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someCondition ) { var N = 10 ; doSomethingElse ( N ) ; } console. log ( N ) ; // 10 }
This is a rather trivial example and hence the problem can be spotted immediately. But in a large code block which uses several closures, such a sloppy name conflict may lead to obscure bugs.
ECMAScript 6 introduces the concept of lexical block scope, where a variable or a function is enclosed within the closest curly braces. The problem in the above example can be solved elegantly using the new let keyword.
// ES 6 function doSomething ( ) { let N = 5 ; if ( someCondition ) { let N = 10 ; doSomethingElse ( N ) ; } console. log ( N ) ; // 5 }
A sibling to let is const. It works the same as let, including the block scope, but it requires an initialization value. As the name implies, const has a constant binding and thus replacing its value has no effect:
// ES 6 const limit = 100 ; limit = 200 ; console. log ( limit ) ; // 100
The major use case for const is to safeguard important constants from being overwritten accidentally.
ECMAScript 6 also has some new features that reduce the ceremonial aspect of coding. Concise method definition provides a compact way to define a function within an object, making it symmetrical to the way its properties are defined. As evidenced from the following example, there is no need to use the keyword function anymore.
// ES 6 var Person = { name : 'Joe', hello ( ) { console. log ( 'Hello, my name is', this. name ) ; } } ;
A function that serves as a callback (not part of an object) can enjoy a shortcut notation as well via the use of the arrow function. For example, the following code computes the squares of some numbers:
// ES 5 [ 1, 2, 3 ]. map ( function ( x ) { return x * x ; } ) ;
The ECMAScript 6 version can be shorter:
// ES 6 [ 1, 2, 3 ]. map ( x =& gt ; x * x ) ;
With the use of the arrow function (=>), we no longer need the function and return keywords. The last expression within the function body becomes the return value. Note that, if the function needs to accept two parameters or more, those parameters must be enclosed with parentheses.
The new spread operator in ECMAScript 6 can be used to reduce the run-time boilerplate code. It is quite common for a seasoned developer to use apply creatively, in particular when an array needs to be used as the list of function arguments. An example of such usage is:
// ES 5 var max = Math. max. apply ( null, [ 14, 3, 77 ] ) ;
Fortunately, this kind of confusing construct will not be the norm anymore. The spread operator “…,” as the name implies, spreads the forthcoming array into the proper arguments for the said function.
// ES 6 var max = Math. max (... [ 14, 3, 77 ] ) ;
Another use of the spread operator is for rest parameters. This is the exactly the opposite of the example above: now we must convert variable function arguments into an array. To appreciate the importance of this, take a look at the following code:
// ES 5 store ( 'Joe','money' ) ; store ( 'Jane', 'letters', 'certificates' ) ; function store ( name ) { var items = [ ]. slice. call ( arguments, 1 ) ; items. forEach ( function ( item ) { vault. customer [ name ]. push ( item ) ; } ) ; }
Here we have a vault in the bank and we want to store an unlimited amount of belongings to the corresponding customer’s safe deposit. With such an API, the function store needs to cast a magical spell with the special object arguments so that it can convert the passed belongings into an array and then push the array elements to the right location. This is far from being clear, it is certainly a code smell.
That run-time hassle is finally gone in ECMAScript 6 with the use of the spread operator for the rest parameters, as demonstrated in the following snippet, re-written for ECMAScript 6:
// ES 6 store ( 'Joe','money' ) ; store ( 'Jane', 'letters', 'certificates' ) ; function store ( name,... items ) { items. forEach ( function ( item ) { vault. customer [ name ]. push ( items ) } ) ; }
For those who love functional programming, the new array comprehension syntax will be strikingly familiar. Basically, this permits a more natural construct compared to the use of Array’s higher-order functions. For example, the following simple iteration with Array.prototype.map:
// ES 5 [ 1, 2, 3 ]. map ( function ( i ) { return i * i } ) ;
will have a different look when rewritten using array comprehension:
// ES 6 [ for ( i of [ 1, 2, 3 ] ) i * i ] ;
Obviously, array comprehension supports filtering, much like the use of Array.prototype.filter. Compare the following two variants:
// ES 5 [ 1, 4, 2, 3,- 8 ]. filter ( function ( i ) { return i & lt ; 3 } ) ; // ES 6 [ for ( i of [ 1, 4, 2, 3,- 8 ] ) if ( i & lt ; 3 ) i ] ;
Even better, array comprehension can handle multiple iterations, much like nested loops in the imperative style. For example, the following one-liner produces all possible chess positions (a1 to h8):
// ES 6 [ for ( x of 'abcdefgh'. split ( '' ) ) for ( y of '12345678'. split ( '' ) ) ( x + y ) ] ;
Run-Time Renaissance
In addition to the above-mentioned incremental improvements to the language syntax, ECMAScript 6 also offers some run-time changes that improve the life of web developers. Two things which relate directly to the development of large-scale applications are class and modules.
The new class syntax is designed to be concise and easy to understand. The following example code shows how to create a simple class:
// ES 6 class Vehicle { constructor ( color ) { this. color = color ; this. speed = 0 ; } drive ( ) { this. speed = 40 ; } }
A class method with the name constructor has a special meaning, it acts as (surprisingly) the class constructor. Other than that, everything resembles the familiar concept of class as in many other programming languages.
Written in today’s ECMAScript 5, this Vehicle class would look like:
// ES 5 function Vehicle ( color ) { this. color = color ; this. speed = 0 ; } Vehicle. prototype. drive = function ( ) { this. speed = 40 ; }
Use the keyword extends to derive a new class from the base class, as illustrated below. Note the use of super within the constructor, which provides a way to call the constructor of the parent class.
// ES 6 class Car extends Vehicle { constructor ( brand, color ) { super ( color ) ; this. brand = brand ; this. wheels = 4 ; } }
Again, this subclassing is just a syntactic sugar. Doing it by hand would have resulted in the following equivalent code:
// ES 5 function Car ( brand, color ) { Vehicle. call ( this, color ) ; this. brand = brand ; this. wheels = 4 ; } Car. prototype = Object. create ( Vehicle. prototype ) ; Car. prototype. constructor = Car ;
The built-in support for handling modules is extremely important. Modern web applications grow in complexity and to date, structuring various parts of the application to be modular required a lot of effort. There are libraries, loaders, and other tools to ease the burden but developers have had to sink time in learning these non-standard solutions.
Module syntax is still being discussed and finalized. To get a taste of what is possible, take a look at the following fragment which forms a simple module.
const HALF = 0.5 ; export function sqrt ( x ) { return Math. exp ( HALF * Math. log ( x ) ) ; }
Assuming this code lives in a file (or module) called mathlib.js, we can later use the function sqrt from another place. This is possible because that function is exported, as indicated by the keyword export. While the above example shows an exported function, there are many other values that can be exported: variables, objects, and classes. Also, note that the constant HALF is not exported and hence it is only visible within this module.
How do we use the module? From another source file, we can simply import the function using the keyword import following this syntax:
import { sqrt } from ‘mathlib’ ; console. log ( sqrt ( 16 ) ) ;
While the above use case suffices for the common cases, ECMAScript 6 module support goes well beyond this. For example, it is possible to define inline modules, rename exported values, declare default export and import. In addition, there will be a loader system to facilitate dynamic module resolution and loading.
Another interesting run-time feature of ECMAScript 6 is the generator function, which is very useful for suspending and resuming program execution within a function. The use of generators, particularly for sequential operations, is an alternative to the asynchronous approach using callback which has led many developers into “callback hell”.
Within the generator function, yield suspends the execution and next resumes it. The following fragment illustrates a very simple generator:
function * foo ( ) { yield 'foo' ; yield 'bar' ; yield 'baz' ; } var x = foo ( ) ; console. log ( x. next ( ). value ) ; // 'foo' console. log ( x. next ( ). value ) ; // 'bar' console. log ( x. next ( ). value ) ; // 'baz'
Back from the Future
Browsers like Firefox and Chrome (with an experimental flag) are starting to support some of the above mentioned ECMAScript 6 features, but ECMAScript 6 is still far from universally available in its entirety. Fortunately, there is a possible solution to that, namely using a transpiler which converts code written in ECMAScript 6 into something that today’s browsers can execute.
A popular choice for an ECMAScript 6 transpiler is Traceur, a project from Google (GitHub: github.com/google/traceur-compiler). Traceur supports many features of ECMAScript 6, it generates translated code which runs quite well on modern browsers.
Another alternative is to start adopting TypeScript from Microsoft (http://www.typescriptlang.org/). TypeScript is not necessarily equivalent to ECMAScript; it can be viewed as a subset of ECMAScript. TypeScript supports popular features which are part of ECMAScript 6 but at the same time it also adds optional static typing.
Traceur and TypeScript are open-source projects that can be used in many environments. Beside these two projects, there are also other transpiler with a more specific purpose such as es6-module-loader (dynamic module loading), defs.js (only for let and const ), and many others.
Final Words
With the modernization to the syntax, richer built-in objects, as well as being compilation-friendly, ECMAScript 6 paves the way to a brighter future for building large-scale web applications. We are excited to see where ECMAScript 6 is heading and we are evaluating the ways we may be able to use the changes in our frameworks!
P.S: Special thanks to Axel Rauschmayer for his technical review of this article.A guide to help people find ebooks & textbooks *(updated September 10, 2017)
Start by using these 4 steps
1) Search on Google
The name of the book + download and/or epub, “.epub”, mobi, “.mobi”, pdf, “.pdf”
Other ebook formats @ wikipedia.org | google.com/search?q=ebook+formats
An example search > google.com
An example search > google.com
2) Search on Libgen.io | libgen.pw | gen.lib.rus.ec
An example search > libgen.io
An example search > libgen.pw
An example search > gen.lib.rus.ec
3) Search on B-OK.org & BookFI.net
An example search > b-ok.org
An example search > bookfi.net
For scientific articles use BookSC.org & Sci-Hub.ac
4) Search publicly tracked torrents
Search torrentproject.se and torrentz2.eu
An example search > torrentproject.se
An example search > torrentz2.eu
An example search > google.com
[search for the name of the book + torrent]
..and other public torrent indexes
An example search > thepiratebay.org
Publicly tracked torrent index “ebook/book” categories
..and ebook specific public torrent indexes
More public torrent indexes @ /links/publicly-tracked-torrents/#indexes
More public torrent search engines @ /links/publicly-tracked-torrents/#searchengines
If you still cannot find your ebooks/textbooks, try using the steps below
1) Use these threads on Reddit
Use Google for sites without search options (site:the url of the site + the book title)
An example search > google.com
2) Try searching/browsing Reddit
Some Reddit sections do not allow/frown upon asking directly for pirated materials/requesting specific items
READ THE SIDEBAR BEFORE YOU POST!
3) forum.mobilism.org/viewforum.php?f=106 – mobilism.org is a forum for mobile-releases with its own EBOOK devoted section
4)
5) Try this custom Google search
6) Try other reliable ebook search engines/indexes
More DDL sites/blogs/forums @ /links/streaming-ddl/#ddl
7) Ebook/audiobook private torrent trackers
DO NOT join a private torrent tracker simply to try to find 1 book!
Private torrent trackers are communities that share a common interest
They are NOT leech-dumps
EBOOKS/AUDIOBOOKS | REVIEW | myanonamouse.net 2/13/13
EBOOKS/AUDIOBOOKS | REVIEW | ebooks-shares.org 12/29/12
EBOOKS/AUDIOBOOKS | REVIEW | p2pelite.com 7/28/13
EBOOKS/AUDIOBOOKS | REVIEW | rainbownationsharing.net 7/15/13
EBOOKS.HU | REVIEW | libranet.no-ip.org 5/15/13
More e-learning private torrent trackers @ /tracker-list/#e-learning
If you cannot find an ebook/textbook yourself using this guide, most likely it will not be found unless somebody has or can acquire a digital copy
Perhaps you know someone who has purchased a digital copy..
Or perhaps you can acquire a trial account for ebooks/etextbooks..
Research DeDRM google.com/search?q=dedrm
Research PDF ePub DRM Removal torrentproject.se/?t=PDF+ePub+DRM+RemovalFALL RIVER — It is hard to remember a summer quite like this, City Councilor Steven Camara said.
There is progress all around the country on the issue of gay rights. Then there is the slaughter in Orlando — 49 died in a massacre at a gay nightclub. Then more killings in Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Dallas.
“We recognize the mourning our country is going through with the violence,” Camara said. “At the same time, I’d like to see an appreciation of the diversity of our Fall River community and an appreciation of our LGBT community.” Camara stopped, laughed and corrected himself:
“LGBTQA it is now. Lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer and allies.”
So Camara called on his friends and they gathered Sunday at 6:30 outside Government Center for songs and speeches and they marched a half mile to the Unitarian Church in Fall River, 309 N. Main St., for more songs and prayers.
More than 60 people showed up for a short ceremony at Government Center. The rainbow flag was raised and lowered again to half mast. Those in the crowd wore Mardi Gras beads. Some wore rainbow masks, others rainbow suspenders, rainbow hats, rainbow flags, American flags, Portuguese flags and the red jerseys of the Portuguese national soccer team, winners a half-hour earlier of the European soccer finals.
There were cheers, each time a car passed honking its horn and waving the Portuguese flag.
“This is all part of one community,” Camara said.
“Welcome to Fall River’s first gay pride march,” Camara said to open the rally. “I’m a city councilor. I’m the only openly gay member of the City Council.”
All types of people are needed to make a community strong. That is what makes the recent violent deaths of so many people such a loss, Camara said.
At the rally many participants held photographs of the people killed in Orlando. They sang along with musician Louie Leeman to the songs “Dreams,” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
At the church, the Rev. Sam Teitel lead the prayers and the reading of the names of those lost.
He hopes, Camara said, to have other rallies, possibly to celebrate progress for diversity and rights for everyone.
But the first rally, he said, must also honor the memory of those lost.
“So this is a celebration and a remembrance,” he said.
Email Kevin P. O’Connor at koconnor@heraldnews.com.Abstract
Purpose Lean is a widely used quality improvement methodology initially developed and used in the automotive and manufacturing industries but recently expanded to the healthcare sector. This systematic literature review seeks to independently assess the effect of Lean or Lean interventions on worker and patient satisfaction, health and process outcomes, and financial costs. Data sources We conducted a systematic literature review of Medline, PubMed, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Web of Science, ABI/Inform, ERIC, EMBASE and SCOPUS. Study selection Peer reviewed articles were included if they examined a Lean intervention and included quantitative data. Methodological quality was assessed using validated critical appraisal checklists. Publically available data collected by the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses were also analysed and reported separately. Data extraction Data on design, methods, interventions and key outcomes were extracted and collated. Results of data synthesis Our electronic search identified 22 articles that passed methodological quality review. Among the accepted studies, 4 were exclusively concerned with health outcomes, 3 included both health and process outcomes and 15 included process outcomes. Our study found that Lean interventions have: (i) no statistically significant association with patient satisfaction and health outcomes; (ii) a negative association with financial costs and worker satisfaction and (iii) potential, yet inconsistent, benefits on process outcomes like patient flow and safety. Conclusion While some may strongly believe that Lean interventions lead to quality improvements in healthcare, the evidence to date simply does not support this claim. More rigorous, higher quality and better conducted scientific research is required to definitively ascertain the impact and effectiveness of Lean in healthcare settings.
Introduction
Globally, healthcare systems are at a cross roads. Many political and healthcare leaders, and in fact the public itself is calling for, if not demanding, the redesign of healthcare delivery. The concern is fuelled by ever increasing costs and high expectations, while at the same time having surprisingly low rates of patient adherence to care and high rates of adverse events [1]. In response, many jurisdictions have attempted to introduce standardized protocols like Lean.
Lean is a widely used quality improvement methodology. Lean thinking was first developed in the automotive and manufacturing industries but it has recently expanded to the healthcare sector. Lean thinking begins with identifying and ‘removing waste’ in order to ‘add value’ to the customer or patient [2]. The Lean Enterprise Institute articulates five main principles of Lean: specify value from the standpoint of the customer, identify all the steps in the value stream and eliminate steps that do not create value, make the steps flow smoothly toward the customer, let customers pull value from the next upstream activity and begin the process again until a state of perfection is reached [3].
The introduction of these principles placed ‘customer value’ and ‘removing waste’ at the centre of Lean thinking. In this manner, the process is essentially driven by ‘what customers want’ and then organizational steps are taken to define which activities are considered to be ‘value-adding’ as opposed to ‘non-value adding’. ‘Value adding’ activities are encouraged because they directly contribute to creating a product or service a customer wants. On the other hand, ‘non-value adding’ activities are considered a waste and need to be removed or avoided [4].
To date, there have been a limited number of reviews of Lean or Lean interventions in healthcare. One of the reviews started with 207 articles under consideration. However, when the authors applied their inclusion criteria of only accepting papers that were published in peer review journals and studies that had quantifiable data available, it left them with merely 19 papers (9.2%) for critical appraisal [5].
Among the papers accepted, it was noted that the vast majority of studies had methodological limitations that undermined the validity of the results. These limitations included weak study designs, lack of statistical analysis, inappropriate statistical assumptions, inappropriate analysis, failure to rule out alternative hypotheses, no adjustment for confounding, selection bias and lack of control groups. The studies also did not review long-term organizational change, long-term impact or the independent effect of Lean while controlling for other organizational or staffing changes occurring at the same time [5]. Although this review was well-conducted, it was not a systematic literature review and it did not include a quality control checklist.
In North America, there are many examples of Lean healthcare interventions but the largest Lean transformation in the world was attempted in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada [6]. The Health Quality Council (HQC) of Saskatchewan concludes on its website that Lean increases patient safety by eliminating errors, increases patient satisfaction, reduces cost and improves patient health outcomes [7].
On the surface, Lean thinking seems to be an approach that generates positive results [8]. Yet, its application in healthcare has been controversial and its effectiveness questioned. As such, the purpose of this systematic literature review is to independently assess the effect of Lean thinking and Lean interventions on worker and patient satisfaction, health and process outcomes and financial costs.
Methods
We conducted an extensive systematic literature review on the following electronic databases: Medline, PubMed, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Web of Science, ABI/Inform, ERIC, EMBASE and SCOPUS.
Searches were carried out using the following keywords: Lean Production System, Lean enterprise, Lean manufacturing, Virginia Mason Production System, Toyota Production System, Just in time production, Kaizen, HoshinKanri, Lean method, Lean thinking, Lean intervention, Lean healthcare, Lean principles, Lean process, Muda and Healthcare.
Peer-reviewed articles
Articles had to satisfy the following inclusion criteria to be considered: published in English, publicly available, peer reviewed, examined a Lean intervention and included quantitative data. These liberal criteria allowed the inclusion of a wide variety of relevant articles in our study. However, it also served as a means to exclude news reports, blog commentary, informational/promotional pieces and general ‘feel good’ success stories that lacked the necessary quantitative data to be able to critically judge the information presented.
The identification and approval of studies was carried out in three steps. First, the authors examined titles and abstracts to remove duplicates. Second, two of the authors (C.N. and M.L.) reviewed the full-text articles for relevance with regard to the field of healthcare and conformity to the inclusion criteria. Third, methodological quality was assessed by using validated critical appraisal checklists. The diffusion of innovations in health service checklists helped the authors assess the baseline comparability of the groups in each study, the research design, outcome measures and potential sources of bias. They were originally modelled after the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group for interventions in service delivery and organization [9]. Studies that scored >50% on the quality checklist were accepted (i.e. satisfied 6 or more out of 11 questions for before and after studies). Any disagreement between the two authors (C.N. and M.L.) was resolved by additional review and, if required, with a tie-breaking vote by the third author (J.M).
Grey literature
As mentioned, the largest Lean healthcare transformation in the world was attempted in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada [6]. The HQC has been surveying tens of thousands of patients over the years about their experiences in Saskatchewan hospitals. For the purposes of this systematic review, February 2012 was used as the cut-off point for the evaluation of pre- and post-Lean data as it coincided with the official date of the signed provincial contract with a Lean consultant firm [10]. A 26-month period was used to collect and analyse data on a monthly basis before Lean implementation (December 2009 to January 2012) and after Lean implementation (February 2012 to March 2014). This high quality data collected by certified Lean professionals have sample sizes ranging from 17 698 to 92 127 patients with a response rate of ∼51% and it is publicly available on a web site [11]. Additionally, the largest healthcare union or association in the province, the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN), contracted an external professional polling company to randomly survey 1500 nurses about their Lean experience in 2014 [12]. All 1500 nurses contacted, participated in the telephone survey.
Results
We identified a total of 1056 peer-reviewed articles of which 164 were removed as duplicates, 768 were removed due to lack of relevance to healthcare and 76 were removed because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. Among the 48 articles that were assessed for methodological quality, 22 articles passed [13–34] and 26 articles failed the checklist review [35–60] (Fig. 1 and Table 1). The original two reviewers (C.N. and M.L.) independently assessed and agreed on 43 studies with a tie breaking vote required by the third reviewer (J.M.) on five out of the 48 studies. Once finalized, the data from the included studies was pooled and summarized and confidence intervals for rate ratios were calculated with an established software application (SPSS 22.0).
Table 1 Articles that passed methodology review First author's last name, year of publication, country where study was done Study design Number of participants Location of intervention (ex. Emergency department) Intervention Intervention goal Type of outcome Quality scores Outcome rate ratio and 95% CI Health outcome studies Jha, 2012, USA [13] Retrospective cohort 6 000 000 Hospital Pay for performance Reduce 30 day mortality rate Health outcome 9/11 Pass 30 day mortality rate
0.08 (−0.30 to 0.46) McCulloch, 2010, UK [14] Interrupted time series 2083 Emergency surgery ward PDCA Reduced risk of care related harm Health outcome 6/11 Pass Adverse events
0.91 (0.72–1.16) Muder, 2008, USA [15] Pre-/post-test 215 ICU and a surgical unit Hand hygiene, contact precautions, active surveillance (TPS) Reduce incidence of MRSA Health outcome 7/11 Pass MRSA infections per 1000 patient days
2.47 (1.87–3.27) Ellingson, 2011, USA [16] Pre-/post- test 109 Veteran affairs hospital surgical ward Systems and behaviour change to increase adherence to infection control precautions Reduce in MRSA incidence rates Health outcome 7/11 Pass MRSA incidence rate ratio
0.99 (0.98–1.01) Process outcome studies Murrell, 2011, USA [17] Pre-/post-test 64 907 Emergency department Rapid triage and treatment ED length of stay and physician wait time Process outcome 7/11 Pass Unable to compute RR
Length of stay reduced from 4.2 (4.2–4.3) to 3.6 (3.6–3.7) hours
Physician start time reduced from 62.2 (61.5–63.0) to 41.9 (41.5–42.4) minutes Kelly, 2007, Australia [18] Pre-/post-test 63 085 Emergency department Streaming of patients from triage, reallocation of medical and nursing staff (VSM) Reduce number of patients who leave without being seen Process outcome 8/11 Pass Left without being seen
0.99 (0.92–1.08) Naik, 2012, USA [19] Pre-/post-test 22,527 Emergency department Identify and eliminate areas of waste Emergency wait time Process outcome 6/11 Pass Unable to compute RR
Wait time reduced from 4.6 (4.5–4.9) to 4.0 (3.7–4.1) hours Simons F, 2014, Netherlands [20] Pre-/post-test 8,009 Operating room of University medical centre DMAIC using A3 intervention Door movements in the operating room Process outcome 6/11 Pass Unable to compute RR
Door movements reduced by 78% from an average of between 15 and 20 times per hour during surgery to 4 times per hour Burkitt, 2009, USA [21] Retrospective pre-/post 2,550 Veteran affairs surgical center Staff training on hand hygiene, systematic culturing of all admissions, patient isolation Increase appropriateness of perioperative antibiotics and reduction in length of stay Process outcomes 7/11 Pass Length of stay
0.91 (0.76–1.08) Weaver, 2013, USA [22] Pre-/post-test 2444 Mental health clinic Identify and eliminate areas of waste (TPS) Improving number who attend first appointment, reduce wait for appointment Process outcome 9/11 Pass Number who attended first appointment
1.0 (1.0–1.0)
Wait reduced from 11 days to 8 days LaGanga, 2011, USA [23] Pre-/post-test 1726 Mental health center Remove over booking Increase capacity to admit new patients and reduce no-shows Process outcome 7/11 Pass No shows
1.13 (1.03–1.23) van Vliet, 2010, Netherlands [24] Pre-/post-test 1207 Eye hospital Identify and eliminate areas of waste Reduce patient visits Process outcome 9/11 Pass Patient visits
1.84 (1.33–2.56) Martin, 2013, UK [25] Pre-/post-test 500 Radiology department Value stream analysis (VSM) Reduce patient journey time Process outcome 6/11 Pass Unable to compute.
No pre and post raw data—only percentage changes were given White, 2014, Ireland [26] Cross-sectional study 338 Hospital Implementation of productive ward program Improve work engagement Process outcome 7/11 Pass Overall work engagement score1.06 (0.96–1.18) Ulhassan, 2014, Sweden [27] Pre-/post-test 263 Emergency department and two cardiology wards Identify and eliminate areas of waste (DMAIC) Improve teamwork Process outcome 8/11 Pass Overall inclusion
1.02 (0.74–1.42)
Overall trust
1.04 (0.79–1.38)
Overall productivity
1.0 (1.0–1.0) Collar, 2012, USA [28] Pre-/post-test 234 Otolaryngology operating room Identify and eliminate areas of waste (DMAIC) Improve efficiency and workflow Process outcome 7/11 Pass Unable to compute due to data not being provided.
Turn-over time reduced from 38.4 min to 29 min Blackmore, 2013, USA [29] Retrospective cohort 200 Breast clinic Identify and eliminate areas of waste Improve timeliness of diagnosis and reduce surgical consults Process outcome 6/11 Pass Reduced surgical consults
4.60 (1.82–11.62) Simons P, 2014, Netherlands [30] Pre-/post-test 167 Radiotherapy department Implementation of a standard operating procedure Improve compliance to patient safety tasks Process outcome 8/11 Pass Overall compliance
0.96 (0.58–1.58) Mazzocato, 2012, Sweden [31] Case study 156 Accident and Emergency department Identify and eliminate areas of waste, system restructuring Increase number of patients seen and discharged within four hours Process outcome 10/13 Pass Discharged within four hours
1.07 (0.92–1.26) Health and process outcome studies Vermeulen, 2014, Canada [32] Pre-/post-test
Only study with control group 6 845 185 Emergency department Training and system redesign Left without being seen, discharged within 48 h, readmitted within 72 h, died within 7 days of discharge Process and health outcome 8/11 Pass In comparison to control group:
Left without being seen
1.05 (0.77–1.43)
Discharged within 48 h
1.19 (0.72–1.98)
Readmitted within 72 h of discharge
1.0 (1.0–1.0)
Died within 7 days of discharge
1.03 (0.84–1.26) Yousri, 2011, UK [33] Pre-/post-test 608 Hospital Identify and eliminate areas of waste Overall mortality, 30 day mortality, door to theatre time, admission to a trauma ward Health and process outcome 6/11 Pass 30 day mortality rate
1.71 (0.70–4.17)
Door to theatre time within 24 h
1.17 (0.86–1.60)
Admission to trauma bed
1.03 (0.90–1.20) Ford, 2012, USA [34] Pre-/post-test 219 Emergency department Value stream analysis (VSM) Reduce time dependant stroke care and stroke mimic Process outcome and health outcome 7/11 Pass Percent of patients with DNT < 60 min
1.50 (1.21–1.86)
Stroke mimic
0.64 (0.26–1.58) Articles that failed methodology review First author's last name, year of publication, country where study was done Study design Number of participants Location of intervention (ex. Emergency department) Intervention Intervention goal Type of outcome Quality scores Major methodological drawbacks Health outcome studies Ulhassan, 2013, Sweden [35] Pre-/post-test 4399 Cardiology department Changes to work structure and process Improve patient care Health outcome 4/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
No formal statistical test was used
Outcomes were not blinded Wang, 2014, China [36] Pre-/post-test 622 Nephrology department Training, treatment of high risk patients, specialized outpatient clinic Incidence of peritonitis Health outcome 4/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
Primary outcome measure was not reliable
Data did not cover most episodes of intervention at follow-up Process outcome studies Wong, 2012, USA [37] Pre-/post-test 234 616 Cytology laboratory New imaging system, workflow redesign Turnaround time, productivity and screening quality Process outcome 4/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
Primary outcome measure was not reliable
Outcomes measures were not blinded Lodge, 2008, UK [38] Post-test 9297 Division of diagnostics and clinical support Intranet based waiting list for radiology services Reduce radiology wait times Process outcome 3/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
Insufficient data points for statistical analysis
No formal statistical analysis was done Willoughby, 2010, Canada [39] Pre-/post-test 1728 Emergency department Visual reminders, standard process worksheets (PDCA) Improve wait times Process outcome 1/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
No formal statistical test was used
Primary outcome measure was not reliable Piggott, 2011, Canada [40] Pre-/post-test 1666 Emergency department Identify and eliminate areas of waste (VSM) Time to ECG, time to see MD, time to aspirin administration Process outcome 3/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
Primary outcome measure was not reliable
Outcomes were not blinded Mazzocato, 2014, Sweden [41] Pre-/post-test 1046 Emergency department Identify and eliminate areas of waste (VSM) To reduce time to see MD, to increase number of patients leaving within 4 h, reduce number present at 4pm shift Process outcome 5/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
Insufficient data points for statistical analysis
No formal statistical analysis was done Richardson, 2014, USA [42] Pre-/post-test 565 Emergency department Educational training Decrease wasted nursing time Process outcome 3/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
Primary outcome measure was not reliable
Outcomes were not blinded Wojtys, 2009, USA [43] Pre-/post-test 454 Sport medicine practice Identify and eliminate areas of waste (VSM) Improve patient scheduling Process outcome 1/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
No formal statistical test was used
Primary outcome measure was not reliable Niemeijer, 2012, Netherlands [44] Pre-/post-test 445 Traumatology department Identify and eliminate areas of waste (DMAIC) Reduce length of stay and cost Process outcome 1/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
Insufficient data points for statistical analysis
No formal statistical analysis was done Hakim, 2014, USA [45] Pre-/post-test 361 Medical and surgical units Identify and eliminate areas of waste (PDCA) Improve admission medication reconciliation Process outcome 3/11 Fail Insufficient follow-up time
Primary outcome measures not reliable
Primary outcome measure was not valid van Lent, 2009, Netherlands [46] Pre-/post-test 255 Chemotherapy day unit Identify and eliminate areas of waste (PDCA) Data efficiency, patient satisfaction and staff satisfaction Process outcome 4/11 Fail Intervention could not be said to be independent of other changes over time
No formal statistical test was used
Primary outcome measure was not reliable Bhat, 2014, India [47] Case study 224 Outpatient health information department Identify and eliminate areas of waste (DMAIC) Reduce registration time Process outcome 2 |
meaning they've developed heritable systems to repair damaged cells. Covered in radioactive particles after the disaster, one large pine forest turned from green to red: seedlings from this Red Forest placed in their own plantation have grown up with various genetic abnormalities. They have unusually long needles, and some grow not as trees but as bushes. The same has happened with some birch trees, which have grown in the shape of large, bushy feathers, without a recognizable trunk at all.
"Genomes, er, unpredictable," says Igor. "Genome not exactly same from generation to generation. They change."
This is not good for a species. Genomes are supposed to stay the same. That's what holds a species together. No one knows what these changes could result in.
"Soon or late," Igor says, "new species will evolve."
In other words, new animals could actually be in the making here. The area has become a laboratory of microevolution—"very rapid evolution," says Igor—but no one knows what will emerge or when.
One Stanford scientist I spoke to later had a terse summary: if there are genetic changes, and if these pass down to the next generation, and if they survive natural selection, then it's reasonable to talk of evolution. There are two theories about why this may happen. In classic Darwinism, random genetic changes that help an organism survive in its environment are naturally selected through generations, because the individuals with those characteristics do better. But "mutagenesis," an alternate theory, posits that organisms deliberately adapt to their surroundings. The process is not accidental. For example, in Chernobyl, if mice are developing radiation resistance by passing down cell-repair systems, is that because some individuals just happened to develop this attribute and to fare better, or is it because the species deliberately developed this capacity in response to the environment?
Sergey takes us to a real-life laboratory nearby: just an old house, but inside it's been gutted, and the walls are lined with shelves of cages, each one full of scurrying white mice. A rank stench hits us as soon as we walk in.
The white-coated lab technician—yet another Ivan—notices my grimace and smiles. "Yes," he says. "And we just cleaned the place this morning."
He explains that they're studying the effect on the mice of the radioactive spectrum here in the Chernobyl Zone. They took probes from the Red Forest and re-created the conditions here at the lab, then started giving the mice food laced with cesium and strontium.
Why here? I ask.
"This is already a contaminated area. So we don't risk spreading radiation elsewhere." In other words, the zone has become a kind of refuge for radiation research.
He and his team are studying the mice to understand their resistance to radioactivity. They've found sensitivity to ionization, which results in certain tumors, and some of this passes down through the genes. But they're also finding heritable radiation resistance—which could perhaps be beneficial to humans someday.
In spite of being a clearheaded scientist, Ivan gives us a surprise when asked if he's OK being photographed. He starts laughing nervously. "I'm afraid of American shamans and what they may do to me," he confesses. Apparently, some old-time beliefs are still being inherited around here too, even in a science lab. The Ukrainians are complex people: part Soviet, part soulful Slav, part subsistence farmer. Even this lab has its own vegetable patch out front.
On our last morning I wake up early, and as I lie in my bed at the dorm I hear, quite distinctly, a wolf howling. It holds its note a long time before reaching for a higher one, then a still higher one. It sounds like a healthy howl. But no biologist has yet been able to study these wolves in sufficient numbers to have a clear idea of their genetic health. They know what their bellies are full of, but the meat has its own genetic instability. These wolves may have a vast untracked forest to roam, but what is happening deep in their DNA no one knows. Will there be new species in a few generations? There may already be, out in the forest, and we wouldn't even know.
Later that morning, on our way to the ghost city of Pripyat, we see a fox darting across the road—nothing more than a black silhouette, curiously low to the ground. Or perhaps it was a small wolf, says Sergey. Then a big bird, which turns out to be an eagle, is suddenly ahead of us, grappling with a sapling it has attempted to land on, bending it down low, then letting the young tree spring back up again as it rides away on giant brown wings.
Sergey tells us that Pripyat used to be the most beautiful, spacious city he ever saw. More roses grew there than anywhere else he ever knew. There were never any shortages, and you could get fine clothes, Czech-made shoes. It was a model of what Communism was supposed to have been.
It's weirdly distressing to be here. As a human, it's like staring down the barrel of our likely fate. We may wipe ourselves out with a nuclear holocaust, or with carbon and methane, or some other way we can't yet conceive of. Or nature may do it for us. When it happens, trees may or may not mind. Cyanobacteria poisoned their own atmosphere two and a half billion years ago by releasing vast quantities of a gas that was poisonous to them—oxygen—and in the process created an atmosphere suited to higher forms of land life. Who knows what creatures may adapt to a high-carbon, high-methane atmosphere if we keep going the way we are? They may include us, or not.
From Pripyat we drive on to the old power station itself. It's a large area of vast concrete buildings. One of them is the stricken Reactor 4, some 200 feet tall, with a giant chimney still rising out of it. For almost 25 years it's stood encased in a "sarcophagus" of cement, but the seal is far from perfect, and it leaks dangerously. We park 200 yards away to look at it but stay only a few minutes. A new steel sarcophagus is slowly being built; when finished, it will be the world's largest movable structure.
There are canals threading through the giant buildings, which provided water for the old coolant system, and in one of them the catfish have grown to prodigious sizes. We stop on a metal bridge and gaze down into the brown water. Suddenly the monsters rise to the surface, some of them a good ten feet long, black, whiskered, curling around as they hunt for the bread people feed them.
They're not big because of radiation, Sergey insists. It's just that they haven't been fished for a quarter of a century.
The whole area is like this: fecund, scary. Later Sergey takes us to an army barracks where some soldier friends of his keep a few wild pets. From the dark doorway of one of the sheds issues a terrific subterranean grunt, and a moment later, as if in a hurry, out trots another wild boar. It comes straight at the fence, presses against it with the weird, wet sucker of its long, long nose, then raises its bristly head and eyeballs me as if I'm something from another planet.
In a pen next door there's another forest sprite—the barsuk, a very close relative of our badger. When it comes out of its kennel, it runs up a woodpile, turns at the top, and proceeds to stare right into me with deeply strange eyes. Something in me seems to recognize something in it, and I feel a pang of longing. Is it for the deep forest, the pushcha? For the trees, the smell of autumn leaves, of mushrooms and mold? For the freedom to live our own way, far from society?
Crouching and staring, the barsuk doesn't move a muscle. It could be a stuffed animal, with eyes of glass. Or perhaps a new species, staring at the world with new eyes.There’s a lot of After Effects plugins out there. Which ones should you care about? Below is a list of the five plugins that should be a part of any serious motion designer’s tool kit. You’ll notice these being used by professionals across the industry! Click on an image to see the best available pricing at Toolfarm.
One of the most versatile plug-ins After Effects has ever seen. Particular is a particle generator that gives you unparalleled control over particle dynamics, including: shading, turbulence, physics, z-space movement and much more. I’ve been able to use this for all sorts of things, such as creating dust, smoke, light trails and maneuvering a group of custom graphics.
Creating smooth gradients in After Effects can be a pain, especially when you’re trying to make a lot of them! If the built in ramp effect isn’t cutting it for you anymore, check out YY_Ramp+. It delivers intuitive functionality, such as: adding blend modes; smooth interpolations, ramp noise to avoid banding and a simple invert switch to swap color selections.
This revolutionary plug-in adds efficient 3D functionality, right inside of After Effects! Element 3D allows you to extrude custom text, shapes and even import pre-built 3D models, with support for OBJ, FBX, C4D, 3DS Max and Vray. The real beauty of it all, is how simple and quick it is to use. You can extrude, texture and animate custom 3D models in just minutes.
Taking strokes and lines to a whole new level. 3D Stroke brings your mask paths to life with lines that can glow, taper and move through 3D space, as a built-in camera lets you capture the action from any angle. It allows for easy duplication of strokes, so you can create complex scenes in no time.
By far the best way to create flares within After Effects. Once you start using this plug-in you’ll quickly notice that these are the same flares used in popular Hollywood movies, such as Star Trek. Optical Flares gives you detailed control of it’s presets and the ability to create your own flares from scratch.
What are your favorite plug-ins for After Effects?
0 Shares 0 0 0 0 Founder & Creative Director of Modio, the motion graphics studio. He's passionate about simplifying information, solving problems and collaboration. More by Adrian ThompsonFinancial markets are starting to have doubts about Donald Trump. The euphoria that sent share prices on Wall Street to record levels has quickly dissipated amid fears that the new president is dangerously unpredictable.
Evidence that Trump does not really have a clue about what he is doing is mounting by the day. The failure to get Congress to agree to a repeal of Obamacare was the first sign of trouble, since it raised questions about whether the White House would be able to pass an economic stimulus package.
But there has been more to unsettle investors since then – much more. First there was the U-turn over Syria, then the sabre rattling over North Korea. Now Trump has decided, in flat contradiction of what he said on the campaign trail, that China is not gaining an unfair trade advantage through the manipulation of its currency.
The kindest interpretation of this latest flip-flop is that Trump wants to keep Beijing sweet while the US launches military action against North Korea, although this prospect is not exactly designed to make investors any less nervous. A more accurate assessment of Trump’s first three months in the job is that he is making it up as he goes along.
Not only did Trump backtrack on China’s alleged currency manipulation in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he hinted that Janet Yellen might after all get a second term in charge of the Federal Reserve and said he thought the dollar was getting too strong.
On this last point, at least, there was some sense in what the president had to say. It is all very well sabre rattling about the imposition of tariffs and putting taxes on imports but a rising currency would blunt the impact of any protectionist measures by making US exports dearer. That’s assuming, of course, that there will be any protectionist measures. On current form, there probably won’t be.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Trump appears to think that the strength of the dollar is a vote of confidence in him. If only. The greenback is strong because the Fed is the one major central bank in the world that is raising borrowing costs, and investors have been assuming that the US central bank will accelerate the pace of interest rate increases in response to a Trump-inspired pick-up in growth. That scenario is starting to look less likely.
The response in the currency markets to Trump’s latest comments was predictable. Traders took their signal from the White House and dumped the dollar. More significantly, perhaps, demand for gold and the Japanese yen, traditional safe havens in times of uncertainty, rose to their highest level since the US presidential election last November.
Share prices remain close to their record highs but for how long? Cannier investors have taken one look at Trump’s Dr Strangelove-style foreign policy antics and decided to park their money elsewhere. US defence stocks look like a decent bet; the rest of the stock market does not. Caveat emptor.
Lenders getting Bank’s message on unsecured debt
Governors of the Bank of England have never had trouble making their feelings known. Once upon a time they did it by raising the gubernatorial eyebrows. These days they do it through the deliberations of the financial policy committee. The net result is the same. Lenders sit up and take notice.
Bank of England sounds new alarm over consumer credit binge Read more
The FPC’s concern is that too much unsecured lending is going on: too much credit card debt; too many payday loans; too many cars being bought on attractive-looking finance deals. It wants lenders to be more cautious because it knows that all the conditions are in place for a credit card crash: ultra-low interest rates, a strong labour market, lenders vying with each to offer the tastiest deals and inflation rising faster than wages. There is a temptation for consumers to use debt to bridge the gap between their incomes and their spending aspirations, and plenty of lenders are only too willing to feed the habit.
Lenders seem to be getting the message. The Bank’s latest credit conditions survey marks a step-change. After years of making it easier to take on debt, the availability of credit fell in the first three months of 2017 and is expected to fall further in the second quarter. The result will be fewer people getting into financial trouble, less unaffordable spending and a more sustainable economy.
That’s the good news. But the survey also shows that loans to small- and medium-sized businesses have been falling, not because lenders are making it harder to borrow but because firms don’t want to invest. That’s bad news.“Republican leaders, including the speaker and the Republican leader, have pledged loyalty to Donald Trump and his disgraceful policies,” Harry Reid said. | Getty Senate Dems blockade refugee bill
Senate Democrats decisively blocked a proposal to implement stricter screening requirements for refugees from Iraq and Syria, after a partisan dispute over amendments — as usual — killed any prospects of advancing the measure.
Earlier, Democrats indicated that they would seek votes on several hot-button measures in connection with the refugee screening bill, including GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. But the two sides couldn't agree on how to proceed, and Democrats filibustered the measure on a 55-43 vote Wednesday afternoon.
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The Democrats' demand "doesn't sound very sincere," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said before the vote, arguing that Democrats wanted to bring “the presidential campaign to the Senate floor."
Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had laid out the strategy in a floor speech, saying Democrats will help Republicans secure the 60 votes needed to advance the bill to make screening standards stricter for refugees from Iraq and Syria — but only if they get four amendment votes, including on Trump’s Muslim ban.
“Republican leaders, including the speaker and the Republican leader, have pledged loyalty to Donald Trump and his disgraceful policies,” Reid said. “As the front-runner of the Republican nomination, Donald Trump and his proposals are leading the public debate in our country. Republicans who support these illogical plans should be prepared for the next logical step: voting on his vision of America.”
Democrats wanted votes on measures to boost funding for local anti-terror efforts, barring people on the no-fly list from purchasing weapons, and a broader proposal laying out the Democrats’ strategy to defeat the Islamic State. In return, Republicans had sought several votes of their own, including political and substantive measures.
That was in line with what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell foreshadowed at last week's Republican retreat in Baltimore, when he said the GOP could very well counter the Democrats’ political amendments with their own proposals.
“It's worth noting that what's good for the goose is good for the gander,” McConnell said last week. “And so, you could expect amendments that they might not like related to the Sanders or Clinton campaign. As a general rule, what I've tried to ask the Senate to do is let the presidential candidates run their race and let's try to do the people's business.”
Senate Democrats largely oppose the underlying refugee measure, since they argue that it would effectively halt the nation’s refugee resettlement program altogether since the security requirements are so strict. Democrats have also pressed the point that refugees already go through the toughest screening requirements to enter the United States. Some Republican senators, including Jeff Flake of Arizona, have also expressed concerns about the bill.
But the legislation, proposed in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, got broad bipartisan support when it passed in the House, with 47 House Democrats helping to propel the bill into an essentially veto-proof majority. To this date, no identified attackers in Paris assaults were refugees from Iraq or Syria, although in a separate case, two Iraqi refugees were arrested on terrorism-related charges in California and Texas earlier this month.
Some immigration advocates had privately fumed at the Senate Democrats’ amendment strategy, arguing that it muddles the party’s broader stance on immigrants and refugees — particularly in the contrast with Republicans.
The legislation is so high-profile that Senate Republicans running for president, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, are taking time off the campaign trail to cast their votes. Near the end of his comments Wednesday, Reid couldn’t resist taking a dig at those two senators.
“I know it’s a big day in the Senate because on my news briefing on the way to work here this morning, I heard the big day is going to be … the junior senator from Florida is going to be here to vote and the junior senator from Texas,” Reid said. “They’re going to actually be in the Senate to vote. It’s a big day here.”
Burgess Everett contributed to this report.Science is great when scientists use it to manufacture products that make our lives easier. But science can sometimes be the worst culprit when it is misused to hide the dangers that some chemicals pose to human health. In the first article of this series, I demonstrated how easily chemicals get into the food supply and how every time humans, animals and the environment are exposed to them, disease is not only created but also continually fed.
In the second part of the Chemical Reality series I exposed what is perhaps the most dangerous chemical commonly found in products manufactured by the food industry. Bisphenol A along with other synthetic chemicals are intentionally put in industrialized products by an industry that seems to be worried only about supplying a food market without taking into consideration that the chemicals used in the production of those industrialized products are destroying the environment and consequently our health.
One of those chemicals that circulate in our food supply are Dioxins, which is the second chemical in our list of the most dangerous ingredients. Dioxins are multi-tasker chemicals produced from the burning of chlorine and bromine. Just as BPA does, Dioxins disrupt the delicate hormonal balance in male and female organisms.
Even while exposed to very low levels of dioxins, this chemical endangers the life a unborn children, damage sperm quality and count, and the bodies of pregnant mothers. Research has found that dioxins bio-accumulate in organisms including humans, plants and animals, building up to levels that turn it into a dangerous carcinogen. Dioxins are powerful enough to disrupt the immune and reproductive systems.
As in the case of BPA, Dioxins act by interacting with a specific intracellular protein, which in turn causes disruptions on other regulatory proteins in organisms. The aryl hydrocarbon (AH) receptor, the one that is most likely affected by dioxin toxicity, is involved in the expression of many genes. Since many industrial by-products are identified as dioxins, it is not known which of those chemical compounds causes the most harm to organisms exposed to them, but it is abundantly clear that they are responsible for immunotoxicity, endocrine effects, tumor promotion and toxic responses.
The damage caused on humans
Two of the main negative effects that dioxins have on humans are reproductive and developmental problems. Additionally, dioxins are also responsible for damage to the immune system, hormonal disruption and cancer. While in unborn children heavy exposure to dioxins can be deadly, in adults the most common consequences are liver damage, alterations in heme metabolism, disruptions in serum lipid levels, thyroid functions, diabetes and immunological effects.
Perhaps the most studied effect of dioxins in the human body is their ability to cause cancer. Even the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has labeled dioxins as “likely human carcinogens”. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified dioxins as carcinogens type 1 because of their ability to accelerate formation of tumors and affect the mechanisms for inhibiting tumor growth.
It is important to highlight that in most of the Western world, both bromine and chlorine, whose industrialization process releases dioxins into the environment, are contained in bottled water which people purchase in supermarkets. Some of the most powerful chemical companies such as Dow Chemical are heavily involved in the processing of chlorine. This chemical is mainly used to manufacture plastics, chemical solvents, pesticides and other products that are also used in a number of industrial processes as well as in the production of supposed food items.
Because dioxins are a by-product released from the processing of other chemicals, it is easily found in plants and animals on which humans rely heavily for their nutrition. That is why most of human exposure to dioxins comes from the intake of animals products like meat and dairy as well as fish, fruit and vegetables. Even though some governments managed to decrease emissions of dioxins, bio-accumulation of this toxic chemical compound is likely to increase in humans between 20 and 60 years of age.
Among some of the most dangerous examples of dioxins are PCBs and PCDD/F-compounds, which spread around the environment during waste incineration, leakage during transportation, air circulation and of course soils that are contaminated with dioxins such as landfills, which in turn contaminate underground natural water depositories. Despite significant advances in dioxin sequestration, this chemical is still bio-accumulating in the environment and in our bodies.
Neither humans nor animals, not even microbes are able to get rid of dioxins in their organisms fast enough. In fact, dioxins are one of the most persistent toxic compounds in the environment. As if its persistence and capacity to bio-accumulate were not bad enough, dioxins also possess the capacity to bio-magnify their effects. In other words, the concentration of dioxins can exceed its background persistence in humans, animals and the environment.
The capacity shown by dioxins to be persistent, to bio-accumulate and to bio-magnify its effects affects the whole food chain, from microbes to plankton that are later used as food by insects, animals as well as other flora and fauna that eventually becomes food. Every time dioxins reach another level of the food chain their toxicity is multiplied, a fact that makes humans the most endangered receptor of dioxins because humans are at the top of the food chain.
A recent study performed by Professor Niels Skakkebaek, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, proves that endocrine disruptors such as dioxins have an even more dangerous effect on human health than first thought. “For the first time, we have shown a direct link between exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals from industrial products and adverse effects on human sperm function,” says Skakkebaek. The study also found that the accumulation of several kinds of endocrine disruptors cause what is called a “cocktail effect”, that is, the damage caused by unwanted chemicals in our bodies are exponentially higher than when they act alone.
This Danish study also determined that the concentration levels needed for chemicals to negatively impact sperm health and hormonal balance, for example, are very low, similar to the amounts found within the human body. As per Professor Skakkebaek’s study, most of the chemicals that threaten human health are ingested or acquired through the use of everyday products such as soap, toothpaste, plastic containers and toys.
“In my opinion, our findings are clearly of concern as some endocrine-disrupting chemicals are possibly more dangerous than previously thought. However, it remains to be seen from forthcoming clinical studies whether our findings may explain reduced couple fertility which is very common in modern societies,” Professor Skakkebaek told The Independent. According to him, at least one in three substances deemed as “non-toxic” actually have the power to greatly affect the potency of sperm cells, which could explain the high levels of infertility in humans.
According to the Centre of Advanced European Studies and Research in Bonn, Germany, some 30 of every 100 chemicals used in household products, which are considered safe, directly disrupt the “catsper” protein, that is the substance responsible for managing sperm motility, agility and ability to fertilize the female egg. “In human body fluids, one does not find one of a few particular chemicals, but rather complex chemical cocktails with many different endocrine-disrupting chemicals at very low concentrations. We tried to mimic this situation in our experiments,” said Dr. Timo Strünker.
With some much evidence showing that dioxins are indeed a threat to human fertility and even fully grown human beings, there is not doubt that the best thing to do is avoid products that contain dioxins. In fact, it is best to avoid processed, industrialized products completely. Because dioxins and other toxic chemicals are in plastic, cans and other types of wrappings that are used by the so-called food industry, the best way to eliminate exposure to dioxins is avoiding the consumption of all processed foods. Unfortunately, most people do exactly the opposite.
Having plenty of evidence about the dangers posed by chemicals in the food doesn’t seem to be enough for most people to stop eating out of cans, drinking from bottles or feeding themselves with heavily processed fast-food. In fact, it seems like eating oneself to death is fashionable. For those who are into health rather than into fashion, here is a simple reason why it is necessary to eliminate processed foods once and for all: Processed foods are an illusion. The use of words such as “healthy” on a can or a bottle as well as other like low fat, no carbohydrates, fortified, contains omega-3s, etc are all lies, because none of those ingredients, assuming they are actually present in the processed foods, are naturally obtained and added. Take for example milk with added vitamin D. Most, if not all vitamin D added to milk is created by extracting materials from sheep’s wool. I am sure this fact comes as a shock to many.
In our next part of the series Chemical Reality I will continue shrinking the list of things that humans should ingest in order to remain healthy, with a very alarming trend towards the fact that there is very little in our diet that we should be eating and drinking.
Luis R. Miranda is the Founder and Editor of The Real Agenda. His 16 years of experience in Journalism include television, radio, print and Internet news. Luis obtained his Journalism degree from Universidad Latina de Costa Rica, where he graduated in Mass Media Communication in 1998. He also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Broadcasting from Montclair State University in New Jersey. Among his most distinguished interviews are: Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres and James Hansen from NASA Space Goddard Institute. Read more about Luis.ASBURY PARK, NJ - NOVEMBER 05: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie attends his election night event after winning a second term at the Asbury Park Convention Hall on November 05, 2013 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Incumbent Governor Chris Christie defeated his Democratic opponent Barbara Buono by a commanding margin. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
By Wednesday night, Election Day 2013: The Foregone Conclusioning, will be over and you will be confronted with a fresh plate of piping hot media narratives. Here's a field guide to what the shiny-faced pundits will be talking about, as they extrapolate wildly from an amazingly teensy data set yanked from a handful of super-parochial elections that happened a year before the midterms and three years before the 2016 presidential race.
1. Chris Christie is the great hope of the GOP.
Underlying media logic in a nutshell: Man win thing. Maybe man win other, later thing?
You have heard, mayhap, of the great GOP "rebranding?" If so, you may have also heard, mayhap, that this has not gone so well, and that this fall's government shutdown michegas continued to demonstrate some deep-seated divisions about the future path of the GOP. Will Republicans opt to become more pragmatic, if not moderate, in their approach to governing, or will the future instead yield for the march of the pure-conservative hardliners? Chris Christie, who has managed to remain above all of the GOP's internecine fray and froth, and who's held to his own bespoke way of doing things, could settle the issue by just parlaying his big win in the New Jersey gubernatorial race and grafting his brand onto the GOP's 2016 efforts.
What Christie brings to the table is a win that's going to end up cutting across all sorts of demographic lines in ways that will make establishment Republicans salivate. He'll have won in a blue state, carrying a share of Democratic votes and a chunk of most of the traditional Democratic coalitions: women, African-Americans, Latinos. He'll be able to talk a good game about working with people of all parties, while maintaining his reputation for shouting down teachers and spiking the ambitions of labor unions. He's met with the requisite number of billionaires. And he's not a "moderate" by any means -- he's anti-abortion, anti-marriage equality, and famously doubtful that evolution is a thing. Will that be enough to win? Will it even be enough to avoid being tagged a "RINO." Here's Nate Cohn, with the counter:
Yet Christie might just be from a state that’s a notch too liberal and a notch too northeastern. It’s unclear how Christie’s Jersey Shore demeanor and temperament will play in Iowa or New Hampshire. His stance on gun control -- dictated by a state with one of the lowest rates of gun ownership in the country -- will be a real problem, especially since relative moderation and secularism already puts him at a serious disadvantage in the South and across the rural West and Midwest. And although the Republicans have a history of nominating relatively moderate, establishment-friendly Republicans, there is a long list of reasons to question whether that history augurs a Christie win in 2016. The party may decide, but the party has changed.
How hot and heavy will the talk be? Oh, you can expect this meme to run all the way to Sunday shows, paced by establishment GOP types looking to accentuate the positive and centrist-weirdos convinced that Chris Christie is some sort of "new Bill Clinton."
2. Virginia governor race is some sort of referendum on Obamacare.
Underlying media logic in a nutshell: Democrat like Obamacare, beat Republican who no likes Obamacare, what does it meeeeeeean?
Well, Terry McAuliffe is the next governor of Virginia, thus incrementally enhancing the possibility that Obamacare will gain a more solid foothold in the commonwealth. And as Dave Weigel points out, the defeated Ken Cuccinelli had, in the later weeks of the campaign, begun to use Obamacare as a cudgel against McAuliffe, so the Cooch theoretically "opened the door" to using the Virginia contest as a bellwether on the Affordable Care Act:
On Oct. 17, the day the government shutdown ended, the RCP average gave Democrat Terry McAuliffe a 7.4-point lead over Cuccinelli. On Election Day, that average has shrunk to... 6.7 points. Two weeks of making this election a "referendum" has boosted Cuccinelli by less than 1 point. If the polls are right, Democrats will be incredibly grateful that Cuccinelli gave them a "referendum" and they won it.
Ah, but! It looks like Cuccinelli's margin of defeat will be a lot closer than 6.7 points, so suddenly, everyone can argue about this! Republicans can contend that once Cuccinelli got out from under the overhang of the government shutdown, the Obamacare attacks turned the race into a nailbiter. CNN's exit polls found that a slim 50 percent to 48 percent majority of the voters opposed Obamacare as well.
The counter to all of this is "Obamacare, schmobamacare, this race went the way it did because of Cuccinelli's extravagantly bizarre positions on sodomy laws and what level of autonomy women should have over their reproductive organs." (And still the race was pretty close! Welcome to Virginia.) Ultimately, what really matters if you are a proponent of Obamacare is that Jeff Zients delivers on his promise to have a functioning website by the end of November, and all estimates on how Obamacare impacts future elections will have to be recalibrated depending on whether he succeeds or fails.
3. Virginia governor race is a bad bellwether for red state Democrats in 2014.
Underlying media logic in a nutshell: Super-famous Democrat only barely beat heaving crazy-faced loon in Virginia oh noes red state Democrats!
Terry McAuliffe is a super-famous Democrat. And McAuliffe outspent Cuccinelli by wide margins throughout the contest. Yet the end result was a lot closer than anyone expected! So what's going to happen to other red state Democrats in 2014 who can't manage to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on their opponents?
Well, the answer is that it could be real problematic! But in the 2014 congressional elections, the Democrats have bigger worries -- the impact of redistricting, the oversaturation of Democratic votes in urban districts, and the number of seats they'll have to defend. But remember: in the "Fear And Loathing in Virginia" construct, McAuliffe was the "loathing." So the question to ask yourself, if you are a red state Democrat, is "Am I as thoroughly despised by my own base as Terry McAuliffe was by his?" If the answer is no, then you can chill for a few minutes and fret about other things.
4. Virginia governor race is a bad bellwether for Hillary 2016.
Underlying media logic in a nutshell: Man who barely won big pal with woman who may run for other thing later oh noes!
One of the pundit-memes that's been bandied about is the notion that the McAuliffe-Cuccinelli race is a vital test of Hillary Clinton's viability as a presidential candidate in the Crucial Swing State(TM) of Virginia. It's not hard to see why this theme has emerged. As McAuliffe himself will tell you until you drop dead from boredom, he's big-big pals with the Clintons oh man they go way back, you know? And McAuliffe was himself the Clown Prince of the Hillary dead-enders in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, forever rearranging deck chairs and superdelegates on that doomed vessel.
But was McAuliffe ever a great augur for future Hillary Clinton success? Let's recall that in his previous adventures in running for the Virginia statehouse, McAuliffe couldn't manage to defeat Creigh Deeds -- a nothingburger candidate served between two stale null-set buns -- in a Democratic primary. So he was always fairly weak-sauce as a stand-in for Hillary Clinton. Now that he's barely eked out a victory over Cuccinelli, the media's bias toward failure and disarray will kick in and this will probably become a bigger thing. (Had McAuliffe won in a 7-point walk, the media would have just ignored any Hillary Clinton connections and moved on, never again mentioning the whole bellwether thing.)
Besides, are there not many years between now and the 2016 elections, during which time a billion things of greater determining power may happen that could say more about whether Hillary Clinton is a viable candidate? Aye, verily, there are. So my advice continues to be: If you are thinking about writing the Terry McAuliffe-as-Hillary Clinton bellwether story, let someone else write it first.
5. Alabama 1st Congressional District race tells us all we need to know about whether the Establishment GOP or the tea party insurgency is "winning."
Underlying media logic in a nutshell: OMG race between GOP "insider" and GOP "outsider" is a huge sign of who's winning the GOP "civil war."
Yeah, so, the Alabama 1st race pitted former Republican state senator Bradley Byrne against Dean Young, a real estate developer turned self-styled tea party candidate, to fill the seat left vacant by the retiring Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.). And with 100 percent of the precincts reporting, the winner is Byrne by a 5-point margin. So, the GOP establishment can rub that in Sen. Ted Cruz's face, I guess? I think the story here is that a very conservative district has sent a very conservative person to Washington after he prevailed over another guy who didn't differ from the winner in any way other than some superficialities, the end.
Ha, just kidding, this is the political media we're talking about and no one cares about stories that involve poor people.
Anyway, these are the Grand Political Narratives that will be percolating for the rest of the week on cable teevee and in the political media, so now that you know all you need to know about them, you can just skip out on the whole thing and get on with your lives.Sen. Lisa Murkowski Lisa Ann MurkowskiHouse to push back at Trump on border GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration Pence meeting with Senate GOP ahead of vote to block emergency declaration MORE’s ascent to the top of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is likely to reignite the decades-old debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
Alaskans have been fighting for the |
of affairs results in a window displaying an unhappy blank screen reading:
FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.
Don’t panic. Simply go up to the menu bar and select
Devices > CD/DVD Devices > Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file…
This will bring up a file browser, again allowing you to select the installation media file you downloaded earlier. Once you’ve chosen it, go to the menu bar again and this time select the following to reboot your machine using the newly selected virtual CD:
Machine > Reset (Host+R)
Interlude: Some VirtualBox Terminology and Quirks Explained
Before proceeding, it’s worth taking a moment to discuss some important terminology and some quirks of VirtualBox. First, when you’re running an operating system on a virtual machine in VirtualBox, the system running on that virtual PC is called the “guest” operating system. Your actual everyday operating system, meanwhile, is called the “host” operating system.
The reason I explain this is that when using VirtualBox, you’ll see frequent references to the “Host key.” As you may already have noticed, your guest OS is displayed inside an application window on your host OS. And by default, when you begin typing in the window displaying your guest OS, all your keystrokes are directed at that guest OS. This makes intuitive sense, but it can sometimes produce results that seem alarming unless you remember what’s going on.
For example, when you’re typing in the guest OS and you want to, say, change to another program on your host operating system, you may instinctively type Alt-Tab or Command-Tab, only to be surprised when nothing happens. This is because the keystrokes, Command-Tab, were registered by the guest OS, not your normal host OS. In VirtualBox lingo, your keyboard has been “captured” by the guest OS.
Luckily, this isn’t as scary as it sounds. VirtualBox reserves one key on your keyboard to be a hotkey that, when pressed, will tell the system that whatever you type next is directed at the host operating system (i.e. your everyday computer). This key is called the “Host Key.” So, for example, to jump back to your host operating system and use Command-Tab after typing in the guest OS, you would first hit the Host Key, and then type Command-Tab.
By default, the Host Key is your keyboard’s left-hand “superkey”—a.k.a. the command key on a Mac or the Windows key on a Windows PC. But you can reassign the host key to be whatever key you like. To do so, first return to your VirtualBox application (note that while it’s running, a virtual machine registers on your computer as a second application separate from VirtualBox, though you should know that both applications must be running at the same time). Once back in VirtualBox, go to the menu bar and select
VirtualBox > Preferences > Input
Here you’ll see a place where you can assign the Host Key to the key of your choosing. I use the right-hand command key on my Mac keyboard, since it’s not a key I generally use for anything else.
Now that you know where your Host Key is, you can also use it to perform various keyboard shortcuts defined in the menu bar accompanying your virtual machine as “Host-Somekey.” For example, Host-F toggles your virtual machine between windowed mode and fullscreen mode (though we’ll have to install some more stuff before fullscreen mode begins to look nice; hold tight a few minutes).
Step Four: Select a 32- or 64-bit Version of Arch Linux
Once you’ve successfully started up your new virtual PC using the virtual installation disk, you’ll see a welcome screen presented.
The screen includes a menu that you can navigate using your keyboard’s arrow keys (no mouse just yet). The first two options here are the ones that are important to us at present. They’re asking us to select which version of Arch from the CD we’d like to boot into and ultimately install. The first, ‘x86_64’, is a 64-bit version of the operating system, while the second, ‘i686’, is a 32-bit version of the OS. While in a few years time everyone will want to choose 64-bit, at present I typically choose 32-bit for a couple reasons.
First, while 64-bit operating systems and their ability to handle more memory, are undoubtedly the future, at the moment there’s more software available for 32-bit operating systems. And second, since virtualizing a 64-bit system is a bit more memory intensive, I find that I get slightly better performance when virtualizing 32-bit Arch on my computer. However, if you select the 64-bit version of Arch, you should still be able to follow along with the rest of this tutorial. When choosing between the two, here’s a slightly dated, but helpful tutorial.
When you’ve selected the version of Arch you’d like to install, hit the ‘Return’ key to boot the computer from the installation disk.
Step Five: Getting Started and Partitioning Your Virtual Hard Drive
After you’ve selected a version of Arch to install, your new virtual PC will finish booting Arch for the first time from the CD. You’ll see the OS spitting out a bunch of notifications as the system boots. And eventually, Arch will present you with a command prompt, signifying it’s ready to take your instructions:
root@archiso ~ #
As experienced Linux users will know, by displaying ‘root@archiso ~’, the command here is telling you that you are currently using the system as the ‘root’ user (i.e., as the all powerful superuser, capable of making any desired change to the system), that the name of the system you’re using is “archiso” (your cue that you’re currently running Arch off the CD; later once Arch is on our virtual hard drive, we’ll get to set our own system name), and finally that you’re currently operating from the root user’s home directory (the home directory of the logged-in user is always nicknamed ‘~’ for brevity). Lastly, the ‘#’ symbol simply means, “your command goes here.”
Interlude for non-U.S. users
By default, Arch assumes you’re using a U.S. keyboard. But if you’re typing on something other than a standard U.S. keyboard, the first command you’ll want to issue is the “loadkeys” command, which tells Arch the nationality of your keyboard. For example…
# loadkeys uk
…should load up a British keyboard. ‘loadkeys be’ should do Belgian, ‘loadkeys cf’ Canadian French, and so forth. If you’re not sure the letters to use for the keyboard of your nationality, the Arch Wiki has a guide that may be useful. Generally speaking, where the wiki table says something like…
KEYMAP=fr-latin1
…you’ll want to use the lettering right of the equal sign and left of the hyphen. So in the above example, ‘loadkeys fr’ for French.
</interlude>
Again, we’re currently running Arch off a virtual CD, but we’d like to copy it over to our virtual machine’s hard drive. But before we can do that, we need to prepare that hard drive, first by dividing it into the partitions where our Arch installation will live, and then by formatting those partitions so that they’re ready to use.
Partitions are basically different sections of your hard drive that your operating system will treat as distinct drives. Generally speaking a Linux system uses several partitions, but over the years I’ve gathered that just how many and how they should be organized is something of a religious debate. As one primer on the matter states, “The question of ‘how many partitions’ continues to spark debate within the Linux community and, without any end to the debate in sight, it is safe to say that there are probably as many partition layouts as there are people debating the issue.”
I’m going to skip this debate entirely and present what I’ve gathered is one of the more common partitioning schemes out there. Though if you’re interested, you should check out Arch’s primer on partitioning and do a bit of Googling to learn more. Presently, for the sake of this guide, I’m going to make four partitions:
The boot partition // This partition is where your virtual computer’s “boot loader” will live. More on what this is and does later, but suffice to say we’ll need a boot loader if we want the operating system to start at all. The swap partition // Linux uses this space as extra memory—when the operating system takes on a lot of tasks, it can actually make use of this hard drive space to free up some RAM (i.e., the swap partition provides Linux with “virtual memory”). If you put your computer to sleep, Linux can also use this swap partition as a temporary place to store the tasks you were working on, and load them back up when you wake up the computer. The root partition // This is the partition that serves as the highest level of your computer’s file system—when other partitions, like “boot” and “home” are loaded up (“mounted”), they will appear as subdirectories of the root partition. The home partition // This is the partition where all the user’s files and personal settings will be stored.
The last thing to discuss before we go and make these partitions is what sort of ‘partition table’ to use. Basically, a partition table is the system’s ledger for keeping track of how many partitions there are on the hard drive, as well as where each begins and ends. But this ledger can be kept in different formats. Two commonly used types of partition tables are MBR (which stands for Master Boot Record) and GPT (which stands for GUID Partition Table).
While I’ve done some reading on the subject, I do not pretend to be an expert with regard to all the ins and outs of choosing one over the other. MBR is older and some argue out of date. GPT is newer and apparently addresses some of MBR’s shortcomings. The Arch documentation recommends the use of GPT over MBR, so that’s what I’ve used and what I’ll demonstrate here.
To create a GPT partition table, we’ll use a command line utility that speaks GPT. There are several you can choose from, but I’m going to demo the one I’ve used most, called ‘gdisk’.
The only other thing we need to know before getting started is how the install disk we’re running is representing our virtual PC’s hard drive. The drive shows up just like a file; if you look at the contents of the CD’s /dev directory, by entering the command…
# ls /dev
…it will be displayed as an object called ‘sda’, which stands for SATA Drive A. (If we had a second hard drive, it would be listed as ‘sdb’ for SATA Drive B, and so on.)
Now that we know the program we’ll be using to create our partition table (gdisk) and we know where to find the hard drive we’ll be partitioning, it’s time to go ahead and create the partition table for our virtual PC’s hard drive. To do this we’ll fire up gdisk and tell it we want to work with ‘/dev/sda’—enter the following on the command line:
# gdisk /dev/sda
The gdisk partitioning program will start, offering a prompt that looks like this:
Command (? for help):
Type ‘p’ at the prompt and hit ‘Return’ to see an intial summary of your system vitals. Now, let’s create the four partitions I discussed above. To create the first partition, our boot partition…
Type ‘n’ at the prompt and hit ‘Return’ to tell gdisk you want to create a new partition. When it asks for a partition number, hit ‘Return’ to accept the default (1). When it asks for a “first sector”, hit ‘Return’ to accept the default. This will start the partition at the beginning of your virtual hard disk. When it asks for a “last sector”, type ‘+250M’ (without quotes). This will make the boot partition 250 megabytes in size, which is large enough for the boot loader software we’ll be installing there in a few minutes. Hit ‘Return’ to continue. When it asks for a “hex code”, it’s asking you to give it a number that corresponds to the type of filesystem you’d like that partition to use. As you may have guessed from the prompt, you can leave the default (8300 for “Linux File System”) and hit ‘Return’.
At this point the boot partition has been drafted—gdisk knows what you want—but, importantly, it hasn’t yet been implemented. We’re first going to create all of our partitions in gdisk, and then when we’re done drafting them, we’ll end by asking gdisk to write them to our virtual hard disk.
So it’s now time to create the second of our four partitions, the swap partition. Before we create this one, I should add a few words of context. In the instruction that follows, I create a 2 gigabyte swap partition. Be aware, though, that if you gave your virtual system a small amount RAM when you created it in VirtualBox, you may be able to get away with a smaller swap partition. And if you gave your virtual system 2 gigabytes or more of RAM, you may not need a swap partition at all (though for better or worse, I’ve generally created one anyway, despite configuring my virtual machine with quite a bit of memory, and I’m demoing it here). For some pointers on how large your swap partition should be, check out the guide in the Arch wiki. Now, assuming you’re with me, let’s create the swap partition:
Type ‘n’ at the prompt and hit ‘Return’ to tell gdisk you want to create a new partition. When it asks for a partition number, hit ‘Return’ to accept the default (2). When it asks for a “first sector”, hit ‘Return’ to accept the default. This will put the start of the new partition right next to the end of the previous one on the hard disk. When it asks for a “last sector”, type ‘+2G’ (without quotes). This will make the swap partition 2 gigabytes in size, which is plenty of room in almost all cases (see the note above). Hit ‘return’ to continue. When it asks for a “hex code”, it’s asking you to give it a number that corresponds to the type of filesystem you’d like that partition to use. In this case, we don’t want the default. Type ‘8200’, which is the hex code for ‘Linux swap’ and hit ‘Return’. (For those who are interested, here’s a link to a list of the different hex codes for all the various file types gdisk can create.)
The third partition we want to create is the ‘root’ partition. This partition should be sizable, because when you start downloading applications they’re going to live here and some of them will be large. I’ve made the mistake of making this partition too small before, and suffice to say that it’s not enjoyable when you run out of space. It’s often a year or two into using the system that this partition fills up, resizing it turns out not to be as simple as you’d like, and at that point you’ve already put a bunch of files onto your system and won’t be thrilled about the idea of migrating to a new virtual machine.
In this tutorial, I created a machine with a 40 gigabyte hard drive. I’m going to give the root partition 15 gigabytes of that space (though you could probably get away with 10 GB, or less if you don’t plan on installing too much stuff).
Type ‘n’ at the prompt and hit ‘Return’ to tell gdisk you want to create a new partition. When it asks for a partition number, hit ‘Return’ to accept the default (3). When it asks for a “first sector”, hit ‘Return’ to accept the default. This will put the start of the new partition right next to the end of the previous one on the hard disk. When it asks for a “last sector”, type ‘+15G’ (without quotes). This will make the boot partition 15 gigabytes in size, which is roomy enough for our applications and system updates. Hit ‘Return’ to continue. When it asks for a “hex code”, it’s asking you to give it a number that corresponds to the type of filesystem you’d like that partition to use. In this case, you can once again leave the default (8300 for “Linux File System”) and hit ‘Return’.
All right, we’re now almost done with the partition scheme. We have one last partition to create, which is the ‘home’ partition, which is the place on the machine where all our personal files and settings will live. This one’s the simplest one yet.
Type ‘n’ to create a new partition and hit ‘Return’ as usual. Then just go through and hit ‘Return’ repeatedly to accept the default partition number, first sector, last sector, partition size, and hex code. This will create a final partition with a Linux filetype that fills the remainder of our virtual hard drive.
Now type ‘p’ and hit ‘Return’ to see the finished partition scheme. It should include all your newly defined partitions with the information you entered. Mine looks like this:
Make a note of the different partition numbers (i.e., which is the boot partition, which is the root partition, and so on)—as you might expect, they’re going to be important again soon. Also make a note of which numbered partitions have been prepared for a ‘Linux filesystem’ and which partition number is the ‘Linux swap’ partition.
Now that we’ve drafted all our partitions, type ‘w’ at the gdisk prompt and hit ‘Return’ to write the partition scheme to the disk. When gdisk asks whether you’re sure you want to do this, type ‘Y’ and hit ‘Return’ to say yes. Gdisk will implement your partition table and then quit, leaving you back at the command line:
root@archiso ~ #
Step Six: Formatting and Mounting Your New Disk Partitions
Next, back at the command line, we’re going to format our new disk partitions so that we can begin using them. This is not unlike formatting any other disk, except perhaps that you may be used to doing this with a mouse and a desktop GUI. We’ll be doing the same thing from the command line.
The partition numbers you jotted down above should now correspond to new objects in the /dev directory, each with the prefix ‘sda’. So, for example, partition one can now be manipulated from the command line using the handle ‘/dev/sda1’. Partition 2 is ‘/dev/sda2’ and so on.
We’re first going to format the partitions for which we anticipated using a Linux filesystem (which, if the instructions above were followed, are sda1, sda3, and sda4). There are actually multiple types of ‘Linux filesystem’ that can be used in formatting your drive. You can read about all the choices here, but note that the filesystem type ‘ext4’ is the one recommended by Arch, so this is what we’ll use.
Again, in the partition scheme I’m using, partitions 1, 3, and 4 each need to be formatted with a Linux filesystem (‘ext4’). To format them, I’ll run the following commands from the command line:
# mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda1
# mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda3
# mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda4
To briefly break down what’s going on here, the command ‘mkfs’ is short for “make file system”, the flag ‘-t’ means “of type”, I then specify “ext4” and finally, I give it the location of the particular partition I want to format (e.g., /dev/sdax). In summary, each command translates to “make file system of type ext4 on partition /dev/sdax“.
We’ve now formatted all the partitions using a Linux filesystem, but we still have to format the swap partition (in the above scheme, ‘/dev/sda2’). To do this, we now run the command:
# mkswap /dev/sda2
We’ve now formatted all the partitions on our virtual hard drive.
Step Seven: Mounting the New Hard Drive Partitions
Even after formatting the hard drive partitions, though, we’re presently still running Linux off a CD. We still need to install Linux to the drive we’ve just formatted. And the final step before putting Linux on our new virtual machine is to mount our new hard drive partitions—i.e., load them up—so that we can access them and write files to them. Once we have access to our new hard drive partitions, we can finally put Linux on the hard drive.
First, we’ll load up our swap partition—since it serves as virtual memory, it’s a bit of a funny partition, and the command for loading it is unique. Rather than “mounting” a swap partition, we “turn it on.” One thing to know is that, since the swap partition serves as memory, not as file storage we won’t actually be loading files onto it. However, we still need it turned on at this point because we’ll soon be generating a file called ‘fstab’ that will—in the future—automatically mount all our computer’s partitions when our Linux system boots. To generate the fstab file, the system is going to take a census of all the mounted partitions so it knows what they are and can include instructions in the fstab file for loading them up. The swap partition needs to be turned on beforehand, so that it will be counted in this census.
To do so, run this command (if you’ve partitioned your drive differently than I’ve done in this tutorial, you can replace ‘/dev/sda2’ with the location of your own swap partition):
# swapon /dev/sda2
Next, we’ll mount our root filesystem and make it accessible under the directory /mnt. Doing this means that—at least temporarily—when we browse to the /mnt directory on the CD, we’ll be able to view and add files to the root partition of our system’s hard drive. In unix lingo, we’re using /mnt as the “mount point” for the root partition.
To mount the new root partition on /mnt, run this command:
# mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
Now, the root partition is accessible to us. Let’s navigate to it on the command line by cd’ing over to /mnt:
# cd /mnt
We’d also like to be able access our boot partition and our home partition. So within /mnt we’ll create two new directories to use as mount points for these additional partions (i.e., the ‘boot’ partition and the ‘home’ partition). Note that in making these directories inside /mnt, we’re actually creating them on the hard drive itself. As such, they’ll be able to be used as the mount points for these partitions in the future, when we’re running Linux from the hard drive instead of from a CD. Make the ‘boot’ and ‘home’ directories now using this command (note that if you’re using a partitioning scheme that doesn’t include ‘home’ or is arranged differently from my example, you’ll need to change this command accordingly and make folders that correspond to your own partitioning scheme):
# mkdir boot home
Next, while still in the /mnt directory, run the following commands to mount the remaining partitions to the directories we just created. In this example, /dev/sda1 is the boot partition we created and formatted earlier, so it gets mounted on the ‘boot’ directory, while /dev/sda4 was the home partition we created and it gets mounted on the ‘home’ directory. Again, if your partition scheme is different than what I’ve been using in the example, change, add, or omit the commands accordingly:
# mount /dev/sda1 boot
# mount /dev/sda4 home
Since sda1, sda3, and sda4 have now been mounted and swap is on, all four partitions I created in this example are now accessible. You should similarly have loaded all of your own partitions. It’s time to install Arch.
Step Eight: Installing Arch Linux
While it’s not strictly necessary, I tend to navigate back to the root level on the command line at this point:
# cd /
Now that we have access to all the partitions on our virtual machine’s drive, we can go about installing Arch Linux. The good folks behind Arch provide a number of installer scripts that are already available to us as shell commands on the CD we’re running (in English this means they’ve automated a lot of the setup for us). These scripts will do a lot of the work for us of installing the operating system to our virtual machine. The first installer script we’ll use is called ‘pacstrap’. We’ll run this command to download and install the ‘base’ and ‘base developer’ packages to our hard drive. The ‘base’ package contains the bare essentials of Linux, while the base developer, or ‘base-devel’, package contains tools that are ostensibly for developers, but which tend to come in handy in a lot of contexts. These tools occasionally get used indirectly by other software as well, and as such may be useful even when you’re not aware you’re using them.
We want to put Arch Linux on our root partition, which remember is currently available to us as /mnt. To install the ‘base’ and ‘base-devel’ packages to the root partition, run the following command:
# pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
Since we’re currently installing the whole operating system, this command may take a few minutes to execute. You can stick around and watch the progress bars if this sort of thing fascinates you, or you can go get a cup of coffee and come back when it’s finished.
Step Nine: Generating the ‘fstab’ File
Arch Linux is now technically installed! But don’t go trying to reboot into it just yet or you’ll be in for a nasty surprise. While most all the files necessary to run Arch are now in place on your virtual machine’s root partition, if you reboot your machine, it’s not going to know where to find that partition (or even how to start up, but we’ll take care of that, too, momentarily).
As mentioned previously, when Arch Linux boots, it will need to make use of a file called ‘fstab’ that contains instructions on starting up all your Linux system’s various partitions. We still need to create this fstab file. Quite handily, this process can be automated as well by another Arch installer script called ‘genfstab’.
To generate your system’s fstab file, run the following command:
# genfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
This will analyze your virtual machine’s hard disk partitions, currently loaded up under /mnt, and write out an ‘fstab’ file. This fstab file will, from now on, reside in the /etc folder on your virtual machine’s root partition, and the file’s job is to automate the process of mounting all your system’s hard drive partitions in the future when your virtual computer is booted up. The script will also detect the swap partition you turned on earlier and include instructions in fstab for loading it up, too.
To check and see that the fstab file was generated correctly, you can display the contents of the file using the ‘more’ command:
# more /mnt/etc/fstab
This will display the contents of ‘fstab’ on the screen and return you to the command prompt (occasionally you may have to hit the space bar a time or two to see the whole file before being returned to the command prompt). Even if you’re not quite sure what a proper ‘fstab’ file looks like, you should be able to tell if the process worked, (a) because when you execute the ‘more’ command a file turns up with stuff in it (which means that the genfstab command did something), and (b) the file contains mentions of all the hard disk partitions you created earlier (in my case, ‘/dev/sda1’, ‘/dev/sda2’, ‘/dev/sda3’, and ‘/dev/sda4’).
The fstab file spit out by ‘genfstab’ on my system looks like this:
Note that even if you’re following along with this tutorial in lockstep, the UUID numbers included in your fstab file may be different than the ones in this screenshot. These are unique to every machine and partition.
Step Ten: Initial Installation of the Boot Loader
Now we’ve installed Arch Linux and told it how to load up the various partitions we created. Aside from a bit of configuration, which we’ll get to momentarily, there’s one really important component that’s still missing before our virtual machine will run correctly, and that’s the “boot loader.” What, you might wonder, is that?
When a computer boots up and the hardware first kicks into action, it’s momentarily a body without a brain. Until it can load up the software installed on the hard drive, it has no idea what it’s supposed to be doing. But how does a brainless machine go about finding its brain?
The process is akin to how those of us with poor eyesight go about finding our glasses in the morning—by putting them on the nightstand, or some other place we can quickly and reliably find them without thinking about the problem. For the computer, this means having some special software placed at the very beginning of the system’s hard drive (i.e. the first place the computer looks when the hardware kicks into action) whose only job is to help the computer load up the rest of the operating system. In other words, if the hardware can find the boot loader in the expected place, it can load up the rest of its brain.
So, what that means for us is that before trying to boot into our system for the first time, we need to install a boot loader and put it in the place the computer expects to find it. The fact that our “computer,” in this case, is a virtual rather than an actual machine makes little difference in how it operates in principle.
There are several commonly used boot loaders out there. Most people use either GRUB2 or Syslinux. You can read up on the selection, but for a relatively basic setup like the one I’ve been describing here, it matters relatively little which you choose. Here I’m going to describe setup using Syslinux.
Author’s Note [3/21/2013]: As Christoph Schniedermeier pointed out in the comments, and as I discovered myself since writing this guide, there’s a simpler way of installing Syslinux. Read on, but check out the Beginner’s Guide for a look at the syslinux-install_update script and, if you choose the Beginner’s guide method, skip from here to Step Eleven at this point.
To begin installing Syslinux, we’re going to use another handy installer script, which can be executed as follows:
# pacstrap /mnt syslinux
Note that we’ve still got some work left to do before we’ve finished installing the boot loader, but we’ve now completed the first step.
Step Eleven: Configuring the New Linux Installation on Your Hard Drive
Again, we’re not quite done installing the boot loader. To finish up, we’re going to log into our new system for the first time, and while we’re there we’re going to take care of some other important configuration as well.
Luckily (since our boot loader’s not configured yet), it’s possible to log into our new Arch Linux install without rebooting the machine, but by instead using the command ‘arch-chroot’. This command will transport you, at least temporarily, from the version of Arch Linux that you’re currently running off the CD into the new Arch Linux installation that you’ve just placed on your hard drive. To be thusly air-dropped into the root partition of your new installation, run the command as follows:
# arch-chroot /mnt
You’ll get a new command prompt, different from the one you’ve been using up ’til now, which signifies that you’re now logged into, and using, the Linux installation on your hard drive. Depending on your installation media, it’s possible that the command prompt will look something like this:
sh-4.2#
If that’s the case, it means that you’re currently using the most basic shell (command line interface) Linux has to offer. You’d probably rather use the BASH shell, which is a command line interface that is a bit more fully featured [H/T Railmaniac]. To use BASH, run the following command:
# bash
This will give you a version of the command prompt that looks like this instead, and which gives you the greater functionality of the BASH shell:
[root@archiso /]#
Now that we’re logged into the new Arch Linux installation on our hard drive for the first time, it’s time to configure it. We’ll get back to completing the installation of the Syslinux boot loader momentarily, but first we’ll set up a few other things that are also important.
First, your Arch Linux install wants to know where you live. Not in a creepy stalker kind of way, but rather so it can present text to you in your own language and so forth. So let’s set up our locale preferences. To do this, we first need to create and/or edit a couple files—’/etc/locale.conf’ and ‘/etc/locale.gen’—that contain this information. Like most configuration files on Linux, both of these are plain text files, and to edit them we’ll use the command line text editing program, “nano”.
First, we’ll create the file ‘/etc/locale.conf’ in nano. To do so, enter the following on the command line:
# nano /etc/locale.conf
This will open a blank text file in nano that, when saved, will become ‘/etc/locale.conf’. Assuming you are a U.S. user with American English as your preferred language and dialect, type the following in this blank document (If you’re working in a different language, search the Arch Wiki in your language for instructions on what to put instead.):
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
To save your changes and exit back to the command line, type Control-X to quit nano, and when asked if you want to save your changes, type ‘Y’ for ‘yes’. Finally, hit ‘Return’ to confirm that you want to save the file with the pre-filled filename. The file will be saved and you’ll be dropped back to the command prompt.
Next, we’ll edit ‘/etc/locale.gen’, again using nano. To do so, enter the following command:
# nano /etc/locale.gen
This file already exists, so you’ll see a long text file open in nano and fill up your screen. You can move your cursor and scroll throughout the file using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Find the two lines that correspond to your language and dialect. For English-speaking Americans, these would be:
#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
#en_US ISO-8859-1
Delete the ‘#’ preceding each of these lines (i.e., “uncomment” them). This will cause the system to pay attention to these two lines specifying your language of choice, while continuing to ignore the rest. At this point, save the file and exit back to the command line. Again, in nano this is done by typing Control-X to quit nano, then ‘Y’ for ‘yes’ when asked if you want to save your changes, and finally ‘Return’ to accept the suggested filename.
Now that you’ve gone through and arranged Arch Linux’s configuration files to use your language of choice, you lastly need to implement these changes. This can be done by running this command, back at the command line:
# locale-gen
Next, we’re going to tell Linux what time zone we’re in. To do this, we’ll be typing some version of the following command (which, if run as-is would set your time zone to correspond to the time in New York City/US Eastern):
# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime
Chances are, though, that you don’t live in the Eastern time zone. Luckily, there’s still help for you. To find your time zone, begin typing the above command, but don’t run it yet. Instead, assuming you’re in North or South America, type the command only up to the this point…
# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/
…and then hit the ‘Tab’ key a couple times. The BASH interface will ask you if you want to display all the available possibilities. Type ‘y’ for “yes” and it will display a list of cities you can use to identify your timezone. Make a note of the city you want to use. This list is long enough that it’s paginated and you may have to hit the spacebar once to see the whole list.
Once the whole list has been displayed, you’ll be dropped back at the command line, where you can finish typing the rest of your command, which again should look like my example above, but with your own city of choice inserted. For example, if you chose the city of Anchorage, your command would look like this:
# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Anchorage /etc/localtime
If you live outside the Americas altogether, you can similarly find your time zone by hitting tab repeatedly after ‘zoneinfo’ to find your continent, then filling this in and doing the same thing to find your nearest city.
However you get there, once you’ve found your reference city of choice, run the command to set your timezone. What’s actually happening here, is that you’re creating a “symbolic link”—akin to a desktop shortcut or alias if you’re used to Windows or OS X—that refers Linux to the the specific timezone configuration file you’ve identified whenever it looks for the file ‘/etc/localtime’.
Now we’ll set up one last aspect of our system before we finish configuring our boot loader and boot into our new Arch Linux machine for the first time. The thing we’re configuring next is our machine’s “hostname,” which is the name that traditionally identifies your system to your local computer network. This can be pretty much anything, but it’s generally something descriptive, like “archlinux” or “joshscomputer”. Think up whatever you’d like. Generally speaking, it should have no spaces in it and be something simple and straightforward.
To set the the hostname, create the file ‘/etc/hostname’ in nano with the following command:
# nano /etc/hostname
This will bring up a blank file in nano. Type your hostname as the only line in the file. Then quit to the command line in the usual way, saving your changes as you go.
Step Twelve: Finishing the Boot Loader Installation
Author’s Note [3/21/2013]: If you’re using the ‘syslinux-install |
Cipla, which has been embroiled in a legal dispute with Bayer over its right to produce Nexavar, said cancer drugs were a small part of its business and the price cuts would not affect revenues.
But analysts said the step could prompt a price war in the 15-billion-rupee Indian drug market -- challenging multinationals which sell costly patented medicine and Indian firms whose generic range is less expensive but not as cheap as Cipla's.
"This market is price-sensitive and when larger players start cutting prices, others will likely follow," Sudarshan Padmanabhan, pharmaceutical analyst at Mumbai investment house Prabhudas Lilladher, told AFP.
Shares in Cipla, whose market value is around $5 billion, rose 2.46 percent to 325.20 rupees on the back of an "outperform" rating by brokerage CLSA, as a falling Indian currency swells foreign earnings and its domestic market grows.
Cipla's step may not only help cancer patients, but "they will reach many more patients, and will also be able to garner greater market share", Anjan Sen, healthcare director at consultancy Deloitte, told the Economic Times.
"It's a smart move."
Explore further Bayer mulls challenge to India cancer drug ruling
(c) 2012 AFPBayern Munich winger Franck Ribery is not expected to return to action before the end of September and will miss the first match of the Champions League group stage, according to reports in Germany.
Ribery, 32, has been sidelined with ankle problems since mid-March 2015, and on Friday followed Bayern Munich's 5-0 win over Hamburg from the stands of the Allianz Arena.
"I am fine," Ribery told kicker after the match, but did not go into details about his comeback plans.
According to the football weekly, the Frenchman, currently limited to recovery work inside the club's training facilities, could increase his work load by the end of August -- should his ankle not react to the current build-up training.
However, Ribery is not expected to return to the Bayern squad before the end of September, more than six months after his problems first occurred, meaning he is set to miss the opening Champions League group stage match which takes place on Sept. 15/16.
"It's difficult for him, and also difficult for his mind," Bayern attacker Arjen Robben said in kicker, and recalled the last time the pair went a full 90 minutes in the 4-1 defeat of Cologne on Feb. 27.
"I miss the time with him, it has been quite a while. The two of us have been without any luck. Whenever he played, I had problems, and the other way round."
Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, left midfielder Sebastian Rode and Dante out of the Hamburg squad, and later said that he had to make a decision.
"I can't always explain why someone is not in the squad," Guardiola said. "But we need this competition. Dante was out injured for a long time, Sebastian is outstanding player, but recently had problems with his ankle."
Rode, 24, said about the decision: "Like always there were 18 names written on the chalkboard during the team meeting."Dr. Ronald Petersen, MD., PHD. speaks at a news conference concerning the release of a report from the Alzheimer's Association suggesting that breakthroughs in research could result in nearly 3 million fewer Alzheimer's cases by the year 2025 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. on June 23, 2004. Petersen was the physician who first diagnosed the late President Ronald Reagan with Alzheimer's Disease in 1994. (UPI Photo/Greg Whitesell) | License Photo
LEXINGTON, Ky., Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Bad news for people who think they might be developing Alzheimer's. A new study suggests they may be right.
In research results unlikely to sit well with hypochondriacs, Dr. Erin Abner and her colleagues at the University of Kentucky's Sanders-Brown Center on Aging found self-reported memory complaints were predictive of memory impairment problems later in life.
Researchers surveyed 3,701 men aged 60 and older. Respondents were asked one simple question: "Have you noticed any change in your memory since you last came in?"
Researchers were surprised by what they found. "It seems that subjective memory complaint can be predictive of clinical memory impairment," Dr. Abner said. "Other epidemiologists have seen similar results, which is encouraging, since it means we might really be on to something."
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Dr. Abner said patients, doctors and caretakers should be encouraged by such results, not scared. If healthcare providers can locate the onset of Alzheimer's sooner rather than later, they may have greater success at treating it.
"If the memory and thinking lapses people notice themselves could be early markers of risk for Alzheimer's disease," Dr. Abner explained, "we might eventually be able to intervene earlier in the aging process to postpone and/or reduce the effects of cognitive memory impairment."
There are currently more than five million Americans living with Alzheimer's. In 40 years, doctors expect that number to be roughly 14 million, mostly thanks to aging baby boomers. Experts worry the disease could overwhelm healthcare and senior living resources and facilities.
President Obama signed the National Alzheimer's Project Act in 2011, upping the amount of federal funds going to Alzheimer's research.
[University of Kentucky]I am all about the appliances of late, but then I’ve always been. As much as I hate to admit my dependence on material things, I will concede that in my busy home and life, and given my penchant for doing things from scratch in the kitchen, appliances like pressure cookers, slow cookers, blenders and food processors play an important role in getting my family fed. That’s why I was so excited when I found a recipe for a curry made almost entirely in a blender, while leafing through the cookbook, At Home With Madhur Jaffrey, at the public library.
So I checked it out, despite the fact that the curry is not vegan: the two main ingredients in it are eggs and yogurt. And then I turned it into a curry with a vegan spin.
For the curry base I used a paste of spices, tomatoes and cashews. And instead of the eggs, I used a rather beloved egg substitute: tofu. I still had a package of Nasoya’s Chipotle TofuBaked (stay tuned for last week’s giveaway winner) sitting around, and into the curry it went. If you don’t have this, press and bake your own tofu, by all means. No need to marinate it because the sauce is so flavorful, the tofu will soak up all of those flavors and still be delicious.
This curry is extremely vibrant: the spice combination was rather unusual, even to my Indian tastebuds, but still familiar and very pleasant. The tadka of fennel, cumin and mustard gives the dish loads of character and the chickpea flour or besan thickens and smoothens the sauce into a velvety texture that coats the tofu beautifully.
Here’s the recipe for my quick and easy — and rather foolproof — Blender Tofu Curry. If you love my Tofu Makhani, I can guarantee you’ll enjoy this one too.
4 from 1 vote Print Blender Tofu Curry Prep Time 10 mins Cook Time 20 mins Total Time 30 mins A quick and easy blender tofu curry with a sauce of tomatoes, cashews and spices coating chewy baked tofu. Course: Curry Cuisine: Indian Servings : 4 servings Author : Vaishali Honawar Ingredients 1 8- oz block of baked tofu cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1/4 cup raw cashews soaked in 1/4 cup water
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 medium tomatoes chopped
3 tbsp chickpea flour besan
1/2 tsp cayenne
1- inch piece ginger chopped
3 tbsp curry powder use sambar powder as a substitute
1 tsp coconut oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
Salt to taste
2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves Instructions Place the cashews with soaking water, lemon juice, chickpea flour,cayenne, tomatoes, ginger and curry powder into a blender and zap until you have a very smooth paste. Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the mustard seeds. When they sputter, add the cumin seeds and then the fennel and stir quickly. Turn off the heat, add a cup of water and the cashew-tomato paste to the pan, and return to heat. Stir well to mix. Heat the sauce over medium heat until it simmers. Turn the heat to low and cook 15 minutes. The sauce will thicken as it cooks. Add the baked tofu and heat the sauce through. Turn off heat and sprinkle on the coriander leaves. Serve hot with rice or rotis.
***
Try these recipes next:The Bottom Line Pros Curved screen is first of its kind in the market
Note 4 design returns, until you get to the right side
Performance is top tier
Camera is still quite powerful
When the curve proves useful, it's great
Hardware offerings are robust
S Pen is still its ace in the hole
Cons The curved display remains weird even after you get used to it
Ergonomics take a hit when the curve is factored in
When the edge doesn't work, it's infuriating
High cost brings the curve's existence into question
Bottom Line The Galaxy Note Edge is unique, but that might not be enough for many. 8.7 Buy Now on Amazon
Up until recently, most smartphones have generally had the same form factor – a slab of glass, surrounded by a square body – and that gets boring. It’s not often that we see a new form factor readily available for the public to purchase. In fact, it almost never happens when it comes to the smartphone world. Believing that the industry needed a slight push on the hardware front, Samsung announced something very cool alongside the Galaxy Note 4, back at IFA 2014.
Related: Best cases for the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge.
That device is the Galaxy Note Edge. It resembles the Note 4, but it’s still different. Instead of offering a plain slab of glass on the front, the side of the display gently curves around the right edge. Samsung is obviously trying to push the boundaries on how we use our devices, but is that enough to warrant purchasing this device over the Galaxy Note 4? Does it offer enough of a mainstream feature that people will get behind?
Find out this, and more, in our Samsung Galaxy Note Edge review!
Here is where the Note Edge really stands out from the competition. It looks exactly like a Galaxy Note 4, but with one huge change. Obviously we’re talking about the right edge of the display. It changes the way we use the phone, sure, but in all other aspects, you can absolutely tell that it’s a Note device. The Edge uses the same faux-leather back, glossy-plastic front (complete with a big, tactile home button), and brushed-metallic sides as the Note 4.
The right side of the device almost looks as if someone melted the glass and let it cool. The curve is where we see the new handling experience that the Edge brings, in software and in hardware. Due to the added slippery-ness of the edge, there’s a slight lip on the screen, which Samsung hopes will help aid in holding it. Although we haven’t dropped the phone quite yet, we’re even more nervous to than on most other phones. Now that the display wraps around to two edges of the device, there much more of a chance of cracking it once it’s dropped. Since the right edge is the main feature of the phone, cracking it would be detrimental to the user experience.
The button layout has been switched up quite a bit on the Edge, moving the power button to the top of the device. It’s definitely a change, especially since basically every other Samsung phone has had the power button on the right side. Waking the device is still very easy, thanks to the tactile home button, but it’s still odd getting used to reaching up top to put it in standby.
The other edges of the device still have the brushed-metallic look to them, and gives the Edge a nice, premium feel in-hand. The back is still removable, and covered in the familiar faux-leather plastic backing from the other Note devices. We’re happy Samsung decided to include a removable back and premium materials around the device, as it still makes for one heck of a great feeling phone.
Let’s be honest, this device looks weird. A good kind of weird, though. It generates a lot of looks from people, and is usually followed up with, “What’s going on with your phone?” Albeit generally positive reactions, it still gets a lot of looks in public. Let’s just say that this device has piqued our interest in terms of design. We aren’t picking it up everyday because it’s the best all-around device, but mainly because it’s something new. It changes the software and the hardware experience completely, and we’re continually excited to see how it fairs from day to day.
Obviously the display on the Note Edge is one of the biggest differences between this handset and the more traditional Galaxy Note 4. The 5.6-inch display not only looks unique, it actually has slightly more than a Quad HD resolution at 2560 x 1600. Of course, the 160 extra pixels on the right side of the display don’t really improve the viewing experience in any way, as they are reserved for a number of panels and controls.
The display might have a unique edge to it, but the rest of the characteristics are pretty typical of Samsung, meaning the same signature saturation and high fidelity. Text is sharp as ever, and I still enjoyed media and games just as much as I did on the Note 4. That said, I have to admit that the extra curve can be more than a little distracting at times, and I wasn’t too happy anytime I accidentally triggered it and thus covered a sliver of my Netflix or Youtube video up top.
Turning to the curve itself, it’s important to note that it can actually turn on independently from the rest of the display. This means you can use the curve as a clock on a night stand, or as a quick way to few basic notifications. Touch sensitivity here is as good as you’d expect, though interaction is limited to swipes and touches.
We’ll get into more details about how the curve changes the experience a bit later in the review. The big takeaway is that, yes, the display has a higher resolution but it really makes no difference in the grand scheme of things.
The influence of the Edge’s sibling returns here with the handset packing the same Snapdragon 805, Adreno 420 CPU and 3GB RAM as the Note 4. Of course, that’s not a bad thing. The Note Edge is absolutely a beast, providing a reliable, enjoyable experience.
Like the Note 4, the Note Edge packs one of the smoothest iterations of TouchWiz to date. While there are rare moment of stutter or lag, they are few and far between. In other words, no matter what you throw at it, the Note Edge should be able to take it all in stride.
The new addition of the panels in the curve don’t detract from the general experience found the device either, as everything still runs smoothly. I do notice that some new animations have been added in to draw attention to the side, as all of the apps slide in from the edge – but these are just aesthetic changes.
Apart from the curved display and its capabilities, the Galaxy Note Edge basically offers everything you’d get with its flagship sibling, making this one of the most feature-packed devices currently available as well. Usual Samsung features such as removable back cover, that gives you access to the replaceable battery, SIM slot, and microSD card slot, make a return here.
Call quality is decent, and while the external speaker does get quite loud, it is plagued with the issues that affect any speaker that is placed at the back of the phone. Recent Samsung additions like the heart rate monitor and the multiple microphone setup, that helps with recording specific parts of the sound spectrum, also make a return with the Note Edge.
Of course, the main draw with any Note device is the S-Pen stylus, that provides precision usage and note taking abilities, like easily clipping parts of the screen for later usage, access to the S Note, and the Action Memo. The S-Pen itself has also been enhanced to allow for an even finer writing experience. The S-Note application now comes with Photo Note, that captures the lines and designs of any scene, and makes them editable, which is great for making signs, blackboards, or any presentation open to your creativity. Everything said and done, while the S-Pen can prove to be an integral feature of the Galaxy Note Edge, it does feel somewhat weird, especially when you, literally, fall off the edge.
As expected from a device with such a large form factor, the battery life is quite impressive. The 3,000 mAh unit lasted for around four hours of screen-on time, with the standby time and other power consumption features allowing me to reach at least a day and a half of usage on multiple occasions. While my usage might have been a little higher than most, what is appreciated is Samsung’s fast charging capabilities, that allows you to recharge the device very quickly.
Keeping with the Galaxy Note 4 specifications, the Note Edge features a 16 MP rear shooter, bringing with the expected Samsung quality, and various modes to videos. That said, I still had quite a significant problem with the handling experience.
With the Note Edge, a lot of the controls that are used with various applications have been moved to the “curve,” which is actually quite useful, but proves to be a terrible idea in the case of using the camera. While you still get access to some on-screen buttons to adjust the settings, the controls and the quick settings are all on the curved edge, whose ergonomics are unfortunately just not made for smartphone camera shooting.
I was never able to snap photos with one hand, as reaching the shutter button was quite awkward, and constantly resulted in a feeling of the phone falling. The placement of the controls don’t destroy the experience entirely, but this is certainly an example of how an innovation like this does need a lot more thought put into it.
The quality of photos taken still remain the same however, including high levels of saturation that makes for overly vivid photos, which are nonetheless received well by the general user. Various modes are available, including HDR and Selective Focus, which does end up being a hit or miss feature. Low light performance is somewhat helped by the optical image stabilization, but photos do lose detail and get quite grainy the darker the situation becomes. That said, the pictures are still reliably good in well lit situations, which should be pleasing for most users.
Finally, when it comes to software, TouchWiz makes a return in all its glory, but now with a new element to accommodate with the curved screen. Before we get to the curve, the software experience that we’ve covered in the Galaxy Note 4 review continues here, especially with regards to multi-tasking. While TouchWiz has seen an update with regards to its aesthetics, there is still an over saturation of available features, as you will see in an overly long Setting list. The ease of multi-tasking is a focus with the latest iteration of TouchWiz, and is clearly seen in the new Recent Apps screen, which also includes a new button to quickly trigger the Multi-Window feature. All the numerous multi-tasking features all make an appearance with the Note Edge as well.
Multi-tasking is of course a very a big part of the Note experience, is actually at its most capable on the Note Edge, especially when you factor in the curved edge. A panel full of icons or folders that you can customize allow for shortcuts to your favorite apps at all times, which is one of my favorite aspects of this new curved display. A variety of other panel specifications like data tracking, a dedicated news ticker, one that will show notifications in real-time, and a ruler for quickly measuring anything are available here. You also have the ability to personalize the panel in which you have the ability to include a small phrase or drawing, to truly make the “edge” your own. The curve also ends up being the control panel for most applications, but this does end up being annoying in some cases. While not having the controls on screen while watching videos is appreciated, the horrible camera controls are a let down.
The software does use the curve to a good extent, even if not every situation yields a good experience. It definitely is a great place to put perpetual shortcuts, and a good way to easily check the time, but whether these features are enough to justify the need of an “edge” is still unknown.
Pricing does prove to be an issue in the case of the Galaxy Note Edge, with the device on occasion costing $150 more than the Galaxy Note 4, which is essentially the same device, save for the edge. Whether that edge is enough to justify the difference in price is entirely up to you, but all said done, the overall experience is mostly the same with the comparatively cheaper Galaxy Note 4.
So there you have it – the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge! Different, is the best way to describe the experience while using the Galaxy Note Edge. While the steep price point of this smartphone is certainly a drawback, the allure of something new is definitely undeniable. While the differences between the Galaxy Note Edge and the Galaxy Note 4 may not be enough to justify the signifcant difference in price, if you’re someone who is craving exclusivity, and basically just want something unique, the Galaxy Note Edge may just be the device you seek.It's been more than two-and-a-half years since he was charged, so it's easy to forget that the US still sees Kim Dotcom as an Internet fugitive.
The US Department of Justice still hopes to extradite him from New Zealand and bring him to trial on criminal copyright charges for inducing piracy through actions he undertook at his former company, Megaupload. Dotcom is still fighting to stay out of the US, and an extradition trial is now scheduled for February 2015.
Now, Dotcom has won an interim victory—thanks to a ruling from the New Zealand Court of Appeal, he's finally going to get some of the data that was seized from his computers and other devices when his house was raided in January 2012.
It's an important win for Dotcom, who until now has been in the position of having to construct a legal defense without access to his own company's data. Now, he'll get back "clones" of the devices seized, which include laptops, computers, portable hard drives, flash storage devices, and servers, according to the New Zealand Herald. As a condition of getting back the data, he'll have to provide New Zealand investigators with passwords so they can view it.
"The passwords can only be given to two New Zealand police officers, sworn to not provide the information to anyone else, to prevent the U.S. from benefiting from the illegally removed data and further violating Dotcom’s privacy," Dotcom's lawyer Ira Rothken told Bloomberg News.
The appeals court ruling specifically states the encryption codes will not be disclosed "to any other person or any other party, and in particular to any representative of the Government of the United States of America."
Megaupload has been shuttered since the 2012 raid, and its US-based servers are being held by the government. On the one-year anniversary of the raid on his mansion, Dotcom launched a new cloud storage service, Mega.Published online 17 June 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.576
News
American Chemical Society puts squeeze on print editions.
Print is dead. Alamy
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is taking steps towards turning most of its academic journals into online-only publications.
According to a letter seen by Nature that was sent by Susan King, senior vice-president of the ACS's journals publishing division in Washington DC, to ACS associate editors, the move has been prompted by the "accelerated decline in demand for print subscriptions and the diminishing financial return from the print format".
Kings writes that "printing and distribution costs now exceed revenues from print journals" at the ACS. To save money, most ACS journals will, from July, begin printing two pages of reduced text sideways on each page.
Excepted from this condensation will be the society's flagship journal, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and two review journals, Accounts of Chemical Research and Chemical Reviews. At the same time, subscribers will be offered incentives to switch to online-only access.
In 2010, ACS members will no longer be able to buy print subscriptions of journals, and the publications division will monitor print renewals from institutional subscribers. In general, King foresees a "move beyond print to an electronic-only scientific publishing environment".
King would not reveal further details of the plan to Nature, saying, "we do not comment on confidential correspondence".
Uncontroversial and green to boot
Svetlana Korolev, a science librarian at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and head of the executive committee of the ACS Division of Chemical Information (CINF), says that in her personal opinion the move is uncontroversial.
Korolev says that her university cancelled all of its ACS print subscriptions a year ago, and even moved archived print journals to off-campus storage. "We did talk to all the faculty, and no one said that they were going to use the print," she says.
James Milne, editorial director for the Cambridge, UK-based publishing division of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), says that the ACS's decision to reformat the layout of print journals in the middle of the year is surprising. Publishers usually redesign journal layouts at the end of the year, he says, to coincide with the subscription cycle. He adds that the RSC has no plans to move away from publishing its journals in print: "If our customers want print we will provide print," he says.
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Harvard University biochemist Stuart Schreiber feels that the transition of all journals to online only is both "inevitable" and a better way to disseminate and acquire scientific information. And chemist Reza Ghadiri at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, also approves of the trend. "It is about time," he says. "Why do we want print anymore? Everything is online. It is more than cost saving, it is environmentally friendly too."
But William Fenical of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, also in La Jolla, says that he'll miss the physical journals. "I really enjoy thumbing through Organic Letters," he says. "If I had only the electronic option I would do more filtering with keywords, and not see every page. I am finding that I am encountering less and less science outside of my personal area of research. We are losing something — how important it is remains to be seen."
Additional reporting by Katharine Sanderson.June 10, 2014 5 min read
On my morning subway adventure to work, I read a poster advertisement contending "A better web begins with your website."
That’s a flattering delusion. A better Internet begins with broadband capacity and access to it. If nobody can access the website, it’s not even a digital tree falling in the forest. Nobody would have created it. If people can access it, there is no predicting which site will launch the next entrepreneurial triumph. That’s why entrepreneurs love the Internet.
Related: The Latest FCC Net Neutrality Rules Should Be Opposed
Which brings us to “net neutrality,’’ the uninspiring shorthand for a principle that should rally entrepreneurs into a territorial frenzy. Net neutrality, in practical terms, means if you have an idea you can get all the bandwidth you need. What happens after that is on you. The opposite of net neutrality is what we teeter on now. A cartel of America’s most hated companies, the ones who may or may not show up at your house to install cable TV on the day you took off work, have used their unlimited budgets for lobbying and litigation to thwart the Federal Communications Commission’s regulations requiring net neutrality. If they get what they want, they will determine how much broadband they build and they will allocate it.
When it comes to expanding the choice and quality of goods and services, the fang-and-claw competition of our robust free market is seemingly infallible (or at least brutally self-correcting). Not so in the broadband space. Just 13 providers have more than 80 percent of the market and, as we all know, they mostly split the market as local monopolies. Of those 13, just two, Comcast and Time Warner, who fervently want to merge, have more customers than the rest combined. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts bizarrely insists the merger is "pro competitive.'' What he really means is, since they don't compete anyway, the merger won't reduce competition.
The predictable result of this market distillation is Americans pay more for less. Over time, if we pay more for slow broadband access and our international competitors pay less for faster, they win and we lose. "We'' won't include broadband providers, who will do quite nicely regardless. Paradoxically, our free market needs broadband regulation to remain free.
America has recognized and shrewdly managed transformational technology before. The Internet, wondrous as it is, is not more transformational than was electricity a century ago. Then, as now with Internet access, private companies built some generation and ran wires to where they could sell for a profit but nowhere else. It soon became apparent electricity was not like other goods and services. The cost of generating capacity and distribution systems made competition impractical.
Because we recognized a society with universal, ample electric power is incomparably more desirable than one where electricity is a nice thing, if you can afford it, we made a deal. Private investors who raised the money to build power plants and distribution systems were rewarded with regional monopolies and a guaranteed rate of return. Before long, if you had a great idea, you could rely on all the electricity you needed being available. We eventually did the same thing to bring universal phone service.
Related: What Is Net Neutrality, and How Can It Affect Your Business?
We need to do the same thing now with broadband. Broadband providers have much more in common with the old Ma Bell and electric company than with the entrepreneurs who depend on them. The Federal Communications Commission, having lost a suit brought by Verizon challenging its net neutrality regulation, has the authority to do just that, if it has the courage. Entrepreneurs need to speak up. We need a free and open Internet, with no "fast lines'' affordable only to the biggest players. We need transparency from providers, service standards, steady progress toward universal access and the option to prod providers by building our own municipal and regional networks where they won't. Providers are entitled to a fair rate of return, not control of the economic future of the country.
The FCC is taking public comment on net neutrality. It's a good idea to speak up. If you're too busy to think up something original, just repeat what FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said: "There is only ONE Internet. It must be fast, robust and open. The speed and quality of the connection the consumer purchases must be unaffected by what content he or she is using. And there has to be a level playing field of opportunity for new ideas. Small companies and startups must be able to effectively reach consumers with innovative products and services and they must be protected against harmful conduct by broadband providers. The prospect of a gatekeeper choosing winners and losers on the Internet is unacceptable.''Want fairer taxes, less corporate lobbying and more open politicians? Here’s how open data can help
On 21 February, thousands of transparency activists, software developers, designers, researchers, public servants, and civil society groups are gathering at more than 100 cities around the world for the fifth global Open Data Day.
In political speeches and recent reports there has been a significant focus on the potential of open data for economic growth and public sector efficiency. But open data isn’t just all about silicon roundabouts and armchair auditors. Here are five reasons why open data matters for social justice and democratic accountability.
1: Fairer taxes
Map of banks. Photograph: opencorporates.com
Governments around the world have a tax problem. Vast sums of money that could be used to run schools, hospitals, and deliver essential public services are lost to offshore tax havens. Recent estimates suggest that there has been a tenfold increase in the corporate use of tax havens over the past few decades. Leaks such as the Swiss HSBC files and the Luxembourg tax agreements grant us a rare snapshot of the tip of an immense and wholly submerged glacial mass.
The past couple of years have seen several promising initiatives using open data to unpick complex corporate networks and highlight the extensive use of tax havens – including projects on the use of anonymous shell companies to avoid tax, the subsidiaries of major banks in tax havens, the corporate structures of Big Oil, and the use of tax havens by large public sector contractors.
But globally we still lack the information needed for journalists and campaigners to hold decision-makers, avoiders and evaders to account, and to tackle the problem root and branch.
2: Protecting the public purse
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Who does business with the Slovakian state? Photograph: http://znasichdani.sk/
Public sector bodies spend an estimated $9.5tn buying goods and services every year. And every year vast sums of this money are lost to fraud, corruption, overcharging, and under-delivery by private contractors. Recent scandals have ranged from investigations into contracts with outsourcing giants such as G4S and Serco to Africa losing around quarter of its GDP to corruption.
Open data about public contracts give civil society organisations and journalists the means to hold contractors and public bodies to account. For example, the Slovakian civil society project zNašichDaní profiles companies and people who do business with the state. Researchers at the University of Cambridge are developing algorithms to automatically flag cases of potential corruption using open data.
3: Controlling corporate lobbyists
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Annual figures on UK pharma products lobbying. Photograph: opensecrets.com
Corporations spend billions every year trying to influence government policy around the world. Campaigners have used open data about lobbying to shine a light on the composition of the influence industry in Washington and Brussels, as well as on specific topics like lobbying around data privacy laws.
However, in the wake of the failure of the UK’s lobbying bill and the EU’s broken promises to make a mandatory lobbyist register, it is clear that a lot more work is needed to secure even a basic level of transparency around who is lobbying whom for what around the world.
4: Fighting pollution
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pollution in Finland. Photograph: paastot.fi
Data can be an indispensable campaigning and reporting tool to fight back against pollution – whether oil spills in the US, air pollution in Beijing, or heavy metal contamination in Europe. Greenpeace’s energy desk has used open data extensively in its research and reporting, for example to illustrate the potential impacts of fracking proposals in the UK on groundwater and national parks.
5: Holding politicians to account
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Exploring changes in legal texts. Photograph: http://www.lafabriquedelaloi.fr/
Some of the earliest and most widely cited examples of the democratic value of open data were websites built by civic hackers to track the speeches and votes of politicians. Sites like TheyWorkForYou and OpenCongress went beyond previously available parliamentary records by enabling customised email notifications, statistics, commenting and annotation.
The past decade has seen the growth of dozens of parliamentary monitoring websites, which continue to grow and evolve. The ParlTrack project was set up by activists to oppose the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement and its data has been extensively used by campaign groups in Europe. The La Fabrique de la Loi project from Regards Citoyens, Sciences Po’s médialab and Density Design gives an unprecedented view of more than 40,000 amendments to some 300 French legal texts.
These kinds of tools offer citizens and civil society groups a rich base of evidence and analysis to enable them to hold their elected representatives to account.
Jonathan Gray is director of policy and research at Open Knowledge and is also a researcher at the universities of London and Amsterdam
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Looking for a role in government? Visit our GuardianJobs siteAnti-capitalist group bomb Credit Suisse bank and home of finance company Glencore's boss
Postbox outside property owned by commodity trader blown up
Window broken in blast at bank branch in upmarket Zurich suburb
Unnamed group claims responsibility in letter on the indymedia website
Anti-capitalist activists protesting against the World Economic Forum in Davos have claimed responsibility for explosions that broke a window at a Zurich branch of Credit Suisse and blew up the postbox of the boss of commodity trader Glencore.
Police confirmed on Friday that attacks had been made on a Credit Suisse branch in the upmarket residential area of Hottingen and a postbox in the lakeside suburb of Rueschlikon in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Credit Suisse confirmed a security window of its branch had been shattered. Police said the damage, caused by an unidentified explosive device, amounted to several thousand francs.
Targetted: A postbox outside a property owned by Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg was blown up by activists protesting against the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
A spokesman for Zurich police said investigations were continuing into who was behind the attacks and what had caused the explosions, while Glencore confirmed an incident had taken place on the property of CEO Ivan Glasenberg. No-one was injured in either attack.
An unnamed group posted a letter on the indymedia.ch website claiming responsibility for the attacks. The letter said the group had targeted Credit Suisse and Glasenberg due to their support of the WEF.
In the letter, the activists criticised poor working conditions at Glencore and said it had targeted Credit Suisse for a host of reasons, including food price speculation, mass job losses and 'betting against the Greek people'.
Glencore Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg has been scrutinised for his company's involvement in mining operations in countries from Zambia to Colombia
Glencore's 2011 stock market flotation has led to increased scrutiny by environmental and anti-corruption campaigners over its involvement in mining operations in countries from Zambia to Colombia.
Until the listing, Glasenberg, who grew up in South Africa and became CEO in 2002, had lived with his family in relative anonymity in Rueschlikon, a lakeside town about 6 km from Zurich where he moved in 1994.
In 2011, left-wing activists claimed responsibility for a small explosion that broke windows at a hotel in Davos without hurting anybody.
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upcoming NFL games. The talks have been reported by The New York Times as part of the social media platform's plans to broaden its appeal using live sports. (NFL content is already available on Apple TV for paying NFL Game Pass subscribers, but games aren't live-streamed in the US.)
Back in April, Twitter beat out rivals such as Facebook to secure the rights to live stream a number of NFL games, and has since signed similar deals with Wimbledon, the MLB, the NBA, and the NHL. The company wants this content to attract new users to its service as well as bolster its credentials as a home for live experiences. More video content also gives Twitter the opportunity to sell lucrative video ads — although exactly who sell these ads (Twitter or the content provider) differs from deal to deal.
Getting a Twitter app onto platforms like Apple TV would help deliver this content to more people, and traditionally, people love watching live sports on their TV — not on a mobile app or desktop. Such a partnership might also complement Apple's plans for the TV business, with the iPhone-maker reportedly shelving its ambitions to sell users its own TV subscriptions in favor of creating a new interface that makes it easier to find digital content. Adding Twitter's increasingly large catalog of live sporting events to such an "Apple TV Guide" could be a smart move.By Amber Enderton | February 23, 2017 | Special to EGN The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialis...
http://www.elkgrovenews.net/2017/02/the-dsa-is-continuing-bernie-sanders.html
By Amber Enderton | February 23, 2017 |
Special to EGN
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the USA, with 17,000 members across the US; over half of them having joined since November. Among their members includes Trevor Hill, the young man who asked Nancy Pelosi about socialism at a CNN town hall earlier this month. In Sacramento, the local chapter is also growing, and is working on issues that matter here in the capital city.
Rent in Sacramento is one of the fastest growing in the nation. If you have not been affected, consider yourself lucky. While San Francisco and the bay area have groups diligently working on rent control, Sacramento does not have a group working on it.
That is about to change.
DSA Sacramento is putting together a campaign to push the city for rent control and establish fair policies that keeps rental prices affordable. Already they have begun meeting with renters to begin organizing a coalition to put pressure on Sacramento Mayor Darrel Steinberg and city council to address soaring rent prices.
Healthy California and the California Nurses Association have been working tirelessly to bring Bernie Sanders style universal health care to California. Their activism has allowed for a new health care law to be authored in the state legislature. East Bay DSA has had several dozen people going door to door gathering signatures and performing outreach on behalf of the Healthy California measure. DSA Sacramento is preparing to do the same, forming a committee specifically to work with Healthy California here in Sacramento.
Every other week, DSA Sacramento hosts a socialist feminist reading group. They read and discuss Marxist literature from a socialist feminist perspective. It is not a ladies only affair; men are encouraged to participate and develop a new perspective on socialist literature. Their next reading group is on March 5th, where they will be discussing fascism; a popular topic since the election of Donald Trump. You can find more information about this meeting by visiting their page on Facebook.
California is at the forefront of LGBTQIA rights in the nation. We are the first state to outlaw the gay panic defense, and are on track to become the second state to recognize a nonbinary gender option on birth certificates and state IDs. Despite this, there is still more work to be done. DSA Sacramento aims to be a safe space for the LGBTQIA community, and is working on putting into place a system where they can go out and protest schools, businesses, agencies, and landlords who discriminate against LGBTQIA individuals.
If you are interested in learning more about what DSA Sacramento is all about, there is a new member orientation meeting this Saturday, February 25 from 10:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. at Organize Sacramento; located at 1714 Broadway across from Scrub Boys. The parking lot is for the restaurant, so please try to park on the street. A pizza lunch will be provided for those in attendance. The event is open to the public, so if you are interested in becoming a member or just interested in getting more involved, come on down. You can RSVP to the event on Facebook, as well as learn more about what’s scheduled for the event. The suggested reading is not required to attend the event, and you will be able to keep up without it. Also, wifi will be available for guests at the meeting.According to a month-old internal document originally drafted by the management team of the Bitcoin Foundation and which has now been openly published, the foundation is considering splitting into two separate organizations.
One of these organizations would effectively be the continuation of the current foundation, but reorganized as a promotional body. The other would be a made up of the core development team, split off to focus exclusively on development of the core protocol — which is currently the Bitcoin Foundation's mission.
Although the newly released document indicates that the change might also make sense for tax purposes, the main reason for the proposed restructuring of the foundation seems to be its weak financial status, as exposed recently by newly elected board member Olivier Janssens.
The year 2014 was particularly disastrous for the foundation, as it lost some US$4.7 million worth of assets due to expenses and a falling bitcoin price. Since Patrick Murck was appointing as executive director in October of 2014, he cut monthly losses significantly and has since volunteered to take himself off the payroll. Despite this, the foundation is running out of funds quickly, and at current spending rates could run out of funds within a month. It may be a matter of interpretation, however, whether this represents an “effective bankruptcy,” as Janssens has phrased it. The board of directors in an official statement denied bankruptcy.
If the proposals to restructure the foundation are approved, this would mean a reorganization according to the “Mozilla approach,” as opposed to the current “Linux approach.” For the foundation itself, it would entail it becoming a promotional organization.
Although many of the details of what exactly this would encompass are not included in the document, what is clear is that the foundation would focus foremost on public relations for Bitcoin, while it would also be involved with organizing a number of conferences. Additionally, the foundation could still lead funding efforts for a second organization that would exclusively focus on the development of Bitcoin core. This way, the foundation would require minimal staffing, and could cut down on expenses even further.
In addition to the restructuring of the current foundation, the new organization—referred to in the document as “New Co.”— would be established with the mission to specifically focus on engineering resources. The three core developers currently on the payroll of the foundation— Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen, Core Maintainer Wladimir van der Laan, and developer Cory Fields—would move to the new organization. Additional hires are planned.
Details regarding this proposed organization are lacking. The document states that “NewCo will be structured to specifically meet the needs of the highest value contributors in terms of oversight of their funds, most likely through direct board representation.” Additionally, the organization would lead an effort to establish a “Bitcoin Standards Body,” another separate organization, which would oversee standardization efforts for the Bitcoin protocol. The document suggests that “New Co” would soon be able to raise US$2 million.
The short history of the Bitcoin Foundation has been bumpy. It was founded in September 2012 with the intention to standardize, protect and promote the use of Bitcoin. This has always been controversial in the Bitcoin sphere, however, as some feared that such an organization could become a centralizing force in the decentralized Bitcoin ecosystem.
The image of the foundation was further tainted in 2013 when two of its board members —CoinLab CEO Peter Vessenes and Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles — became involved in a legal struggle. One year later, Charlie Shrem and Karpeles both stepped down from the organization disgracefully.
On top of that, the election of Brock Pierce to the board in 2014 was regarded as controversial because of his alleged prior involvement in a sex scandal, although Pierce was never convicted and denies any wrongdoing. Andresen and the foundation have indicated that the tainted image as well as the corporate governance structure with elected board members are important reasons why funding has now dried up.
Whether or not the Bitcoin Foundation will indeed split into two different entities is currently not clear. While the official statement released by the board of directors indicates that the plans have been approved, both Janssens and the other newly elected board member, Jim Harper, deny this to be the case. Furthermore, based on public remarks on the foundation message board by both Janssens and Andresen, members may get an important say in the matter.
Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones:Loaded Lux has challenged Murda Mook to battle. The challenge was made today (January 29) via Twitter.
“@MurdaMookez you next!!!! Who got that check? #unfinishedbusiness,” Loaded Lux said in his Twitter post.
The hashtag refers to a battle that Loaded Lux and Murda Mook had in the past where the two faced off inside of a store. Footage of that battle can be seen below. Their match-up is highly regarded as one of the era’s most acclaimed battles and it’s seen as one of the most influential matches in SMACK history.
When Loaded Lux asks about a check in the Twitter post, it is perhaps a call to all Battle Rap leagues. While their first published battle took place on SMACK, there is no guarantee that this match-up will be slated for a SMACK/URL release. Loaded Lux’s previous battle against Hollow Da Don was meant to take place under SMACK/URL, but was later hosted by UW Battle League.
That match-up, between Hollow Da Don and Loaded Lux, took place Sunday (January 26). A recap of their battle can be viewed here.
The Dot Mob’s Mook has responded to Loaded Lux, seemingly taking him up on his offer. “this shit ain’t gone be good for u g,” Mook said in a Twitter post. “just when i was minding my business.”
Mook has not battled since 2012’s Summer Madness 2, when he faced off against Iron Solomon.
@iAmLoadedLux this shit ain’t gone be good for u g. ….just when I was minding my business. — Mook. (@MurdaMookez) January 29, 2014
RELATED: Loaded Lux & Hollow Da Don Battle At UW Battle League’s “High Stakes”The Ottawa Senators are five points behind the Boston Bruins — with one game in hand — for the final wild card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
These teams will square off in Ottawa on Tuesday night and it’s as close to a much-win for the Senators as it gets. The Toronto Maple Leafs were the only team at this stage of the season to fall out of a playoff spot in 2013-14, and with less than 20 games remaining and two more head-to-head meetings with Boston, these are games Ottawa needs to win in regulation.
Beating the Bruins won’t be easy, though. The B’s have gone 5-1-1 in their last seven games, including a pair of wins over the weekend against the Philadelphia Flyers and Detroit Red Wings.
Boston hasn’t lost in regulation to Ottawa this season. The last two meetings were won by the Senators in overtime and a shootout.
Expect another close, physical game Tuesday night. Here’s a quick preview of Bruins-Senators.
TV, Radio Information: NESN and 98.5 The Sports Hub
Season Series: 2-1-0 Senators
Record: Boston (33-22-10, fourth in Atlantic); Ottawa (30-23-11, sixth in Atlantic)
Bruins Player To Watch: Brad Marchand scored three goals over the weekend, including the game-tying and game-winning goals Saturday against the Philadelphia Flyers. He leads the Bruins with 21 goals and has scored in two of the three previous games versus Ottawa this season.
“Things just seem to be clicking right now, bounces that weren’t going in earlier in the year are now finding the net,” Marchand said Sunday. “So, I’m just trying to work hard and that’s how hockey goes, sometimes you get the bounces, sometimes you don’t, and you just try to stay even-keeled.”
Senators Player To Watch: Andrew Hammond has carried the Senators back into the playoff race with a remarkable 7-0-1 record and a.954 save percentage since Feb. 16. However, he will not start in net against the Bruins. [tweet https://twitter.com/ian_mendes/status/574968494711775233 align=”center”]
Even though Hammond has played better of late, Anderson has won three of his last four games against the Bruins since the start of last season and earned the victory in Ottawa’s 3-2 overtime win at TD Garden in January. He made 26 saves on 28 shots for a.929 save percentage.
The Senators are 4-1-1 in the last six games Anderson has started.
Key Stat For Bruins: Boston’s power play appears to have turned a corner with five goals in the last five games and ranks 15th with an 18.4 percent success rate. In fact, the Bruins have scored two power-play goals in back-to-back games for the first time since 2011. The Senators gave up a power-play goal in Sunday’s 5-4 shootout win over the Calgary Flames, but they rank 10th on the penalty kill this season.
Key Stat For Senators: Ottawa ranks 27th in the league with a 47.6 faceoff percentage. Kyle Turris (48.7 percent), Mika Zibanejad (47.6 percent) and David Legwand (47.5 percent) have the taken the majority of the faceoffs for Ottawa and all of them have struggled.
The Bruins will have a huge advantage in this part of the game. They rank first with a 54.7 faceoff percentage, led by Patrice Bergeron’s league-leading 59.9 faceoff percentage.
Thumbnail photo via Bob DeChiara/USA TODAY Sports ImagesThe Netflix side of the MCU is moving along at full speed, with plenty of shows in different stages of production. This year will give us the second season of Daredevil in March, as well as the first season of Luke Cage.
If you watched Jessica Jones, (and if you didn’t what is wrong with you? Do yourself a favor and watch it right now.) you got your first introduction to Mike Colter as Luke Cage. His solo series is currently filming in New York, with many of us hoping that Iron Fist will quickly follow with the start of production. The problem with that is the cast and crew are not really there as of yet, or so we thought.
Scott Reynolds looks to have revealed via his Twitter account bio that he is staying with Marvel after writing episodes of Jessica Jones, and will apparently be writing Iron Fist as well.
As you can see in the photo above (via Reddit user Grant_Lewis), Reynolds looks to have confirmed it himself. However, if you go looking on his profile now, the “Iron Fist writer” section has been removed. Whoops.
With a writer most likely on board and Scott Buck announced as the showrunner, all we need is our Danny Rand. It has been thought that Marvel, while closing in, had not yet made a decision on who it would be, but if Colter is to be believed, it has already happened. Here is what he told Collider when asked about potentially teaming up with Iron Fist,
The actor has been cast, but he’s in a basement somewhere. When the time is right, they’ll let him up and tell him where he is. I am [excited]. I’ll get a nice little break, after doing Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Whether I’m in [his show], I don’t know, but there’s The Defenders.
Now that word is out there that Marvel apparently has cast the character, hopefully people with connections can try and figure out just who is playing him. If you want to know and don’t have any sources? Just start checking every basement you can find. Who knows, maybe you’ll just happen to stumble upon Iron Fist.
Iron Fist is currently in development with no projected Netflix debut.
Sources: Imgur & Collider.Denver police were looking for vehicles involved in two separate downtown hit-and-run accidents involving pedestrians Sunday, one of them fatal.
At about 2 a.m. Sunday, one person was hit at 13th Avenue and Broadway and died.
The “suspect vehicle (was) possibly a white pickup,” Denver police said.
#Headsup#DPD on scene of auto-ped fatal crash at 13th & Broadway. 1 person deceased. Suspect vehicle possibly a white pickup truck. — Denver Police Dept. (@DenverPolice) October 30, 2016
The accident happened after a similar crash at 19th Avenue and Larimer Street. The pedestrian involved in that accident was taken to a hospital.
The “suspect vehicle (was) possibly white sports utility vehicle,” Denver police said.
#Headsup:#DPD on scene of auto-ped hit and run crash at 19th & Larimer. 1 person transported w/SBI. Suspect vehicle possibly White SUV — Denver Police Dept. (@DenverPolice) October 30, 2016
Updated Nov. 2, 2016 at 11:27 a.m. The following corrected information has been added to this article: The time of the fatal accident at 13th Avenue and Broadway has been corrected.Getting involved in politics is a Christian duty," Pope Francis told a gathering of students in Rome in June. "We Christians cannot be like Pilate and wash our hands clean of things." But, according to one strand of opinion, politics is precisely what church leaders should not be doing.
An editorial in the Independent the other day advised the archbishop of Canterbury to stick to matters spiritual, saying that, as someone who has not been elected, he has no business making pronouncements on things political. The example it used was child poverty and welfare reform, arguing that "public pronouncements on purely political issues in which his organisation has no direct involvement are as unconstructive as they are inappropriate".
There are so many things wrong with this it's hard to know where to start. For one thing, no one has elected the Independent's leader writers, yet they make political pronouncements every day. More worrying is the narrow view of politics that is embedded in this idea, as if politics is something that goes on only in Westminster or the town hall or among registered opinion-formers.
When Tony Benn left the House of Commons he declared he did so to concentrate more on politics. Whether you wear a burqa or V for Vendetta mask, politics is how we express our vision of what human life ought to be about. Politics is the way we negotiate our differences. It is a conversation in which everyone has to be involved and where every voice must be heard.
Which is to say: I don't think the church – or anyone else for that matter – requires any special expertise in order to be qualified to take part in the political. Though, as it happens, the idea that the church has no experience to offer when it comes to welfare reform or child poverty is bizarre. There are many places where the church is one of the few remaining social organisations. It was rooted in the fabric of community life long before democratic politics was a gleam in Thomas Rainsborough's eye; for centuries it was the only thing vaguely resembling a welfare state in this country; and it has never abandoned its commitment to universal service provision, if you'll pardon the pun.
The pope learned his politics during Argentina's dirty war, where priests were both victims and collaborators. He re-learned it in the slums of Buenos Aires, trying to put drug dealers out of business. Religion is not just about kissing statues and lighting candles.
Let me be clear. Bishops have no place in the House of Lords ex officio. Religious people ought to have no special privileges simply because they are religious. This makes me a committed secularist. But, by precisely the same token, neither ought they to be denied a voice simply because they are religious.
Yet this is what some people mean when they say that religion ought to be a private matter and that the God-squad should stick to matters spiritual. If the "spiritual" here is being used in opposition to the material, then the spiritual is the one thing the church ought to have nothing whatsoever to do with.The incarnation makes Christianity the most materialistic of the world's great religious traditions. And the opposition of the spiritual and the material was one of the earliest heresies – Gnosticism – that the church condemned. No self-respecting Christian can ever accept this opposition.
Those who think of religion as something to be done only in private by consenting adults haven't ever opened a Bible or understood that free speech is a fundamental principle of democracy. And that means no one needs have a licence to speak out in the public sphere.
Twitter: @giles_fraserThe NHL’s regular season lasts about six months. Each team plays 82 games, worth a possible 164 points. It is amazing that over that span of time, a season which provides so many twists, so many turns, so many peaks and pitfalls of points gained and lost, can come down to the final days and games. Entering the last few days of the season, 28 teams in the NHL already know if they are in or they are out of the playoffs. Only two do not.
One of them is the Dallas Stars.
Again.
For the second time in the last four years, the Stars are mere hours away from the end of the regular season, but still do not know whether their calendar of games will continue beyond it. Back in 2010-2011, things literally came down to the final period of the season for Dallas. The Stars won four straight games to set up a win-and-in scenario in Game #82, and were tied 3-3 entering the third period at Minnesota. As you probably recall, things didn’t end well. The 5-3 loss became the final curtain of what was year-three of the current, five-year playoff drought for the Stars. Four holdovers who played in that game remain in the Dallas lineup today. They are Jamie Benn, Trevor Daley, Alex Goligoski, and Kari Lehtonen. Those four, along with the rest of this year’s team, are on the verge of exorcising half a decade of demons for the Stars organization. But there is still work to be done.
Unlike three years ago, this time around, if the Stars season comes down to the final game, it will be against the very team they are battling with for the final spot. The Stars and Phoenix Coyotes enter Thursday separated by just two points. Dallas has two games remaining and Phoenix has three. Adding to the drama, they end their seasons against each other on Sunday when they square-off in Arizona.
Thanks to a few key wins down the stretch – along with a five-game Coyotes winless skid – the Stars have the upper hand. Not only are they ahead in points, but they also own the tie-breaker of combined regulation and overtime wins. That puts the Stars in position to punch their ticket to the postseason in advance of that final game. With a magic number of four, any combination of four points gained by the Stars or lost by the Coyotes wraps things up for Dallas. At the earliest, the Stars could clinch on Friday. At the worst, it will once again come down to the final game. Dallas cannot be eliminated before then.
When we all wake up on Monday and know the answer to the question of whether or not the Stars made it this year, there will be time to reflect on the season. With 82 games in the rearview mirror, there are always a number of different nights that teams can look back on as missed opportunities. If you’ve been here all season, I’m sure you have your list. But teams can also look back on points they got that they weren’t necessarily supposed to collect either. Additionally, at a time like this, some single-point overtime or shootout losses that once seemed devastating, retroactively seem like huge points gained, and can serve as the margin of difference between two teams battling over one final spot. The comebacks that eventually fell short to Colorado and New Jersey certainly apply to that category.
Undoubtedly, there will be a retracing of steps after this weekend. How they are recalled, however, will be determined over the next four days. There is a stark contrast between the look back at a road that takes you to the playoffs, and one that leads to a dead end. And yet, just inches from the finish line, both look remarkably similar. So much so in fact, that on the last leg of this home stretch, the Stars still aren’t sure which road they’re on.
When you make the playoffs, there are no sleepless nights spent contemplating what might have been as you look back upon the regular season. Instead, you view it all as all part of the journey that got you to the postseason. But when your season ends after the 82nd game, you dissect every last detail of the prior six months. Nobody wants to feel that way. Just ask the four guys who played in that game in Minnesota.
But this time around they can change the result. This is their shot at redemption. This is the entire Stars’ shot at redemption. Even those who were not on that team in 2011 have something to prove. Look at this club and how they were assembled. Whether they know it or not, they have been battling long before they ever got to this fight for a playoff spot.
Their head coach was fired last season. Their leading scorer was publicly cast off by a Stanley Cup finalist. Their captain is a former fifth round pick, who was passed on by every other team. Their goaltender perennially gets overlooked despite his play. They have five undrafted players – a couple of whom not so long ago were playing in the Central Hockey League. They have former captains and alternates who were dismissed from their previous homes. They were too young. Or too old. Not ready. Or past their prime. In some respects, the Stars were the team that no one wanted.
But together, they’ve transformed into the team that no one wants to play.
Perhaps that’s why there was an instant bond with this team from day one. They are all united by their road to Dallas. Now, they have the opportunity to remain united on the road moving forward.
It’s somewhat fitting that all year long nothing has come easy for the Stars. It’s just not their style. Nothing has ever been given to them. This team has had to fight for everything. Every point, every win, every break was a battle. They’ve had to overcome things that no other team has faced. Their six-month fight has led the Stars to the door of the playoffs. It’s no surprise that they’ll have to kick it down if they wish to enter.
So, here it is. The Stars closing statement of the season. One last chance to return this organization to the playoffs. One last chance to officially announce their arrival to the rest of the hockey world. One last chance to make sure that any talk of what could have been is replaced by talk of what was.
This is it. The end is here. It’s time to find out once and for all where this road leads.
Hang on… Here we go.
Below are some things to keep ‘On the Radar’ during the final days of the regular season:
New Ground
The Stars are trying to get back to the playoffs for the first time in six years. For many of the players tasked with getting them there, it would be their first ever trip to the NHL postseason. Twelve different Stars players have never played in a NHL playoff game. That amounts to over half of their active roster. Additionally, four veteran players haven’t played in a playoff game in five or more years. They are Shawn Horcoff (’06), Kari Lehtonen (’07), Trevor Daley (’08), and Erik Cole (’09). Clinching a playoff spot would mean a lot to the Stars organization and their fans. But it would mean just as much for a group largely comprised of players who have not been there, either at all, or in quite some time.
Fiddler on the Move
For all the players on the Stars roster who have not tasted the playoffs, one that has and is doing his part to get back there is veteran center Vernon Fiddler. Currently in his 11th NHL season, Fiddler has appeared in five different NHL postseasons. His elevated play of late has helped put the Stars in a position to give him his sixth. After registering points in just 12 of his first 65 games of the season, Fiddler has points in six of the last nine. Additionally, on Tuesday night he scored one of the more memorable shootout goals of this season, to extend the game in an eventual win over Nashville. This is the second consecutive late-season push Fiddler has provided to Dallas. Last year the veteran went on a career-long, six-game point streak and notched points in seven of eight games in April to keep the Stars in the playoff race after the trading deadline.
Welcome to the Club
Prior to this season, in the two-decade history of the Dallas Stars, only one man had ever totaled 35 goals and 80 points in the same season. That man was Mike Modano, who accomplished the feat four times in his Dallas career (93-94, 95-96, 96-97, 99-00). This year the Stars have already had one player join the exclusive club, and it’s possible they may add a second before the end of the week. Tyler Seguin has 36 goals and 83 points this season to lead the Stars thus far in both categories. However, just off pace is captain Jamie Benn, who has a career-high 34 goals and 77 points through 80 games. If Benn can nab one more goal and three more points in the final two games, he would join Seguin and Modano as the only Dallas Stars to ever put up those numbers in the same campaign.
Initial Surge
Over the last ten Stars games, the team to score first has also gone on to score second in nine of them. This stat includes the Columbus Blue Jackets who took an inherited a goal into Wednesday’s game, but also managed to score the first two in play that evening. As one would imagine, the early advantages have led to positive results most nights out. The team to score first has won nine of the ten games over that span. The Stars have scored first in six of those ten. The lone loss when scoring first came in last Sunday’s 3-2 defeat in Florida, when the Stars squandered a 2-0 lead in the finale of their road trip. The only game in the last ten that has not featured two goals by the same team to open the scoring was Tuesday’s Stars win over Nashville. Dallas took a 1-0 lead, but it was answered early in the second period, before Dallas went on to win in a shootout. Part of the reason the Stars have gotten off to such quick starts is thanks to Jamie Benn. The Stars captain leads the NHL with seven goals scored in the opening five minutes of games. Overall this season, he has scored the first goal in 10 of the 80 Stars games this season, ranking him third in the NHL behind only Pittsburgh’s Chris Kunitz (14) and Washington’s Alex Ovechkin (12).
Josh Bogorad is the Pre-Game, Post-Game, and Intermission host for the Stars radio broadcasts. He can be heard 30 minutes before face-off and immediately after games all season long on SportsRadio 1310AM and 96.7FM The Ticket. Follow him on Twitter at @JoshBogorad.
This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club. Josh Bogorad is an independent writer whose posts on DallasStars.com reflect his own opinions and do not represent official statements from the Dallas StarsKenIchi: The Mightiest Disciple
"Weak Legs" Kenichi Shirahama would rather spend his time reading self improvement books than fighting. However, when he finally works up the courage to become strong and join his school's karate club, he is coerced into fighting a bullying upperclassman who is intent on getting him kicked out of the club. He is about to give it all up until he falls for his mysterious new classmate, Miu Furinji. In order to face this challenge, he undergoes rigorous training at the dojo she lives at, Ryouzanpaku. Some initial training by the masters there allow him to defeat his upperclassman, however his fighting prowess brings him to the attention of the powerful gang of delinquents, Ragnarok. Wishing to protect the things he loves and determined to have the strength to face the increasing adversity, he must learn various martial arts from the dojo's resident masters, taking Karate, Muay Thai, Ju Jitsu and Chinese Martial Arts and combining them to create his own fighting style!3-Year-Old London Child Deemed “Extremist” & Placed in Government Reeducation Program
Michael Krieger | Jul 27, 2015
The United Kingdom has gone batshit crazy.
There’s simply no other way to put it.
I warned about Britain’s “war on toddler terrorists” earlier this year in the post:
The War on Toddler Terrorists – Britain Wants to Force Nursery School Teachers to Identify “Extremist” Children.
Here’s an excerpt:
Nursery school staff and registered childminders must report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists, under counter-terrorism measures proposed by the Government.
The directive is contained in a 39-page consultation document issued by the Home Office in a bid to bolster its Prevent anti-terrorism plan.
The document accompanies the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, currently before parliament.
It identifies nurseries and early years childcare providers, along with schools and universities, as having a duty “to prevent people being drawn into terrorism”.
Never fear good citizens of Great Britain.
While your government actively does everything in its power to protect criminal financial oligarchs and powerful pedophiles, her majesty draws the line at toddler thought crime.
We learn from the Independent:
A three-year-old child from London is one of hundreds of young people in the capital who have been tipped as potential future radicals and extremists.
As reported by the Evening Standard, 1,069 people have been put in the government’s anti-extremism ‘Channel’ process, the de-radicalization program at the heart of the Government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy.
The three-year-old in the program is from the borough of Tower Hamlets, and was a member of a family group that had been showing suspect behavior.
Since September 2014, 400 under 18s, including teenagers and children, have been referred to the scheme.
The fact that this story broke on the same day that chairman of the UK’s Lords Privileges and Conduct Committee, Lord John Sewel, was caught on video snorting cocaine off the breast of a prostitute with a £5 note, is simply priceless.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
From the BBC:
Lord Sewel is facing a police inquiry after quitting as House of Lords deputy speaker over a video allegedly showing him taking drugs with prostitutes.
The footage showed him snorting powder from a woman’s breasts with a £5 note.
In the footage, Lord Sewel, who is married, also discusses the Lords’ allowances system.
As chairman of committees, the crossbench peer also chaired the privileges and conduct committee, and was responsible for enforcing standards in the Lords.
Lord Sewel served as a minister in the Scotland office under Tony Blair’s Labour government.
Tony Blair, why am I not surprised:
He has been a member of the Lords since 1996, and is a former senior vice principal of the University of Aberdeen.
Here’s a clip, in the event you’re interested:
https://youtu.be/VsOfbc1NSbQ
The UK government is so far gone that it insists on protecting the public from toddlers, rather than protecting toddlers from powerful sexual predators.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/07/27/3-year-old-london-child-deemed-extremist-and-placed-in-government-reeducation-program/BALTIMORE (AP) — A new report finds that Maryland is among the top five states with the greatest number of guns federally licensed gun dealers reported lost or stolen last year.
A local radio station reports that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms report found that Maryland ranks third in the nation with more than 880 guns lost and 98 guns reported stolen from dealers in 2012.
Pennsylvania came in first in the ATF’s ranking followed by Texas.
The National Crime Information Center database reported more than 190,000 guns were lost or stolen across the county and about 9 percent of those reports were from federally licensed gun dealers. The agency says many lost or stolen weapons go unreported.
The report comes as President Barack Obama pushes for stronger federal gun laws.
——
(Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)So you haven’t picked a Halloween costume, and the big night is fast approaching. If you’re looking for something a little funny, a little nerdy and sure to impress fellow physics fans, look no further. We’ve got you covered.
1. Dark energy
This is an active costume, perfect for the party-goer who plans to consume a large quantity of sugar. Suit up in all black or camouflage, then spend your evening squeezing between people and pushing them apart.
Congratulations! You’re dark energy: a mysterious force causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, intriguing in the lab and perplexing on the dance floor.
2. Cosmic inflation
Theory says that a fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe grew exponentially, expanding so that tiny fluctuations were stretched into the seeds of entire galaxies.
But good luck getting that costume through the door.
Instead, take a simple yellow life vest and draw the cosmos on it: stars, planets, asteroids, whatever you fancy. When friends pull on the emergency tab, the universe will grow.
3. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Here’s a great excuse to repurpose your topical Breaking Bad costume from last year.
Walter White—aka “Heisenberg”—may have been a chemistry teacher, but the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is straight out of physics. Named after Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist credited with the creation of quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that the more accurately you know the position of a particle, the less information you know about its momentum.
Put on |
false is that “constitution” signifies limitations on power, while “democracy” commonly refers to the active involvement of citizens with their government and the responsiveness of government to its citizens. For their part, “empire” and “superpower” stand for the surpassing of limits and the dwarfing of the citizenry. Ad Policy
The increasing power of the state and the declining power of institutions intended to control it has been in the making for some time. The party system is a notorious example. The Republicans have emerged as a unique phenomenon in American history of a fervently doctrinal party, zealous, ruthless, antidemocratic and boasting a near majority. As Republicans have become more ideologically intolerant, the Democrats have shrugged off the liberal label and their critical reform-minded constituencies to embrace centrism and footnote the end of ideology. In ceasing to be a genuine opposition party the Democrats have smoothed the road to power of a party more than eager to use it to promote empire abroad and corporate power at home. Bear in mind that a ruthless, ideologically driven party with a mass base was a crucial element in all of the twentieth-century regimes seeking total power.
Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media’s reports of rampant crime and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General and by their own fears about unemployment. What is crucially important here is not only the expansion of governmental power but the inevitable discrediting of constitutional limitations and institutional processes that discourages the citizenry and leaves them politically apathetic.
No doubt these remarks will be dismissed by some as alarmist, but I want to go further and name the emergent political system “inverted totalitarianism.” By inverted I mean that while the current system and its operatives share with Nazism the aspiration toward unlimited power and aggressive expansionism, their methods and actions seem upside down. For example, in Weimar Germany, before the Nazis took power, the “streets” were dominated by totalitarian-oriented gangs of toughs, and whatever there was of democracy was confined to the government. In the United States, however, it is the streets where democracy is most alive–while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government.
Or another example of the inversion: Under Nazi rule there was never any doubt about “big business” being subordinated to the political regime. In the United States, however, it has been apparent for decades that corporate power has become so predominant in the political establishment, particularly in the Republican Party, and so dominant in its influence over policy, as to suggest a role inversion the exact opposite of the Nazis’. At the same time, it is corporate power, as the representative of the dynamic of capitalism and of the ever-expanding power made available by the integration of science and technology with the structure of capitalism, that produces the totalizing drive that, under the Nazis, was supplied by ideological notions such as Lebensraum.
In rebuttal it will be said that there is no domestic equivalent to the Nazi regime of torture, concentration camps or other instruments of terror. But we should remember that for the most part, Nazi terror was not applied to the population generally; rather, the aim was to promote a certain type of shadowy fear–rumors of torture–that would aid in managing and manipulating the populace. Stated positively, the Nazis wanted a mobilized society eager to support endless warfare, expansion and sacrifice for the nation.
While the Nazi totalitarianism strove to give the masses a sense of collective power and strength, Kraft durch Freude (“Strength through joy”), inverted totalitarianism promotes a sense of weakness, of collective futility. While the Nazis wanted a continuously mobilized society that would not only support the regime without complaint and enthusiastically vote “yes” at the periodic plebiscites, inverted totalitarianism wants a politically demobilized society that hardly votes at all. Recall the President’s words immediately after the horrendous events of September 11: “Unite, consume and fly,” he told the anxious citizenry. Having assimilated terrorism to a “war,” he avoided doing what democratic leaders customarily do during wartime: mobilize the citizenry, warn it of impending sacrifices and exhort all citizens to join the “war effort.” Instead, inverted totalitarianism has its own means of promoting generalized fear; not only by sudden “alerts” and periodic announcements about recently discovered terrorist cells or the arrest of shadowy figures or the publicized heavy-handed treatment of aliens and the Devil’s Island that is Guantánamo Bay or the sudden fascination with interrogation methods that employ or border on torture, but by a pervasive atmosphere of fear abetted by a corporate economy of ruthless downsizing, withdrawal or reduction of pension and health benefits; a corporate political system that relentlessly threatens to privatize Social Security and the modest health benefits available, especially to the poor. With such instrumentalities for promoting uncertainty and dependence, it is almost overkill for inverted totalitarianism to employ a system of criminal justice that is punitive in the extreme, relishes the death penalty and is consistently biased against the powerless.
Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents.
What is at stake, then, is nothing less than the attempted transformation of a tolerably free society into a variant of the extreme regimes of the past century. In that context, the national elections of 2004 represent a crisis in its original meaning, a turning point. The question for citizens is: Which way?Bachmann: 'Crying' mother shared HPV story
Michele Bachmann again accused Rick Perry of practicing "crony capitalism" Tuesday morning, appearing on NBC's "Today" show to criticize Perry for seeking to force "innocent little 12-year-old girls or 11-year-old girls" to take a "potentially dangerous" vaccine injection.
Repeating criticism she leveled at Perry in Monday night's debate, Bachmann noted that Perry's former chief of staff had been a lobbyist for Merck when Perry tried to mandate the use of a Merck-produced vaccine for HPV.
Story Continued Below
And this time, Bachmann added a bracing story that she said a woman told her in Florida overnight.
"I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Fla., after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter," Bachmann said.
She continued: "The mother was crying what she came up to me last night. I didn't know who she was before the debate. This is the very real concern and people have to draw their own conclusions."
Asked if she would continue to hammer away at the HPV issue, Bachmann said it was an appropriate way to draw "very real distinctions" with Perry over the use of executive power.
"You can't abuse executive authority with executive orders, because there could be very negative consequences that the American people have to pay," she said. "There is no second chance for these little girls if there is any dangerous consequences to their bodies."Summary: This week we're speaking wth Gary from Kansas City about the fast approaching day of solidarity with transgender prisoners which will occur this friday, January 22nd. In this interview we talk about Gary's past experiences with the prison system, the original call out for this day by trans prisoner Marius Mason, and the conditions that trans people generally face in prison, and the importance of focusing on this issue. For more on this day, to get ideas and to give report backs, you can visit http://transprisoners.net/
For more on Marius Mason's case you can visit http://supportmariusmason.org/
If you'd like to send our guest an email to get ideas on how to proceed, you can write Gary at gcwagaman@gmail.com
We also feature a segment from Dissident Island Radio's mid December show of 2015 about the changed security situation in France since the Paris attacks by Daesh-affiliated militants. The host of Dissident Island speaks with Camille, the name for anyone coming from the ZAD and speaking about experiences there. In this segment, Camille talks about the State of Emergency declared by the government of President Francoise Hollande, the suspensions of rights to publicly gather, the extension of the State of Emergency for 3 months, the challenges to folks with dual citizenship, the nighttime raids of immigrant communities and experiences of the folks at the ZAD as they enter a period of possible eviction. Camille also talks about how the ZAD at times acts as a refuge to immigrants and refugees seeking a break from state repression on a self-defended land project.
Check out the twice a month DIY radio show out of the London Action Resource Centre by visiting http://dissidentisland.org/
====================================
Statement from Marius Mason for the Trans Prisoner Day of Action and
Solidarity
"January 22nd 2016
Happy New Year, Family and Friends! Many, many thanks for so much support
and care over this year from both long-standing friends and new pen pals.
I feel very grateful and am always humbled by the encouragement and
resources sent my way by folks who are doing so much already to increase
our collective chances for survival. The news has been full of stories
about someone winning the big money pool that has accumulated for the US
Lotto - but the most important "win" has nothing to do with money. I am
betting on the movement to win big this year: in getting more control over
their communities and defending against police brutality and racial
inequality, in winning more victories for animal and in the defense of
wild spaces, in creating social relations based on respect, dignity and
compassion for all people.... regardless of their race, orientation,
creed or gender presentation.
Thank you for coming together today, to hold up those members of our
community who struggle so hard behind walls to keep their sense of self
intact. Sovereignty over our selves, our bodies is essential for any other
kind of liberty to be possible. By reaching out to trans prisoners, you
affirm their right to define themselves for themselves - and defend them
against the overwhelming voices who claim that they do not exist, that
they must allow others to define them. In the isolating environment of
prison, this is toxic and intimidating, and amounts to the cruelest form
of psychological torture. By offering your help and solidarity, you may
just save a life. I know that for the last year and a half, as I have
struggled to assert myself as a trans man, as I have advocated for the
relief of appropriate medical care for my gender dysphoria - it has been
the gentle and loving reminders of my extended family of supporters who
have given me strength and courage to continue. Please join me in offering
this help to so many others who need it to keep going. Never underestimate
the healing power of a letter, those letters have kept me going...and I
want to pass that gift on, if you will help me.
Thank you again for coming together on this day, for connecting to those
on the inside who truly need you, who need you to see them as they really
are and striving to be. Until the prisons are gone, we need to work hard
to support those of us inside - especially those of us who are not always
as visible to the rest of the world. We are always stronger together.
Marius Mason
January 2016"
Playlist here: http://www.ashevillefm.org/node/15020Image copyright SPL Image caption The amount of TV watched live fell from 89.9% in 2012 to 88.7% last year
The traditional television set is still at the heart of UK viewing, with only 1.5% of total viewing in 2013 watched via mobile platforms, figures suggest.
The average viewer watched three hours and 55 minutes of TV a day last year, according to commercial TV marketing body Thinkbox.
But just three and a half minutes - the equivalent of three 30-minute shows a month - was watched via mobile devices.
The average viewer now watches 12 more minutes of TV a day than in 2003.
Despite the low figure for non-TV set devices, it was still slightly up on the three minutes (1% of total viewing) recorded in 2012.
Thinkbox added the majority of viewing on mobile devices was on-demand and catch-up programming using services such as the BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, Sky Go and 4OD.
"New screens are making TV even more convenient for viewers," Thinkbox chief executive Lindsey Clay said.
"But, the more we learn, the clearer it becomes that the TV set will remain our favourite way to watch TV - especially as on-demand services become more available on the best screen."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Lindsey Clay, head of Thinkbox: New devices "not replacing" traditional TV viewing
Overall, daily linear TV viewing - that is, watching TV "live" rather than using catch-up services - fell by nine minutes to three hours and 52 minutes a day, against 2012's figure of four hours and one minute.
The lack of significant sporting events following the London Olympics, added to the good weather in 2013, are thought to have contributed to the slight dip.
However, the World Cup is expected to boost live viewing figures again this year.
The research also found the proportion of linear TV watched live fell from 89.9% in 2012 to 88.7%, reflecting the growth of digital TV recorders (DTRs) like Freeview+, Sky+ and Tivo on Virgin Media.
According to Barb - which measures TV viewing on DTRs for seven days after the original broadcast - 81% of all recorded, or time-shifted, viewing was watched within two days.
Thinkbox said it expected the average amount of recorded and playback TV viewing to settle at around 15-20% of total linear viewing, with the proportion of on demand viewing increasing as part of the time-shifted total.The Dolphins and Eagles kick off this Halloween edition of the NFL trade deadline with a trade of the Miami running back to Philadelphia.
Eagles Get: Jay Ajayi
Dolphins Get: 4th Round Draft Pick
Jay Ajayi is in his third season out of Boise State University. After dropping in the draft due to a knee issue, he has struggled to stay healthy on a regular basis. With a backfield full of question marks and injuries of their own, the Eagles could really use a solid runner like Ajayi.
Ajayi had a breakout season in his second year, running for 1,272 yards and eight touchdowns, while also totaling 151 yards through the air. The season was highlighted by his 4.9 YPC and three games of 200+ rushing yards.
He has been disappointing this season and certainly inconsistent. His YPC is down to 3.4, he has eclipsed the 100-yard mark just twice, and he has not found the end zone yet this season.
While fantasy owners may be more than frustrated with Ajayi this season, Eagles fans should be excited. The third-year running back may be exactly what this team needs come January to make a postseason run. While Carson Wentz has been nothing short of spectacular, a more balanced offensive squad will get this team where it needs to be.OTTAWA - Canada's chief electoral officer is confirming for the first time that Conservative party workers have failed to co-operate with an investigation into fraudulent robocalls.
Marc Mayrand appeared before a House of Commons committee Tuesday where he asked MPs once again for legal changes that would give the elections watchdog greater power to compel testimony from witnesses.
Elections Canada has been seeking more investigative tools since 2010, without government movement.
"Indeed, the investigations into deceptive calls have made us keenly aware that the Commissioner of Canada Elections needs better tools to do his work," Mayrand said in his prepared remarks to the procedure and House affairs committee.
"Good rules are of little use if they cannot be enforced."
Mayrand's testimony comes just days after a Federal Court ruled that widespread phone fraud occurred in the 2011 election, part of what Judge Richard Mosley called an unprecedented voter suppression scheme by a person or persons unknown.
Mosley, however, refused to overturn the election results in the six ridings named in the court case, saying he had no evidence the fraud efforts actually affected voters. He ruled the scheme likely involved the Conservative party's closely guarded database, but found no evidence to suggest party candidates or officials "approved or condoned" the fraud.
"Rather, the evidence points to elaborate efforts to conceal the identity of those accessing the database and arranging for the calls to be made," Mosley ruled.
Elections Canada, and the commissioner who conducts its investigations, has been on the trail of the automated calls since May 2011 but only a single charge has been laid against a junior campaign worker in Guelph, Ont.
Tom Lukiwski, the Conservative parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, said Conservatives are concerned about the slow pace of the investigation because the party remains under a cloud of suspicion.
"Until such time as the investigation is completed, it's very difficult for us to prove we had nothing to do with that," Lukiwski told Mayrand. "Justice delayed, justice denied."
Mayrand has his own frustrations.
Despite recommending repeated fixes to election law since 2010, Mayrand noted no amending legislation has been introduced and he has not been consulted by the government on its promised reforms.
The investigating commissioner, he said, is "facing the situation when people don't want to talk to him, he's got very little option — even though those people may not be suspect, but may have relevant information to the investigation."
Mayrand said if legislation is not passed by next spring, there won't be enough time to properly implement it in time for 2015's fixed election date.
And he painted a picture, somewhat reluctantly, of Conservative intransigence in the face of the robocalls investigation.
Last week's Federal Court ruling sharply criticized Conservative party legal delays and obstructions, but Mayrand declined to comment.
"I think we'll let everyone draw their own conclusions from the judgment of Justice Mosley, which speaks for itself," he said.
However under questioning from NDP MP Craig Scott, Mayrand confirmed media reports that the Conservative party's lawyer took three months to respond to robocalls inquiries from Elections Canada after the 2011 election campaign — an investigation that is still ongoing.
And speaking to reporters later, Mayrand cited evidence that three Conservative campaign workers in Guelph, Ont., refused to speak to investigators.
Mayrand said that when individuals decline to be interviewed, it can't always be characterized as refusing to co-operate.
"What would concern me is if we detected a pattern where people systematically refuse to meet with investigators — even though they are not suspect, I should point out."
So does he see a pattern? Mayrand was asked.
"I think there are cases, I think in Guelph there were a few cases that are now publicly documented and it is a concern that certainly the commissioner has expressed," the chief electoral officer replied.
"Basically, in some cases appointments are cancelled at the last minute. People who have agreed suddenly decide they don't want to meet with the investigator. That adds time, delays, and makes the investigation a little bit more complex than it needed be."
Mayrand agreed with Lukiwski that delays in getting to the bottom of the fraudulent robocalls are problematic, but said a lack of co-operation is at the root of the problem.
"Again if we go back to this issue of justice delayed, justice denied, well, that's where it starts, among other things."
Conservative party spokesman Fred DeLorey said in an email that the party has been co-operating.
"We have been assisting Elections Canada from the beginning, including handing over any documents or records they've requested," said DeLorey.
He did not directly respond to a question about the court finding that an encrypted, password-protected Conservative database likely was used by unknown persons to commit widespread fraud.
"The court was clear: neither the Conservative party, nor any of the six (Conservative)candidates, nor their agents engaged in any fraudulent activity," wrote DeLorey.
Also on HuffPostNew research findings out of Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin may help provide some direction for men diagnosed with prostate cancer about whether their cancer is likely to be life-threatening.
In a study that appears in the February issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, researchers confirmed their earlier findings that men who have too much calcium in their bloodstreams subsequently have an increased risk of fatal prostate cancer. Now researchers have also identified an even more accurate biomarker of the fatal cancer: high levels of ionized serum calcium.
"Scientists have known for many years that most prostate cancers are slow-growing and that many men will die with, rather than of, their prostate cancer," said Gary G. Schwartz, Ph.D., senior author of the study and an associate professor of cancer biology at the School of Medicine, a part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. "The problem is, how can we determine which cancers pose a significant threat to life and need aggressive treatment versus those that, if left alone, are unlikely to threaten the patient's life? These findings may shed light on that problem."
This was the first study to examine fatal prostate cancer risk in relation to prediagnostic levels of ionized serum calcium, and researchers found that men in the highest third of ionized serum calcium levels are three times more likely to die of prostate cancer than those with the least amount of ionized serum calcium. Researchers also confirmed a previous finding of a doubling of risk for fatal prostate cancer among men whose level of total serum calcium falls in the highest third of the total serum calcium distribution.
Ionized serum calcium is the biologically active part of total serum calcium. About 50 percent of total serum calcium is inactive, leaving only the ionized serum calcium to directly interact with cells.
The findings have both scientific and practical implications, said Halcyon G. Skinner, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin, the study's lead author. From a scientific standpoint, it helps focus research on what it is about calcium that may promote prostate cancer. On a practical level, the finding may offer some guidance to men trying to decide whether or not to seek treatment for a recent prostate cancer diagnosis. If confirmed, the findings could also lead to the general reduction of over-treatment of prostate cancer.
"Many men with this diagnosis are treated unnecessarily," Schwartz said. "Within months of initial diagnosis of prostate cancer, many men opt to undergo either radiation or radical surgery. The problem is, we don't know who needs to be treated and who doesn't, so we treat most men, over-treating the majority. These new findings, if confirmed, suggest that men in the lower end of the normal distribution of ionized serum calcium are three times less likely than men in the upper distribution to develop fatal disease.
"These men may choose to delay treatment or perhaps defer it altogether," Schwartz added. "It also suggests that medicine may be able to help in lowering the risk of fatal prostate cancer by reducing serum calcium levels."
Schwartz added that much of the ongoing research into the development of prostate cancer is focused on identifying characteristics of aggressive tumors, whereas this research is focused on identifying characteristics of the men who will develop the tumors before they actually develop.
He cautioned that calcium in serum is little influenced by calcium in the diet. Serum calcium levels are controlled genetically and are stable over much of an individual's life, he said.
"These results do not imply that men need to quit drinking milk or avoid calcium in their diets," Schwartz added.
The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society.Just before Christmas, charities concerned with suicide circulated figures showing that almost four times as many men as women now kill themselves. This prompted me again to wonder why do men have so little sympathy or fellow feeling for men? Why do we care so little about each other?
As ever, discussion of those suicide figures was mediated by women. All of the predictable commentators wheeled out yet again the unchanging, mouldy narrative of gender stereotypes which we have been hearing for 40 years. What they always say is that suicidal men turn their aggression on themselves because they are useless at talking about their problems - mute primitives, as we are - and need help to open up their sensitive side.
Jane Powell, Director of Calm, responded to the December figures by saying: “Men can feel less able to talk about their problems.” In the past, that same authority has written “For a man to ask for help is seen as failure, because by convention men are supposed to be in control at all times”. Even the Samaritans locate “emotional illiteracy” and “masculinity” among the reasons for the greater numbers of male suicide.
(You can’t help but wonder how fully those diagnoses account for the suicides of – for example - Van Gogh, Mayakovsky, Richard Brautigan, Jerzy Kozinski, R.B. Kitaj, Mark Rothko and Kurt Cobain? Did those dumb brutes do away with themselves because they couldn’t find the words to express their thoughts or compose the art to convey their feelings?)
In other words, brothers, the fault cannot be externally - with our stars or our times - but must be with ourselves that so many of us are sick to death. According to the standard authorities, there is something in the very nature of masculinity that causes men to kill themselves.
No man appeared in the national media to ask if this savage disparity between men and women might raise the question whether many more men than women are placed in circumstances where it seems reasonable to feel that life isn't worth living.
Educational disadvantage, debt, unemployment, mental illness, imprisonment, problems with drink and drugs, family breakdown and separation from children through the family law system - all of these conditions which, in fact, affect men far more numerously and adversely than women might be considered to have a bearing on the suicide figures rather than the Agony Aunt's clucking observation that the chaps aren't very clever at expressing their innermost feelings.
Why don't men speak up for men on this question? Why are they so mute, passive, unmoved? Why do they feel no personal connection or brotherly solidarity with those unfortunate men? If three to four times as many women as men killed themselves, we would be hearing about it every day. Every feminist columnist and commentator would be raging about this incontestable proof that women suffer unbearable disadvantage in a society organised by horrible men for their own benefit.
Nick Clegg would launch a national campaign. Ed Miliband would wring his hands and turn to Harriet Harman to put the words in his mouth. Woman's Hour would devote a week of programmes to the cause.
What do we hear from men when the subject in question is men? Not a peep.
Perhaps this is, indeed, conclusive proof that men aren't very good at expressing their feelings; but I take it more as evidence that men don’t think of themselves as members of a social collectivity called "men" in which they share mutual interests. Women have been parading a sororal solidarity with all women for the last 50 years which now seems to entitle all women to speak on behalf of all women at any moment because they all, supposedly, share the same interests and outlook. Most men don't begin to see other men in that light at all.
They are likely to care about their sons and grandsons. They probably care about their fathers, their brothers and their cousins. They often care a lot about their friends, their colleagues and their team-mates. But men, as a whole, couldn’t give a stuff about the notional idea of men as whole.
Men are obviously superbly adept at forging and belonging to tribal fraternities - whether it's the hunting party, the platoon, the sports team, the freshman year or the place of work. When they subjugate their individual identities in tactical organisations, such as an army or a football gang, they can make the world shake in their unity. But it would no more occur to most men to raise their voices on behalf of men who commit suicide than to join an organised protest over the treatment of fathers in the family courts or of boys in primary schools.
If they are brothers, lifelong friends or military comrades, a man might risk his own life to save another man from killing himself; but he probably won’t raise an eyebrow or lift a finger over the abstract figures for male suicide – even though those figures are certain to get even more terrible.
Suicides by women peaked in the mid-1960s at around 2,400 a year and have fallen gradually ever since. By 1990, when I first wrote about this subject in a national newspaper, about 3,000 men a year were killing themselves. At that point, the number of female suicides was a little more than 1,100 a year.
Drawing attention to the fact that those 3,000 male suicides were greater in number than the total figure for deaths on UK roads, I asked if we should question whether something might be going seriously wrong for men in general that wasn’t happening for women. Those 3,000 suicides have now risen by more than a third in 25 years. Meanwhile the figure for women has barely shifted from around 1,100. The question remains unanswered.
What is the true explanation? Would the Director of Calm have us believe that men over the last 40 years have become even more bovinely incapable of expressing their innermost feelings? Is that the most sympathetic and helpful interpretation our wickedly complacent, woman-centred age can offer?
Above all, why don't men, as whole, care about this question? Why haven't they got anything to say for themselves?
* Data: ONSAll three emergency services were called out after the man got his head stuck in Aberdeen.
SWNS
A man had to be freed by firefighters after getting his head stuck in a bin in the centre of Aberdeen.
Fire crews were called to the Castlegate at around 5.45pm on Sunday.
Grampian Fire and Rescue officers took around 15 minutes to cut the 52-year-old man free.
The man, who is believed to be a local homeless person, was taken by ambulance to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where he was treated for facial injuries before being released.
A Grampian Police spokesman said they were unsure what the man was looking for.
The unusual incident was captured on camera by residents and the picture quickly spread on social networking sites.
Homeless charities are condemning people who have poked fun at the man and Aberdeen Cyrenians are urging people to understand the desperation of people living on the streets.
Scott Baxter, of The Cyrenians, said: “Whoever the gentleman is I’m sure, for whatever reasons, he wouldn’t want to see himself being plastered about all over the media.
“I understand it has gone worldwide but hopefully maybe people will take a moment to think being in those shoes would they want to be laughed at.”
Stuck:The man was freed by firefightersCLEVELAND -- Center Alex Mack came through the locker room Monday and wasn't yet ready for interviews after breaking his leg in October, but he did add this.
He'd be around for organized team activities (OTAs).
This seemed to indicate he'd be back as a healthy member of the Cleveland Browns. Mack didn't talk all year while injured, and though I don't want to speak for him, I'd assume he was trying to rehab in the shadows and do right by teammates, push them to the forefront instead of himself.
Saying he'd be back for OTAs, which likely start in May, could be a refresher for an offense that wasn't the same without him.
The Browns have their quarterback woes but the offensive line with Mack directing traffic was steady. The Browns had a few bright moments without Mack (the Thursday night win at Cincinnati, the run-heavy win at Atlanta) but the rushing drop-off was significant -- 146.4 yards per game in five games Mack started, 90.5 yards per game without him.
Those numbers add bargaining power to Mack's five-year, $42 million deal, which includes an opt-out clause after next season.
"I think not having him definitely hurt but I wouldn't say that was the sole reason for any downfall," left tackle Joe Thomas said. "We played some pretty good football at times when he was out."
Compounding the problem was the Browns' lack of a true backup center, erratic play and the sluggish return of Josh Gordon.
Mack's return for offseason work will symbolize continuity for an offense that needs it. A second year in Kyle Shanahan's zone-blocking scheme should help a team strength improve.
Next year, the Browns should expect to set the same standard from those first five games with Mack, Thomas said.
"We were being lambasted for not winning with enough style [in 2014] -- when you do that, you're proving you're raising the bar. That's where we want to be," Thomas said.Sandie Benitah, CP24.com
A mother who briefly had her baby boy and vehicle stolen Wednesday morning told police she left the car running while she dashed inside a Malton gas station to pay for fuel.
The woman says she was gone for about 30 seconds but when she came out, her car – and the baby sitting inside – were missing. It was seen turning onto Derry Road from Rexwood Avenue and heading west. The time was 9:02 a.m.
Her nine-month old son was found unharmed about 30 minutes later inside her vehicle which was abandoned in front of an apartment building.
The woman and her child were taken to Peel police 21 Division where she had to make a formal statement about the incident but both are now resting at home.
The woman is “emotionally distraught” and “traumatized” over the ordeal, Peel police spokesperson Const. Lilly Fitzpatrick told CP24.
“She got her baby back safe and sound but it’s still traumatizing,” she said.
Though Fitzpatrick said her decision to leave the car was not a wise one, the woman likely won’t be facing any charges.
“Something like that could happen to anyone,” she said.
Investigators have turned their attention to finding the suspect, obtaining footage from a surveillance camera at the gas station. The description officers have released of the suspect is vague – a man wearing a grey hoodie – but investigators are hoping witnesses will come forward with more information.
However, Fitzpatrick said if they do catch up with the man, he will likely only face a charge of theft and not a charge of abduction.
“Everything we’ve seen shows it was a crime of opportunity,” she said. “All we have right now is a vehicle theft, not an abduction. To lay a charge of abduction, the theft of vehicle would have been done to gain custody and control of child but there is nothing to show that.”
@SandieBenitah is on Twitter. For up-to-the-minute updates on this story and more, follow @cp24 on Twitter.Betiana “Betty” Mubili was on her way to becoming a commissioned officer with the Canadian Forces when she was killed Sunday in a skydiving mishap, says her heartbroken father.
Viktor Mubili said he’s been fielding phone calls and messages of condolences “left, right and centre” since police confirmed his 29-year-old daughter Betty was killed after her parachute malfunctioned during a solo recreational jump near Petawawa Sunday.
According to her father, Betty Mubili had already packed her belongings and was preparing to move back to Toronto, where the family first settled after moving to Canada from Zambia in the early 2000s.
Betty enlisted in the Canadian Forces right out of high school in 2006, training first at CFB Gagetown before transferring to Edmonton and later Petawawa, where she had been stationed for just under a year before Sunday’s skydiving incident.
She trained as a medic, and served a year-long tour in Afghanistan, where she attained the rank of Master Corporal.
“She always wanted to help people,” said Viktor Mubili, who said he came from a military background in his native Zambia. “She was supposed to move back to Toronto this month to start her training. She was going to be Lieutenant. But now that will never be.”
Mubili said he was overwhelmed by the outpouring of condolences.
Betiana Namambwe Mubili, who had an unspecified problem with her parachute, landed in a field off Black Bay Road near the Pembroke Airport, about 150 kilometres northwest of Ottawa.
More than 100 mourners showed up at the family’s old neighbourhood church in Mississauga Monday, where Betty “never missed a day at church,” her father said, to express their grief, share memories and offer prayers.
“She was everyone’s friend,” Mubili said. “She was always smiling, always happy, and the happiness she exuded made others around her happy as well.”
Mubili said funeral services will likely be held in Toronto on the weekend, though plans have not yet been finalized.
“I’m at a loss for words,” said Mubili’s cousin Iqbal Geloo. “One thing I can tell you is that this was an exceptional girl full of life… she served in Afghanistan and that inspired us all to pursue careers. She excelled in her career. Until this untimely death.”
She leaves behind a young brother Issa “and a whole lot” of grieving cousins and nephews,” said Geloo. “Gone but never forgotten.”
Garrison Petawawa public affairs officer Daphny Gebhart-Turcotte confirmed Mubili served as a medic and was recently promoted from Master Corporal to Officer Cadet, and said she was about to pursue her nursing training in Toronto.
Viktor Mubili confirmed a video clip posted to YouTube on July 31 shows his daughter completing her first skydive, a tandem jump from 10,000 feet with Skydive Petawawa |
result of the extreme pressure he was placed under as a result of his decision to originally leave the club.
Winding down [ edit ]
Matera's form declined once he reached his 30s. Most of his premiership teammates retired around him leaving Matera one of only a handful of experienced Eagles left by the turn of the century – Matera was named a vice captain of the club in 1999, holding this position for three seasons. The teams fortunes took a turn for the worse in 2000 and 2001, missing the finals for the first time since 1989. Matera, while still finishing top 10 in the Club Champion award was not the outstanding performer he was in his prime. 2002 saw the return to the club of legendary Eagles captain John Worsfold, this time in the role of senior coach. Worsfold's return saw the side return to the finals and saw Matera, aged 33, regain some fine form and it appeared he may play on in 2003. To some surprise and disappointment, late in the preseason of 2003 Peter Matera drew the curtain on his illustrious career, succumbing to a persistent thigh injury which had rendered him unable to reach peak fitness.
Peter Matera played 253 games for the West Coast Eagles and kicked 218 goals over 13 seasons. He also played 60 games for South Fremantle and represented Western Australia in state football on 5 occasions.
In August 2005, Matera was named on the wing of the Indigenous Team of the Century. Matera said of the honour:
Stephen Michael was my idol as a kid, and we used to hear all about how good Polly Farmer was so to be recognised with them is an honor.
After leaving the football world following his retirement, Matera dabbled in coaching in South Western WA before signalling his intentions to return to the game in a larger capacity. Despite being linked by some to the vacant assistant coaching position at West Coast, Matera took on an assistant coaching and mentoring role at the East Perth Football Club in the WAFL for the 2006 season.
On 10 March 2006, Matera was inducted into the Western Australian Football Hall of Fame.
On 22 June 2006, Matera became the first ever career West Coast Eagle to be inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. Considered one of the highest honours in Australian Football, Matera was pleased to receive the recognition
To be inducted in the highest level of football and accolades as in the Hall of Fame is one of those things that just caps off my career. This more or less finishes my career on a high.
In early 2015, Matera Foundation was formed and a Pathways to Employment Program was created for Aboriginal Australians who are currently unemployed and seeking employment but have found it difficult to find a career pathway within fields they desire to be in. The program is run by Peter and his partner Suzy in Perth with the view to branch out nationally in time and involves a commitment from individuals for 8 weeks to break down barrier and behaviours from the past by openly discussing issues and the past in a group environment and work together to implement change and a plan to move forward with positive outcomes. Additionally the program aims to improve health and wellbeing by having access to group fitness training sessions, nutritional education and mental health support.
The Matera Foundation works with jobactives to select candidates for the program who are on centrelink and throughout the 8 weeks of the program those jobactives geographically source employment around where the candidates live or potential opportunities within FIFO roles. This program shines a spotlight on the issues that have prevented individuals from sustainable employment in the past, identifies and creates ways to manage these issues with the view to turn things around and improve opportunities for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. http://materafoundation.org.auPresident Donald Trump may have promised to drain the swamp, but that hasn't stopped him from appointing officials with conflicts of interest to positions of influence.
One of his new proposals for the war in Afghanistan, which involves hiring contractors instead of using federal troops, was developed by Blackwater Worldwide founder Erik Prince and Stephen Feinberg, who owns the military contractor DynCorp International, according to a report by The New York Times.
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The strategy, which is being pushed by chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner, has not seemed to take off with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, but it nevertheless demonstrates another potential conflict of interest with the people developing Trump's policies.
On the domestic policy front, at least 28 of Trump's appointees for deregulatory positions have potential conflicts of interest, according to a report by The New York Times. These include Scott Cameron at the Department of the Interior, who is a member of its deregulatory team and had a meeting with a pesticide company lobbyist whose company had partnered with his nonprofit group; Samantha Dravis, who is chairwoman of the Environmental Protection Agency's deregulatory team despite once serving as president of an organization that helped energy companies join Republican attorneys general to sue the government; Rebeckah Adcock, who used to lobby the Department of Agriculture on behalf of a trade association for pesticide makers before being hired to its deregulatory team; and Brian McCormack, who is a part of the Department of Energy's deregulatory team despite his previous job dealing with political and external affairs for a trade association involved in investor-owned electrical utilities.It’s easy to forget when you’ve got the adorable little Pikachu as the franchise’s mascot, but the word ‘Pokémon’ is actually a blend of the English words ‘pocket’ and ‘monsters.’ Usually people aren’t thinking about that fact as they catch as many of the cute little critters as they can in each new video game installment, but one artist is out on a different quest to remind everyone that pokémon are indeed monsters at their core.
Artist Beth Emery, otherwise known as zsparky on art-sharing community site DeviantART, is gaining attention online for her creepily brilliant drawings of pokémon portrayed in the artistic style of Attack on Titan.
Warning: You may never be able to see Jigglypuff in the same way after seeing these pictures…
For your viewing pleasure, we have compiled a contrastive analysis of Ken Sugimori’s original Pokémon designs and Beth Emery’s Attack on Titan-style renderings below. Enjoy, and don’t run for the hills screaming!
▼Who could ever resist the adorable puffiness of Jigglypuff?
Bulbapedia
▼Or the cuteness overload of Clefairy using its Metronome attack?
Bulbapedia
▼But wait – two terror-inducing pink Titans appear at the city wall! Rattata, get out of there!!
▼Lickitung was always a bizarre pokémon to begin with…
Bulbapedia
▼…But now it’s been made postively grotesque! We hope that’s saliva on its tongue and not the remains of some unfortunate Squirtle…
▼How many of you chose grass-type Bulbasaur as your starter Pokémon way back in Generation I?
Bulbapedia
▼If you did, we sincerely hope that your buddy resembled the specimen above, and not this bloodsoaked one (umm, where’s Ash??).
▼The orphaned Cubone in Lavender Town charmed fans in the original generation of games.
Bulbapedia
▼But what happened to you?! You’ve evolved into a Colossal Titan Cubone!
▼Mr. Mime is usually more than eager to protect you with its Light Screen attack.
Bulbapedia
▼But not any more! Now Mr. Mime bears an uncanny resemblance to a rampaging Titan…
Well, readers–have you been thoroughly traumatized after seeing your childhood memories morphed into bloodthirsty Titans? Props to Beth for her imaginative and masterful drawings! Be sure to check out her page on DeviantART.
Sources: Kotaku Japan via My Game News Flash
Images: DeviantART – zsparkyFirst make the meatballs. Tip the mince into a bowl, add the oats, spring onions, spices and the coriander stalks, then lightly knead the ingredients together until well mixed. Shape into 12 ping-pong- sized balls. Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan, add the meatballs and cook, turning them frequently, until golden. Remove from the pan.
Tip the onion and garlic into the pan with the pepper and stir-fry until softened. Stir in the cumin and chilli paste, then pour in the stock. Return the meatballs to the pan and cook, covered, over a low heat for 10 mins. Stir in the tomatoes and beans, and cook, uncovered, for a few mins more. Toss the avocado chunks in the lime juice and serve the meatballs topped with the avocado and coriander leaves.On Monday, a researcher named Lisa Diamond, who works on issues of sexuality and sexual identity, claimed that her work is being “misconstrued and distorted” by John Boehner’s legal team. Boehner’s lawyer cited Diamond’s research in a lawsuit defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. (A woman named Edie Windsor has sued, claiming the law is unconstitutional.) The Boehner brief makes the case for the Defense of Marriage Act in part by quoting a study by Diamond that said, “50 percent [of respondents] had changed their identity label more than once since first relinquishing their heterosexual identity.”
In an affidavit, Diamond said:
This quoted statement refers to sexual identity labels (i.e., how individuals describe and interpret their identity) and not to sexual orientation. Neither this article or any of my published work supports [the] claim that ‘a high number of persons who experience sexual attraction to members of the same sex early in their adult lives cease to experience such attraction.’ Hence they have completely misrepresented my research.
If you want to read more about Diamond’s research — and in particular her ideas about the malleability of women’s erotic lives — check out Daniel Bergner’s intriguing article in the magazine about female desire.Goa chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar has allegedly advised protesting nurses not to stage a hunger strike under the hot sun as it could darken their complexion and affect their marital prospects, joining a growing list of ministers from the state who have drawn criticism for their public comments.
Anusha Sawant, one of the protesting nurses, said: "When we met the chief minister over our demands at Ponda (on Tuesday), he said the girls should not sit on hunger strike in hot sun as their complexion will become dark and they will not find a good bridegroom.
"The comment was unwarranted. We expect the CM to meet our demands if he is really worried about us," Sawant said.
Parsekar was not available for a reaction but an official in his office said: "We have no idea whether any statement was made but we don't think he would say something like that."
Nurses and others workers attached to a government-approved ambulance service run by a private firm are on hunger strike for the past few days.
They claimed the firm operates only 13 ambulances though it is being paid for 33. After their representatives met Parsekar twice, the nurses decided to confront him at every public function he attends.
"We also want to create awareness about the fraud committed by the company in connivance with government officials," said Hridaynath Shirodkar, the working president of Goa unit of Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh, which is affiliated to the Rashtriyaswayam Sevak Sangh.
In January, Goa's sports and youth affairs minister Ramesh Tawadkar attracted criticism and scorn from rights activists and opposition political parties when he said the state government was planning to set up centres to treat LGBT youngsters and make them "normal".
"We will make them normal…Like Alcoholics Anonymous centres, we will have centres. We will train them and give them medicines too," he had said.
Tawadkar did a U-turn after he was rapped for his "ignorance" by the chief minister, saying he was misquoted on the issue.
In July last year, Goa minister Sudin Dhavalikar sparked a controversy by calling for a ban on young girls wearing short skirts to nightclubs. "Young girls wearing short skirts in nightclubs are a threat to the Goan culture," Dhavalikar told reporters.
Last month, Goa's assembly was informed by art and culture minister Dayanand Mandrekar that his department has barred its employees from wearing sleeveless clothes, jeans, T-shirts and multi-pocketed pants to office to "maintain decorum".
Beyond Goa, other politicians too have been criticised for their controversial remarks about women.
Last month, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav had commented on the complexion of women from south India, drawing flak from activists and parliamentarians.
During a debate in parliament on the insurance bill, Yadav had said, "Here people are awed by fair skin. Matrimonial ads also ask for fair skinned brides. The proposal to raise foreign investment is a symptom of this obsession."
Despite DMK member Kanimozhi's objection to his comments, Yadav added: "In the entire country there are more saanvle (dark skinned) men. The women of south are beautiful, their bodies...their skin...We don't see it here. They know dance."
When the issue was later raised in the House by HRD minister Smriti Irani, Kanimozhi and some others, Yadav remained defiant and unapologetic. But he later expressed regret over his comments against Irani.
First Published: Apr 01, 2015 10:20 ISTFor 'Warmachine' and 'Hordes'
The second pair of Army Boxes for Privateer Press’ tabletop miniatures games Warmachine and Hordes will be releasing in February.
(Click either image for larger view.)
Each of the new Army Boxes features a complete 50-point army from one of the factions of the two games. Each Army Box contains previously released models at a significant discount, and are intended for new players or veterans wanting to start a new faction army.
The Protectorate Army Box 2017 will include the Warcaster Vice Scrutator Vindictus, two Sanctifiers, a Redeemer, a six-piece Choir of Menoth, 10 Exemplar Errants, 6 Knights Exemplar, and Visgoth Juviah Rhoven with Honor Guard. MSRP is $154.99.
The Skorne Army Box 2017 comes with the Warlock Archdomina Makeda, a Titan Gladiator, a Titan Sentry, a Basilisk Krea, 10 Praetorian Swordsmen plus an Officer and Standard Attachement, 10 Praetorian Karax plus Officer and Standard Attachement, 3 Paingiver Beast Handlers, and Orin Midwinter. MSRP is $169.99.
Like the first two sets, the Cryx Army Box 2017 and the Circle Orboros Army Box 2017, these Army Boxes will be small limited runs sold direct to retailers only in North America (see “Privateer Reveals First Direct-to-Retailer ‘Army Boxes’”).
In a statement to ICv2, Privateer reinforced its commitment to the traditional distributor model in its business strategy, stating that the Army Boxes are a test of their new format and do not represent an attempt to bypass their distributor partners (for the full statement, see “Privateer Press Reaffirms Traditional Distributors’ Role in Retail Strategy”).The team behind the sequel to 2009’s “Star Trek” got a late start. And because of that, there will be no “Star Trek 2” in 2012. Instead, it could be Paramount’s summer tentpole in 2013.
That’s the official word from Philippe Dauman, chief executive of Viacom, the parent company of Paramount Pictures. He made those comments during an earnings conference call where Viacom reported triple earnings and revenue growth of 22 percent.
In fact, thanks to films like “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” Viacom actually earned $576 million in the quarter. That equated to about $1 per share, and was done on the worldwide take of more than $1 billion for Transformers, as well as $95 million for “Paranormal Activity 3,” which cost only a fraction of that to produce. In fact, Paramount was about all Dauman could talk about with investors and analysts.
While Viacom wants to see such high revenue growth continue, the company knows it might be a little while for its venerable Star Trek franchise to contribute. The plan had been for a 2012 release for “Star Trek 2,” but accommodating director J.J. Abrams’ schedule took a little finesse, and filming isn’t even expected to start until early 2012. Because so much time was needed for post-production, Paramount could’ve considered, at the earliest, a Christmas 2012 release.
However, reports continued to circulate once Abrams took the helm that the film would indeed be pushed to 2013, with Paramount wanting to once again push it to an early summer release. They had done the same with Abrams’ first attempt at Star Trek, first setting it to premiere in Christmas 2008, but instead moving it to May 2009. “Star Trek” would go on to earn $257.7 million domestically and nearly $400 million worldwide — topping all 11 previous films.
Now that audiences have had a chance to meet the new Kirk and Spock, and with about a four-year wait, there is a chance Star Trek could pull a “Dark Knight” and grab an even larger box office take, especially if Benicio del Toro signs on as previously reported.
But Paramount is not just hanging its hat on Star Trek. The success of “Paranormal Activity 3” means that Paramount is going to jump on a fourth film as quickly as possible. “Paranormal Activity 3” has earned $95 million at the box office, despite the fact it’s only been out for a few weeks. With a budget of just $5 million, that means the film has already made $19 for every dollar invested, a tremendous return.
The studio also is not giving up on Transformers, even though both its director and star of the first three films feel it’s time to move on. The most recent installment earned $352.4 million domestically, second only to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.” Despite its high production budget and poor reviews, Transformers continues to be a large box office draw, and Paramount is keen to remaining tapped into it.
This year, Paramount has topped the box office with $1.6 billion in ticket receipts, according to The Numbers. It’s just slightly ahead of the $1.5 billion earned by Harry Potter’s Warner Bros. Studios. However, Warner Bros. has released more films than Paramount — 11 more to be exact — meaning Warner Bros. is averaging $50.8 million per movie, while Paramount is averaging a whopping $85.3 million per film.
Viacom also said it was considering a new live-action version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, falling under its Nickelodeon brand, since the characters were going to return to the kids network in 2012 as a new cartoon. It’s not clear if Vanilla Ice would be available for a cameo or not.What was summer like 20 years ago in the Capital Region? Click through the slideshow to see it in photos. Tulip Festival turns to mud festival as people waiting for Spin Doctors concert dance to radio music in Washington Park Saturday May 11, 1996. less What was summer like 20 years ago in the Capital Region? Click through the slideshow to see it in photos. Tulip Festival turns to mud festival as people waiting for Spin Doctors concert dance to radio music in... more Photo: LUANNE M FERRIS, DG Photo: LUANNE M FERRIS, DG Image 1 of / 77 Caption Close Photos: A look back at the summer of '96 1 / 77 Back to Gallery
What was summer like in the Capital Region 20 years ago? Look through the photos and you'll find out who made appearances at SPAC, the Knickerbocker Arena (now Times Union Center), and even the Starlite Music Theater in Latham. The theater was torn down in 2012.
Also, keep an eye out for a rising football star/future morning TV host, who spent some time at University at Albany for the New York Giant's training camp. And find out who was presented with an edible key to the city in Saratoga Springs.UPDATE 1.40pm: RICHMOND Valley mayor Ernie Bennett said Metgasco and the government had ignored the council's calls for better community consultation, including its recommendation they set up a shopfront in Casino.
"From the industry's point of view, if you want to operate and be welcomed, then you need to be proactive," he said.
"That's why we asked both of them to take up a shopfront in the main street and inform the community.
"If they believe gas is what's needed and is safe then they needed to get out there and sell the message."
He said if both parties had responded better to the councils repeated requests, made clear in its official position on coal-seam gas, today's outcome may have been different.
The council had requested the NSW Government conduct baseline water testing around Bentley, but when that was ignored the council was forced to go directly to Metgasco to get funds for the testing.
Mr Bennett said despite the loud voices of those against the industry, there were also a "large silent group" in the community who were "still not convinced one way or the other".
"There were a lot of people who needed more information before they could make a decision," he said.
But he also acknowledged Metgasco's challenge in dealing with the large community opposition to gas.
"How do you make it effective? I know how difficult it can be if your community aren't in the mood to be consulted."
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."
Bentley sing-a-long: Anti-gas protesters join in a slightly-altered version of Mavis Staples' We Shall Not Be Moved as the celebrations continue.
UPDATE 1.25pm: WHILE Clarence MP Chris Gulaptis was celebrating the suspension of Metgasco's exploration licence around Bentley, his neighbouring Nationals colleague Lismore MP Thomas George was more vague.
Asked whether Metgasco had failed to adequately consult with the community over the Rosella well, Mr George said he needed to understand the technical definition of community consultation.
"It's not spelled out in black and white," he said.
Mr George said he could not comment in-depth on Resources Minister Anthony Roberts decision to suspend Metgasco's PEL16, because he hadn't been briefed.
But he defended his record of representing the community's concerns over the gas issue, saying had raised the issue of consultation with Metgasco some months ago, after interviewing two constituents who complained they had not been consulted even though they lived within 10km of the planned Rosella well.
There was something fundamentally wrong with Metgasco's approach to their community consultation
- Clarence MP Chris Gulaptis
"I provided those details to Metgasco who said they had consulted with them, and those constituents criticized me for doing that," he said.
Mr George went on to acknowledge the issue of CSG had been one of the most divisive for his electorate.
"I've been criticized openly and continuously over this issue … (but) I've been making my representations in the appropriate place," he said.
"All the rules that we've brought in while we've been in government have certainly not provided Metgasco or Dart or any company with an easier path to gas exploration.
"Have a look at the rules that we've put in place in the last three years."
Meanwhile Mr Gulaptis welcomed the decision, saying he hoped Metgasco's suspended exploration licence was ultimately cancelled completely based on the "ongoing angst" the company's plans had created in the community.
"There was something fundamentally wrong with Metgasco's approach to their community consultation," Mr Gulaptis said.
He also expressed relief that the planned police operation at Bentley - what would have been one of the most significant operations in NSW police history - did not go ahead.
Mr Gulaptis's electorate would have covered much of PEL16 under proposed electoral boundary adjustments ahead of next year's state election.
UPDATE 11.20am: METGASCO may be gone (for now), but the protesters at the Bentley blockade say they aren't going anywhere.
Even as celebratons continue at the site, protesters are continuing their blockade at gate "A" of the Graham family's farm.
"We are all simmos here but no one is locked on at the moment because we don't need to be," one protester said.
Gathered around a campfire protesters are expressing their joy and relief at the suspension of Metgasco's petroleum exploration licence by the NSW government.
Adam Guise of Lock the Gate described this morning's decision by Resources Minister Anthony Roberts to suspend Metgasco's Bentley licence as "a Franklin Dam moment".
Protesters at the site say they have no plans to leave and a development application for the protester camp was lodged with Richmond Valley Council only yesterday.
UPDATE 10.44am: METGASCO has announced a 48-hour trading halt on its shares after NSW Resources Minister Anthony Roberts suspended its licence to operate at Bentley and referred it to ICAC.
In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, the company says it is confident it is "in compliance" with all conditions relating to the site "and is seeking to demonstrate this to the government".
Mr Roberts annouced the suspension this morning, saying the company must demonstrate it had done "genuine and effective" consultation with the community on the drill site. As a separate issue, he announced he had decided to refer the company to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after receiving information "concerning shareholdings and interests in Metgasco Limited".
The announcement followed a meeting between Bentley landowners and the director of OCSG and the NSW Land and Water Commissioner.
In its statement to the market, Metgasco says it "has sought and obtained a 48 hour ASX trading halt pending the opportunity to meet and discuss the matter with government so that there is a clearer understanding of the outlook for rig mobilisation".
'Excited but wary': Simon Clough and Ian Gaillard of Lock the Gate say they are excited about the suspension of Metgasco's Bentley licence, but remain wary.
UPDATE 10am: THE State Government should follow its decision to suspend Metgasco's Bentley licence with "root and branch reform" of the way it regulates coal and gas, anti-gas group Lock the Gate says.
Lock the Gate president Drew Hutton has issued a statement welcoming the news of the licence suspension and Metgasco's referral to ICAC, saying Metgasco's plans for the region had "galvanised the community".
"We offer our warm and heartfelt congratulations to the people of the Northern Rivers for this incredible people's victory," he said.
"We hope that the State Government heeds the lesson from the Northern Rivers and embarks on root and branch reform of coal and gas regulation.
"This means no-go zones to protect communities, rivers, groundwater, farmland and forests and regulatory reform to restore balance in regional NSW."
Gasfields Free Northern Rivers coordinator Ian Gaillard thanked Resources Minister Anthony Roberts for taking action.
"The blockade at Bentley sprang up in response to abject failure of the regulatory system to protect land and water from mining, and put the public interest first," he said.
The Australian Greens and Page MP Kevin Hogan have also welcomed the decision, with Mr Hogan saying the NSW Government had listened to the community and "acted accordingly".
"I've continually said that CSG in Page is not appropriate. It has become a community issue not a political one, and I congratulate Mr Roberts for suspending Metgasco's licence on the grounds that the company had not undertaken 'genuine and effective consultation with the community'," Mr Hogan said.
Greens Federal mining spokeswoman Larissa Waters said the NSW Government now needed to go a step further and revoke Metgasco's Bentley licence - a sentiment being echoed around the protest site this morning.
"A suspension isn't enough - the New South Wales Government should completely overturn this licence, especially given the lack of community consultation and the ICAC referral," Senator Waters said in a statement.
"It would be naive to think that the corruption going on in New South Wales stops at state borders.
"We need a commission against corruption federally and that's why the Greens are moving for a national ICAC in the federal Parliament today.
"Communities should not have to protest day in and day out to protect their land and water from contamination - they should have the right to say no to the big mining companies."
Protesters celebrate at Bentley: The Bentley blockade has take on the appearance of a festival as protesters celebrate the news Metgasco's Bentley licence has been suspended.
UPDATE 9.35am: Our reporter Rodney Stevens has arrived at the Bentley protest camp.
Drums are beating and protesters are singing in celebration of the NSW Government's decision to suspend Metgasco's drilling licence for the Bentley site.
"Hear us, can you hear us," the protesters are chanting.
The energy at the camp is one of celebration, with protesters of all ages dancing and singing: "We stand for the water, we stand for the land".
Lock the Gate spokesman Ian Gaillard, one of the driving forces behind the protest, has just arrived at Camp Bentley.
His media commitments began instantly.
About 200 protesters have gathered around a smouldering fire, dancing and singing as a drone hovers overhead filming the celebrations.
Beaming smiles and hugs are being exchanged, demonstrating the relief of protesters.
Lock the Gate chairman, Simon Clough, is hugging protesters and joining in the celebrations.
"What can I say? Woo hoo!"
Protesters celebrate at the Bentey blockade
UPDATE 8.50: NSW Police has cancelled an operation that had been expected to bring hundreds of police to the Bentley blockade.
In a brief statement, NSW Police Media says: "A planned NSW Police Force operation to protect public safety at a proposed gas drilling site near Lismore has been cancelled."
The Bentley operation had been tipped to bring hundreds of police from across NSW to the Northern Rivers to help Metgasco get its drill rig onto the property owned by former Lismore councillor Peter Graham.
While the State Government and NSW Police had been vague on the specifics, estimated of the numbers being sent to the region ranged as high as 900 officers, who would have been expected to quell a protest of many thousands of Northern Rivers residents.
A circular from the NSW Police Association obtained early this week suggested the number of officers involved meant they would have been accommodated across Casino, Lismore and Ballina.
The circular raised concerns so many officers would be involved it could leave some local area commands without enough officers to respond to meet "first response" requirements in the event of an emergency.
UPDATE 8.40: METGASCO is "finished" and "should pack up and leave" after NSW Resources Minister Anthony Roberts suspended the company's Bentley licence and referred it to ICAC, the Greens say.
NSW Greens mining spokesman Jeremy Buckingham described Mr Roberts' decision as "a fantastic win for the people of the Northern Rivers that have united in great spirit and determination to protect their land, water and community".
"The Bentley blockade is a physical manifestation of the social licence and shows that a social licence is not only real, but necessary for an industry like coal seam gas to operate," Mr Buckingham said in a written statement.
"People across NSW consider coal seam gas as unsafe and unnecessary. From Western Sydney, to the Northern Rivers, to Narrabri, to Gloucester, the community is saying no and that they are prepared to put their bodies on the line to stop this industry.
"Metgasco have patently failed to win the support of the community and are finished. They should pack up and leave."
Mr Buckingham said the Greens wanted a total ban on coal seam gas "because it is unsafe, unnecessary and unwanted".
UPDATE 8.26am: ANTI-gas protesters can claim victory in the battle to keep Metgasco from Bentley, Northern Rivers Guardians president Scott Sledge has said.
Mr Sledge says protesters at the "Camp Liberty" campsite "erupted in celebration" when news came through this morning NSW Resources Minister Anthony Roberts had suspended Metgasco's licence to drill at Bentley and had referred the company to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
"Community relief is reflected all over the Northern Rivers as opposition was widespread and thousands of residents had their bags packed to join the protectors at Bentley, putting their lives on hold for a cause of massive and overwhelming importance to the future for themselves and generations to come," Mr Sledge said in a written statement.
"There will be shouting, dancing and singing around the region to celebrate this historic victory for people power.
"The war against invasive gas mining is far from over, but for now we can celebrate.
"As the adage goes "Victory has a thousand fathers. Happy Father Day… and Mothers' Day too!"
UPDATE 7.30am METGASCO must demonstrate it has done "genuine and effective consultation" before it can hope to return to Bentley, NSW Resources and Energy Minister Anthony Roberts has said.
And he says the decision to refer the company to ICAC had been made to ensure previous decisions around the Bentley site were above board.
In a statement just released, Mr Roberts says he decided to suspend Metgasco's licence, which was issued by the former Carr Government in 1996, after the director of the Office of Coal Seam Gas and the NSW Land and Water Commissioner met with landholders at Bentley.
"I have been advised by OCSG that fundamental concerns have been expressed by members of the effected community about the way in which Metgasco has characterised its activities," Mr Roberts says in the statement.
"On 13 May 2014 the Director of OCSG and the NSW Land and Water Commissioner held a meeting with local landholders, at which matters of consultation between the community and Metgasco were raised.
"The Director of OCSG has now suspended the approval to construct the Rosella E01 gas exploration well.
"Metgasco must now demonstrate to OCSG that it has complied with this fundamental condition of its licence."
Mr Roberts described the decision to refer Metgasco to ICAC as separate from the decision to suspend its licence and that is was prompted by information "concerning shareholdings and interests in Metgasco Limited".
In accordance with Section 11 of the Independent Commission Against Corruption Act, I have referred this to the Commissioner to ensure that any decisions pertaining to PEL 16 have been made entirely properly and without any undue interest or influence."
UPDATE 7.08AM : METGASCO has been referred to the NSW corruption watchdog and its licence suspended over its Bentley operation.
Macquarie news reports NSW Resources and Energy Minister Anthony Roberts has referred the gas miner to ICAC over shareholding issues.
Mr Roberts has suspended Metgasco's licence for failing to meet conditions that it undertake genuine community consultation before beginning its operation at Bentley, where it plans to drill a conventional gas well.
The Bentley operation has prompted enormous opposition from the community, with thousands of people turning out at a blockade there.
Metgasco is the biggest coal seam gas miner operating on the Northern Rivers and is currently at the centre of a huge community protest at Bentley, between Lismore and Casino, where it plans to drill a gas well on a farm.
The company last year pulled out of the Northern Rivers, after the former Federal Government announced it would require coal seam gas operations to demonstrate they posed no risk to the water table where they proposed drilling, and after the NSW Government announced plans for exclusion zones around urban areas.
The company announced late last year it intended to drill its "Rosella" well on land owned by former Lismore councillor Peter Graham. Approvals from the Richmond Valley and Kyogle councils had just been delivered to allow the drill rig to be moved through the region and it had been expected to arrive within the next few weeks, along with hundreds of police.
6.43am: NSW Resources and Energy Minister Anthony Roberts has suspended Metgasco's licence.
Mr Jones has made the comment on his 2GB radio show this morning, saying Mr Roberts will make an announcement about Metgasco at 7.10am.It's not a done deal yet, but Seattle seems close to a sure thing to be next in line for an NHL team. So, what does that mean for Quebec City, Houston and other NHL hopefuls?
It’s not set in stone and there are some yet-to-be-cleared hurdles, namely proof of interest through a season-ticket drive and a payout of $650 million for an expansion franchise, but the belief following Thursday’s meeting of the NHL’s board of governors is that the league will have a franchise in Seattle come the 2020-21 season.
As colleague Ken Campbell outlined earlier, the whole NHL-to-Seattle thing has appeared to be a fait accompli for some time now, dating back to the past round of expansion, one which yielded the league its 31st franchise in the Vegas Golden Knights. When that round of expansion opened, many were of the opinion that Seattle would be among the cities to enter a bid, alongside Las Vegas and Quebec City. As we know now, however, that didn’t come to pass, in large part due the lack of an arena suitable for a team from one of the four major professional sports.
Seattle city council’s approval of a memorandum of understanding for a $600-million renovation of KeyArena earlier this week changed the landscape, though, reigniting talk that the NHL — as well as the NBA — could be on its way to Washington State. And after Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan signed off on the city council’s approval and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman green-lit a ticket drive and set the cost of acquiring an expansion franchise at $650 million, the league’s future, one that seemingly includes a 32nd franchise and 16th Western Conference club, appears that much more clear.
But now that Seattle looks to be next up, what happens to those cities who have also been in the mix for NHL action in recent years?
QUEBEC CITY
The former home of the Nordiques, who relocated to become the Colorado Avalanche, Quebec City has a lot going for it. It’s quite obviously a hockey-mad market, a city with NHL history and one that has proven it can support a franchise at the junior level. Though attendance has dipped in recent years and the current average of 8,105 is the lowest in more than a decade, the QMJHL’s Quebec Remparts have averaged more than 10,000 fans per home game over the past decade. But maybe the biggest asset for Quebec City is their building. The Videotron Centre, which opened in September 2015, is a state-of-the-art arena, one readymade to host professional sports and one that has, with pre-season games being hosted there in the past.
The issue, however, is that while no one doubts the drawing power, the size of the market is a concern. At present, the least-populated NHL city is Winnipeg, estimated to be roughly 705, |
initiated flirting or even full on sexual contact with a gay man (something the woman might actually enjoy, while the gay guy does not get pleasure from it). I can’t help but feel that the woman probably enjoyed her evening with the gay men, even if the ass slap wasn’t exactly a ‘thrill’ (unless it was; I have seen numerous women ask to be spanked by gay men). I can’t help but to imagine that most of these interactions were just good drunken fun between people who were comfortable around each other, due to the fact that there was no risk of having it escalate to a severely violating level, so a few silly things happened.
But of course, as many authors describe, we are now living in an age where ‘victimhood’ is becoming a cultural norm. People define their self worth based on ‘oppression,’ and are looking for new targets to accuse of being ‘oppressors.’
Straight white men were the first target, obviously… but the attacks have spread. Now, gay men have been facing immense scrutiny from 4th wave intersectional feminists. We are accused of having ‘male privilege’ (despite being numerous times as likely to suffer a violent hate crime than cisgender lesbians), we are accused of being ‘misogynists’, and now we are even accused of frequently ‘sexually assaulting’ and even ‘raping’ women… the very people who our lack of attraction to defines our sexuality.
I truly believe that many of the women who are making these claims are being flagrantly dishonest. Again, I don’t doubt that inappropriate touching happens towards women with clear boundaries occasionally, but in my 20 years experience of being gay, I have never once heard a legitimate complaint from a female friend of mine at the time that it happened. I know that is anecdotal, but it is the truth.
I believe that this is a narrative that has largely been deliberately manufactured by career feminists. Remember, there are more than a handful of women who make their living primarily by writing articles about ‘feminism,’ and probably the most common topic tends to be some form of complaining about men… including gay men.
Once they had the idea that they could attack gay men, they began cherry picking for examples of it, and overemphasizing what truly goes on. If they had stuck to a simple “Lack of respect of personal boundaries,” I could have swallowed it. But the accusation that gay men frequently ‘sexually assault’ and even ‘rape’ women, and then somehow constantly ‘get away with it because they are gay’, strikes me not just as deceitful, but damaging to the greater community (and some would say homophobic).
I’ll say it simply:
In general, gay guys don’t touch women… THEY TOUCH US.
Does that mean I think more gay guys should press charges? Well, that obviously depends on the severity of the action, but generally, no. I don’t think gay men usually care all that much when casual touching happens at parties or gay bars, and if they do, they can communicate their discomfort. I trust that gay men can do that.
But for women to simultaneously touch gay men very frequently without our consent, and then to go around the internet claiming they have been ‘sexually assaulted’ by gay men, because they happened to occasionally get touched in return, sounds simply dishonest in the vast majority of cases.
I want people to be respectful of each other. I want people to be mindful of boundaries and listen to one another when they say that a specific behavior is bothering them. I want legitimate sexual assault and rapes to happen less, and I want people to be aware that they can happen in unexpected circumstances.
What I don’t want is a world where everybody is terrified of touching each other, or expressing their sexuality in any way… especially in gay bars, where gay men go to touch each other and feel open about their sexualities. I don’t want our female friends to worry that they might be ‘sexually assaulting’ us when they get a bit frisky at a club. I do not want to live in a world where gay men are persecuted both for touching men (by the heterosexual norms of society), but then also accused of criminal acts by feminists for supposedly touching women.
That sounds very depressing to me.Mike
Synopsis: After losing their only child, Alice, in a vicious dog attack, two grieving parents relocate to a small town where — to their horror and fascination — they discover a pagan ritual that will grant them three more days with their deceased daughter. Hoping to allay their sorrow, at least temporarily, the couple decides to go through with the rite, but the larger question remains, what happens after the three days have passed?
Director: David Keating
Cast: Aidan Gillen, Amelia Crowley, Brian Gleeson, Dan Gordon, Ella Connolly, Eva Birthistle, Ruth McCabe
This Supernatural Irish / UK Horror movie, also known as The Wake Wood, presents a very intriguing question – what happens after the three days have passed? The reasoning for that question is because two grieving parents, who have recently lost their child, Alice, to a vicious dog attack, are left to wonder what will indeed happen after three days once they take part in a ritual to resurrect their daughter.
With Wake Wood, we are presented with a good looking film that is as character driven as it is story driven. We are treat to wonderful outdoor shots and feel like we know the characters. The movie spends much of its time with character development.
For you gorehounds, this is really not the film for you. While there are a few brief moments of gore that may satisfy some, the movie is far from a gory film by any stretch of the imagination.
This is a film from Hammer Film Productions, so for you Hammer Horror fans, myself included, this was a nice treat. Once Hammer rose from the ashes, this was the kind of film that I think we were all looking for from them.
On the down side, Wake Wood is a little rough around the edges at times. It seems like a movie that may have been cut down to its running time of 86 minutes. That is a small complaint considering that there is much about this film that there is to like.
Overall, I think that many will find this film to be very disturbing. It is definitely well directed and well acted.On November 2, the Chicago Police Department announced it would not be charging the concealed carry permit holder who intervened and killed an alleged robber who was pointing a gun at a female store employee on Halloween.
The Chicago Tribune reported the incident occurred some time around 7 p.m., after police say 55-year-old Reginald Gildersleeve entered the store, “announced a robbery… and displayed a handgun.” After displaying the gun, Gildersleeve pointed it at a female employee, and the concealed permit holder shot him multiple times. Gildersleeve was later pronounced dead.
After the incident occurred, Fox News/AP reported that Chicago PD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said police were looking at the concealed permit holder’s actions “as a self-defense issue at [that] point,” but nothing more concrete was said. Guglielmi indicated “it’s a slippery slope” for police in “trying to ascertain if individuals with concealed permits should intervene in dangerous situations, if at all.”
Then, on Monday, the Chicago PD announced they would not charge the concealed permit holder who intervened to save a woman’s life. According to WGN, Guglielmi explained that “investigators classified the shooting as self-defense after they reviewed witness statements and surveillance videos from the store and currency exchange.”
The WGN report reaffirms that the concealed permit holder opened fire after the robber pointed his gun at a female employee “and forced her to the back of the store.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.Fox News host Sean Hannity (screen grab)
Fox News host Sean Hannity asserted on Wednesday that Democrats who embraced the Black Lives Matter movement were backing “racism” similar to the Ku Klux Klan.
During a segment called “Race In America,” Hannity complained that Democratic presidential candidates had agreed to participate in a town hall event with “radical” Black Lives Matter activists.
“Not all lives matter, black lives matter,” Hannity told Fox News contributor Juan Williams. “Your Democratic Party is going to allow the ‘pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon’ group to host a Democratic forum?”
“What’s wrong with your party?” the host asked. “Why don’t you let the Klan host a party? Talking about killing cops, fry them like bacon.”
“You guys make this into that this was the anthem of all Black Lives Matter,” Williams pointed out. “Let’s get to the politics of it. They are a special interest group and they are saying they want attention for their issue.”
“Right,” Hannity quipped. “The ‘pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon’ group.”
“How in this day in age can you say black lives matter — all lives matter — and just say black lives,” the Fox News host continued. “Hispanic lives don’t matter, Asian lives don’t matter, white lives don’t matter, the unborn lives don’t matter. That, to me, is racist!”
Williams reminded Hannity that Republicans also listened to special interest groups like the NRA.
“There’s a group of Republicans called NRA, guns everywhere, let’s have a shooting gallery for a country!” Williams exclaimed.
Hannity was shocked by the comparison: “Don’t compare the NRA to this racism! Excuse me, I’m a proud NRA member and I’m the biggest gun safety person you’ll ever meet.”
Watch the video below from Fox News’ Hannity, broadcast Oct. 21, 2015.
(h/t: Media Matters)In March the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case filed by a Texas woman fighting for the return of over $200,000 in cash that the police seized from her family. Although neither Lisa Olivia Leonard nor any of her relatives were ever charged with any underlying crime connected to the cash, the state's sweeping asset forfeiture laws allowed the authorities to take the money.
The Supreme Court offered no explanation when it refused to hear Leonard v. Texas. But one member of the Court did speak up in protest. In a statement respecting the denial of certiorari, Justice Clarence Thomas made it clear that in his view modern asset forfeiture law is fundamentally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. Yesterday, one of the most influential federal appellate courts in the country—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit—signaled its agreement with Thomas' assessment in a notable decision in favor of an innocent couple fighting for the return of $17,900 in cash seized by the police.
As Thomas explained in Leonard v. Texas, "this system—where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use—has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses." For one thing, "because the law enforcement entity responsible for seizing the property often keeps it, these entities have strong incentives to pursue forfeiture." For another, this sort of police abuse disproportionately harms disadvantaged groups. "These forfeiture operations frequently target the poor and other groups least able to defend their interests in forfeiture proceedings," he observed. "Perversely, these same groups are often the most burdened by forfeiture. They are more likely to use cash than alternative forms of payment, like credit cards, which may be less susceptible to forfeiture. And they are more likely to suffer in their daily lives while they litigate for the return of a critical item of property, such as a car or a home."
To make matters worse, Thomas continued, the Supreme Court's previous rulings in this area do not line up with the text of the Constitution, which "presumably would require the Court to align its distinct doctrine governing civil forfeiture with its doctrines governing other forms of punitive state action and property deprivation." Those other doctrines, Thomas noted, impose significant checks on the government, such as heightened standards of proof, various procedural protections, and the right to a trial by jury. Civil asset forfeiture proceedings, by contrast, offer no such constitutional safeguards.
In short, Justice Thomas offered a searing indictment of modern civil asset forfeiture and called on the judiciary to start reconsidering its flawed approach.
The D.C. Circuit got the message. In its opinion yesterday in United States v. Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred Dollars in United States Currency, the D.C. Circuit repeatedly cited Thomas' Leonard v. Texas statement while ruling in favor of a New York City couple that went to court seeking the return of $17,900 in cash seized by law enforcement officials. Once again, the police took the money despite the fact that no underlying criminal charges were ever filed. But after Angela Rodriguez and Joyce Copeland submitted a claim requesting the return of their seized money, a federal district judge ruled that they lacked standing, thus ending their case and leaving the government in possession of their cash. Describing the legal process that led to this result as "onerous, unfair, and unrealistic," the D.C. Circuit reversed the district court.
"The pair has a right to contest whether the money is subject to forfeiture," the D.C. Circuit held. "Despite the government's best efforts, this will remain an adversary proceeding." Now that their standing to bring suit has been recognized, Rodriguez and Copeland will continue their legal battle to get their money back.
Critics of civil asset forfeiture should be heartened by this ruling. Not only did it vindicate the legal standing of innocent people fighting for the return of their own money, it shows that the lower courts are starting to heed Justice Thomas' call to arms against asset forfeiture abuse.In the last several years, I’ve found it very difficult to talk to many LGBTQ White people. Everything I learn about LGBTQ experiences is primarily from LGBTQ Black people and other ones of colour. Because I am a cisgender heterosexual* Black woman, often times LGBTQ White people approach me with the assumption that I am homophobic, transphobic and theist (where theism justifies the bigotry, as if theism is arbitrary [without history] and only applies to Black people). I am none of these. I’m a Womanist. My feminism is intersectional. I’m an agnostic atheist.
There’s been several times on social media networks (and in person) where a LGBTQ White person started speaking to me with the assumption of homophobia and theism. Once a gay White man assumed the sheer mention of Tracey Morgan meant I defend him. He accused me of homophobia, mentioned that my avatar revealed the truth about me (since in America, to be Black is to be deemed homophobic) and actually hashtagged the word “black” in his tweet reply. For the record, I don’t like Morgan’s comedy; I pointed out how his White audience and White fans laughed at his homophobic jokes, but as a way to punish Black men in general, and uphold White supremacy, White homophobes must be obscured and ignored. This angered LGBTQ White people (others came along) who felt that attacking me with racist tweets was better than recognizing that I didn’t defend Morgan and that yes, Whites, not solely Blacks are a part of the problem of homophobia in this country.
Why would they think racism is the best way to respond to presumed homophobia? Well, as long as this society is White supremacist, media figures like Anderson Cooper and David Gregory continue to push the idea that Black people are virulently homophobic, and Whites receive awards despite homophobia or homoantagonistic policies (i.e. Brett Ratner, Bill Clinton) while Black people are repeatedly and statistically inaccurately portrayed as “exceptionally” homophobic and the “real” problem, White supremacy will not only remain unchecked but LGBTQ Whites privileged in every other area can unequivocally blame Black people for their oppression while ignoring White supremacy, racism and White privilege. His approach ignored what I actually tweeted and was not intersectional.
Another time I discussed media stereotypes and a White trans woman said the media will see me as a “criminal” and her a “whore.” Her response considered my race not my gender and intersectional experience. This isn’t to say that Black women aren’t the most punished and incarcerated women in the country; we are, just as Black men are the most punished and incarcerated of men. But I doubt that she was thinking of women’s incarceration statistics. She was thinking of the stereotype of the “Black male criminal” because I am Black. However, overlooking my experience as a woman, a Black woman no less, she wasn’t able to see how the stereotype “whore” that she thinks could harm her life has harmed generations of Black women and even has hegemonic controlling images (Jezebel/welfare queen/hoochie mama) associated with it. I was expected to listen to her experience as a trans woman since cis privilege shields me from her experiences yet to her, I was interchangeable with a Black man. Again; not intersectional.
Recently I had an exchange with a different White trans woman who felt that I derailed her criticisms of cis women by mentioning Black trans women who felt supported by cis Black women. I apologized, as it wasn’t my intent. She didn’t want to continue to speak with me to continue the conversation. However, she started the conversation by mentioning that I was the only woman of colour that she’s ever encountered who mentioned cis privilege/support trans women and no women of colour really do. How do you say that as a White trans woman and not realize it sounds like “you Black women are transphobic just like Black men are homophobic.” She didn’t critique cis White women. She specifically mentioned ones of colour, as a White trans woman. That’s why I mentioned what I did–not to obscure valid critique of cis privilege but to repudiate the White supremacist idea that cis Black women or ones of colour aren’t supportive and cis White ones are. The imperative for me to check my cis privilege (important) yet ignore her White privilege and endure racism (painful) is exhausting to me.
What some LGBTQ White people fail to realize is LGBTQ Black people deal with homophobia AND racism. Will the former write the latter off as automatically homophobic too? I shouldn’t have to be called a homophobe for rejecting racism from LGBTQ White people any more than when I am called anti-Semitic for rejecting Jewish men’s cinematic interpretations of Blackness through a racist lens or Jewish comedians’ obsession with blackface.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t acknowledge cis and heterosexual privilege. For example, I see how Black women who are marginalized and oppressed by race and gender (and class, complexion, weight, ability, education, immigration status/citizenship, nation, for being trans etc.) are further marginalized and oppressed when their sexuality is deemed deviant. Even heterosexual Black women, with heterosexual privilege, deal with our sexuality labeled as a deviant form of heterosexuality; pathological, hypersexual and “unrapeable.” (“Deviant sexuality” is more than a label–it facilities oppression on multiple institutional, structural, systemic and social planes). I also listen to and talk to queer Black men about the intraracial and interracial difficulties of navigating or rejecting patriarchal masculinity and the emotional/physical violence that homophobia breeds. Clearly an intersectional perspective is needed, especially in regards to Black women who are bisexual, lesbian, queer and trans. It’s not one that I can always exhibit effectively because my cis and heterosexual privilege have to consistently be checked. Further, some experiences I won’t even have the experiential knowledge (which culturally for Black people is highly valued as an epistemological approach) that some bisexual, lesbian, queer and trans Black women have, so listening to them and not speaking for them is important to me.
When I see LGBTQ Black people without heterosexual privilege like I have, stating the exact same things that I just wrote above, there’s a problem. That’s their own community that they’re being excluded from by LGBTQ White people. I see this a lot, actually, and I feel stress and pain for them because despite dealing with the same racism as them and for some, the same sexism, misogynoir, colourism, classism, and more, and even with stereotypical constructions of my heterosexuality as deviant, I still don’t face the homophobia/transphobia that bisexual, lesbian, queer and trans Black women deal with, for example. While I face one of the highest risks for rape or assault as a Black woman, I don’t risk being beat up just for “looking gay;” something that Black men face in a hetero-patriarchal and homophobic society. (Gay Black men and Black women have a lot of overlap in experiences since homophobia and misognyoir are honestly two sides of the same coin.)
I don’t understand how to communicate with LGBTQ White people if the assumption is that I am homophobic and theist because I am a Black woman, if the conversation cannot be shaped with an intersectional perspective, if White homophobes are always off the hook and if they continue to believe that Black people are “exceptionally” homophobic and responsible for America being a homophobic nation. If the price of connection is me admitting homophobia that I didn’t exhibit, checking cis and heterosexual privilege that I do have but enduring racism along the way as they deny its existence and pretend like White supremacy and White privilege are figments of my imagination, that’s an impasse.
I don’t want the price of dismantling oppression in one area to be suffering in silence in another. I don’t understand how to support LGBTQ White people who exclude and oppress LGBTQ Black people and ignore intersectionality, racism and White privilege in regards to heterosexual Black people who aren’t homophobic and aren’t using heterosexual privilege to silence them. I most certainly do not condone homophobia from anyone of any race, to be clear. There ARE Blacks AND Whites who are homophobic, and this is a problem. And homophobic or not, ALL heterosexuals benefit from heterosexual privilege, just like individually racist or not, the historical, institutional, structural and systemic manifestations of racism, White supremacy and White privilege benefits all Whites.
I know the possibility of intersectional thinking exists because videos like this powerful spoken word performance with a queer White woman and a heterosexual Black woman help me visualize the possibility. Maybe such a possibility will materialize into common, not fluke experiences for me.
(12/7/13 - I edited this after the fact because I don’t really ID as “hetero” anymore [as it never completely fit anyway and I stopped being afraid to tell the truth] but as asexual. A personal process. I discuss asexuality now. Even so, the points above still stand because even queers and aces who are Black are assumed to be “homophobic” because of how White supremacy occupies massive space amidst sexuality.)POLYAMORY: We're all in this together. [That's mine.]
Open minds. Open hearts. Open love.
The more love you give, the more you have to give.
Polyamory: Love makes the world go 'round, and 'round, and 'round...
There's nothing more beautiful than loving someone... except loving two people.
Polyamory: Free your loves.
Share the love – there's more where that came from!
It ain't a movement if it ain't got good slogans. A while back I posted about poly T-shirts, buttons, and other personal-media displays. Some are cool, some are cool but obscure, some are cool but too long, and some are just off-target or confusing. Diana Adams, poly-activist lawyer and community organizer, has put out a call for a better T-shirt slogan (requires Facebook login, and scroll down to "I have a challenge..."). Here's your chance to make poly history — by inventing the most brilliant, witty, memorable, and chest-friendly declaration ever of what we're about. It has to have viral potential. People have to want to display it. (And you have to let Diana use it.)You can enter by posting in the comments below. Some early entries:Hey Diana, is there a prize?Time's running short to plan and announce your Poly House Party Weekend get-together June 3, 4, or 5. No event you put on is too big or too small, people just gotta have fun.This thread is something else. https://t.co/E1HA5agvP2 — Jason C. (@CounterMoonbat) January 7, 2017
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus has warned time and time again about the looming climate apocalypse. Combine that with the election of Donald Trump as president and it was all just too much:
I'm starting my 11th year working on climate change, including the last 4 in daily journalism. Today I went to see a counselor about it. 1/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
I'm saying this b/c I know many ppl feel deep despair about climate, especially post-election. I struggle every day. You are not alone. 2/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
There are days where I literally can't work. I'll read a story & shut down for rest of the day. Not much helps besides exercise & time. 3/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
The counselor said: "Do what you can", which I think is simple & powerful advice. I'm going to start working a lot more on mindfulness. 4/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
Despair is natural when there's objective evidence of a shared existential problem we're not addressing adequately. You feel alone. 5/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
You feel powerless. You feel like nothing matters. Your relationships suffer. You feel guilty for "not doing more" 6/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
But what the hell am I supposed to do? Write another blog post? Our secretary of state is the fucking Exxon CEO. 7/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
Last year we lost a huge chunk of the Great Barrier Reef. We are literally ending existence of animals that were here for millions of yrs 8/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
We don't deserve this planet. There are (many) days when I think it would be better off without us. <cue climate denier trolls> 9/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
How am I supposed to do my job—literally to chronicle planetary suicide—w/o experiencing deep existential despair myself? Impossible 10/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
To me, our emotional/psychological response is *the* story on climate change. It defines how (and if) we will solve the problem. 11/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
The number one comment I get is "we're fucked". That's not totally true. In order to "save the planet" we have to confront this despair. 12/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
Climate despair, on its own, isn't bad. It's a sign you care. It's just hard to function when you feel weight of the world crashing down.13/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
The more I talk about my despair, the more I realize other ppl feel same thing. That makes me hopeful—we are more powerful than we think.14/ — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
I don't have an answer for where to go from here. That's why I'm in counseling. But part of the answer is: don't be afraid to talk. 15/15 — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 6, 2017
Hopefully Holthaus rented an extra large safe space for this occasion, because he’s not alone:
The despair @EricHolthaus expresses here has—at one point or another—overcome every single person I know who works on the planetary future. https://t.co/YUTkOlDbQb — Alex Steffen (@AlexSteffen) January 6, 2017
This is a thread by a climate scientist, for everyone verging on despair over the state of climate inaction today. https://t.co/QOHJcVTm2l — Rob Cottingham (@RobCottingham) January 6, 2017
Very brave tweet of a frustrated/depressed #climate #scientist. I know how you feel. https://t.co/8YRpa8c4mJ — Andreas Lieb (@andreas_lieb) January 7, 2017
@EricHolthaus solidarity and strength, you aren't alone — GermaineDavid (@germaine_david) January 7, 2017
@EricHolthaus Thank you for writing all of this – it encapsulates everything I've been feeling. Keep writing… — Sarah Allentuch (@allentuch) January 7, 2017
Journalism becomes pointless — impossible to do well — if "things are in the saddle and ride mankind." (Emerson.) Read this thread. https://t.co/Do4Jk5gjva — Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 7, 2017
This is a moving thread about the personal despair of a writer who covers climate change every day https://t.co/wWWY0eRNR9 — Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) January 7, 2017
Others believe Holthaus has, let’s just say, a flair for the dramatic and wild exaggeration:
Sheltered and overpaid professional meteorologist can't do his job because… of Climate Change. Not making this up. pic.twitter.com/mAj6zKT41z — Craig R. Brittain (@CraigRBrittain) January 7, 2017
I am going to need a safe space, it’s going to snow early next week. I don’t think I can handle this. What should I do, @EricHolthaus? — Scott Lofquist (@ScottLofquist) January 7, 2017
@EricHolthaus It's depressing when you're theory that you've devoted your life to isn't panning out like you thought it would. — Ex-GOP Greg (@Flying59Vette) January 7, 2017
.@EricHolthaus On D-Day, there was no weeping about trace CO2 pic.twitter.com/8Fh4s94fKN — Tom Nelson (@tan123) January 7, 2017
@CraigRBrittain Someone get this poor meteorologist some help. He's in a cult if this is affecting day to day. https://t.co/zKFaGhxkiH — Colorado RedTraci (@goptraci) January 7, 2017
Snowflake central. Would you even dare write this online? https://t.co/m7U3fvCV4p — Deplorable Samuel (@shardiman92) January 7, 2017
@EricHolthaus This thread is hilarious. Both pretentious & delusional. — DailyPlanet (@Daily_Planet_1) January 7, 2017
Just as bad are the tweets replying to this pathetic rant. A lot of seriously screwed up people that agree with him out there … https://t.co/JJPSzWBkEW — Lemon (@GrumblyMumbly) January 7, 2017
@CraigRBrittain Shit, this is so funny! It either hoax or we dealing with the most weak minded people ever walking on planet Earth. — Red Pill Science (@RedPillScience) January 7, 2017ROLANDO (CBS 8) - David Robert Moore III, a student at San Diego State, is facing a number of charges Saturday after police found at least nine firearms, including a pistol and a shotgun in his trunk.
The discovery was made around 7:30 Friday night in the parking lot of a CVS pharmacy on El Cajon Avenue and 62nd St.
Moore, 20, originally attracted the attention of undercover officers, while they were holding an underage sting targeting minors trying to buy alcohol.
Witnesses say, Moore opened the trunk of his white Honda Civic while two undercover officers followed him, revealing what appeared to be military-grade weapons inside including a modified sniper rifle, a military knife, and a variety of guns.
The officer's immediately handcuffed Moore while they called in back-up. He was given a field sobriety test while bomb-arson investigators swept the car looking for possible explosives.
San Diego State Police, USD Police and CHP were also in the area and responded to the scene.
Moore was arrested for suspicion of DUI. He may also face charges for the weapons as well.
Investigators say if the incident had happened earlier in the day, while First Lady Michelle Obama was visiting San Diego, the law enforcement response would likely have been much more severe.Bill Ackman could hardly contain himself: American voters had just elected a businessman to run the country — someone who would steer the U.S. in the right direction.
While others were skittish about Donald Trump, Ackman felt nothing but optimism Wednesday morning when he heard the election results.
"I was extremely bullish on Trump, believe it or not," Ackman, the head of Pershing Square Management, said Thursday at the Dealbook conference in New York. "The U.S. is the greatest business in the world. It's been undermanaged for a very long period of time. We now have a businessman as president."
During the primary process, Ackman spearheaded an effort to draft another businessman — former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg — to run, but it wasn't to be. Ackman said Bloomberg was a better fit for him regarding social issues.
Absent his chosen candidate, Ackman said he was pleased with Trump, all things considered.
"My concern about Donald Trump is volatility. My concern was, who knows what he's going to do," Ackman said. "The guy just became president of the United States. This is going to be his legacy. Does he want to screw it up? No, he wants to be the greatest president this country has ever had."The 22nd annual program, which will begin at 8 p.m. ET, benefits the Major League Baseball Players Trust. Balloting was conducted in September.
The MLB Players Choice Awards will be handed out Monday on MLB Network, with honors going out in four categories in each league, and two more spanning the entire sport.
The MLB Players Choice Awards will be handed out Monday on MLB Network, with honors going out in four categories in each league, and two more spanning the entire sport.
The 22nd annual program, which will begin at 8 p.m. ET, benefits the Major League Baseball Players Trust. Balloting was conducted in September.
Each league will hand out an award for Outstanding Player, Outstanding Pitcher, Outstanding Rookie and Comeback Player. There will also be a baseball-wide Player of the Year selected (Miguel Cabrera, Chris Davis and Clayton Kershaw are the nominees), and a Marvin Miller Man of the Year (Carlos Beltran, Raul Ibanez and Mariano Rivera are up for that one).
The nominees for the other award categories are as follows:
American League
Outstanding Player: Cabrera (Detroit), Davis (Baltimore), Mike Trout (L.A. Angels)
Outstanding Pitcher: Yu Darvish (Texas), Anibal Sanchez (Detroit), Max Scherzer (Detroit)
Outstanding Rookie: Chris Archer (Tampa Bay), Jose Iglesias (Detroit), Wil Myers (Tampa Bay)
Comeback Player: Scott Kazmir (Cleveland), Victor Martinez (Detroit), Rivera (N.Y. Yankees)
National League
Outstanding Player: Paul Goldschmidt (Arizona), Andrew McCutchen (Pittsburgh), Yadier Molina (St. Louis)
Outstanding Pitcher: Jose Fernandez (Miami), Kershaw (Los Angeles), Francisco Liriano (Pittsburgh)
Outstanding Rookie: Fernandez (Miami), Shelby Miller (St. Louis), Yasiel Puig (Los Angeles)
Comeback Player: Marlon Byrd (Pittsburgh), Liriano (Pittsburgh), Troy Tulowitzki (Colorado)
For the first time, all Major Leaguers were also asked to cast a separate ballot for the player they would like to see adorn the next cover of PlayStation's "MLB The Show" video game. PlayStation is a sponsor of Monday's announcements. That winner will also be unveiled during the broadcast.
The Players Choice Awards have been handed out since 1992. This year's winners will each designate charities to receive grants totaling $260,000 from the Major League Baseball Players Trust, which raises funds and attention for issues affecting the needy and promotes community involvement.Officials vow that no exhibitionism will be tolerated at a section of Bois de Vincennes that is being reserved for naked people
Parisian nudists will finally have a spot to take it all off – for the next few weeks at least – at a secluded zone in the Bois de Vincennes park east of the city.
“The creation of an area in the Bois de Vincennes where naturism will be authorised is part of our open-minded vision for the use of Parisian public spaces,” said Penelope Komites, a deputy mayor in charge of the city’s parks.
'Nobody runs for the hills': is Britain ready for everyday nudity? Read more
The site, still considered an experiment, will be open from Thursday 31 August until 15 October, from 8am-7.30pm (0600-1730 GMT).
Signs will let park users know what’s going on (or coming off) in the clearing near the park’s bird reserve, spread over 7,300 square metres (79,000 square feet, or nearly two acres).
Officials vow that no voyeurism or exhibitionism will be tolerated in order to assure the respect for those making the most of their natural state.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Two men walk past a sign at the Bois de Vincennes park. Photograph: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images
“It’s a true joy, it’s one more freedom for naturists,” said Julien Claude-Penegry of the Paris Naturists Association, estimating that thousands of people in the region will want to take advantage of the site.
“It shows the city’s broad-mindedness and will help change people’s attitudes toward nudity, toward our values and our respect for nature,” he said, adding that he has been a practising nudist for 20 years.
Parisians already have one public pool where they can swim in the buff three times a week, and across the country some 460 areas are reserved for naked enjoyment, including 155 campsites and 73 beaches.
More than 2. |
, 3.02 FIP, 8.53 K/9, 2.70 BB/9, 0.28 HR/9, 0.95 WHIP
ETA: Late June
24. Max Kepler (OF, MIN, AAA)
Stats: 128 PA,.282/.367/.455, 1 HR, 1 SB, 10.9% K rate, 12.5% BB rate
ETA: Late July
Update: Max Kepler was recently promoted in the wake of Miguel Sano's injury. He is a solid play in deeper leagues, but does not have much value in leagues with fewer than 12 teams
25. Josh Bell (1B/OF, PIT, AAA)
Stats: 219 PA,.302/.393/.466, 5 HR, 1 SB, 19.6% K rate, 11.9% BB rate
ETA: Mid-July
26. Gary Sanchez (C, NYY, AAA)
Stats: 147 PA,.297/.340/.536, 6 HR, 3 SB, 15.6% K rate, 4.8% BB rate
ETA: Early August
27. Sean Newcomb (SP, ATL, AA)
Stats: 57.0 IP, 3.47 ERA, 3.30 FIP, 9.16 K/9, 5.21 BB/9, 0.16 HR/9, 1.37 WHIP
ETA: Early August
28. Jose Berrios (SP, MIN, AAA)
Stats: 33.0 IP, 3.27 ERA, 3.54 FIP, 9.55 K/9, 4.64 BB/9, 0.55 HR/9, 1.36 WHIP
ETA: Mid-July
29. Alec Mills (SP, KC, AA)
Stats: 56.0 IP, 2.25 ERA, 1.79 FIP, 8.68 K/9, 1.77 BB/9, 0.00 HR/9, 1.07 WHIP
ETA: Mid-July
30. Lewis Brinson (OF, TEX, AA)
Stats: 191 PA,.222/.274/.392, 5 HR, 8 SB, 16.2% K rate, 5.8% BB rate
ETA: Early August
MLB Rookie Rankings
1. Corey Seager (SS, LAD)
2. Nomar Mazara (OF, TEX)
3. Trevor Story (SS, COL)
4. Steven Matz (SP, NYM)
5. Aledmys Diaz (SS, STL)
6. Kenta Maeda (SP, LAD)
7. Jon Gray (SP, COL)
8. Trayce Thompson (OF, LAD)
9. Byung-Ho Park (1B, MIN)
10. Michael Fulmer (SP, DET)
11. Jameson Taillon (SP, PIT)
12. Tyler Glasnow (SP, PIT)
13. Brandon Drury (2B/OF, ARI)
14. Trea Turner (2B, WAS)
15. Alex Bregman (SS, HOU)
16. Orlando Arcia (SS, MIL)
17. A.J. Reed (1B, HOU)
18. Dansby Swanson (SS, ATL)
19. Blake Snell (SP, TB)
20. Byron Buxton (OF, MIN)
Live Expert Q&A Chats - Every Weekday @ 1 PM and 6 PM EST (DFS)
Fantasy Baseball Chat Room"We were driving home the other night from the hospital and he made a comment that, 'Wait until everyone hears about my Thanksgiving dinner,' So, I don't think that he had a dinner. I think this is what he's going to remember every single Thanksgiving," says McHugh.
In the affidavit, Gage reportedly admitted to attacking his wife in the past, telling detectives he could have caused her injuries, but could not remember because of the amount of alcohol he had consumed.
McHugh says all he can do is pray that justice is served, and Gage gets what he deserves. He says the most difficult part is explaining their mother's condition to his little brother.
"Today is the first day that he known that she's not going to make it. I've tried to talk to him, but every time he sees her, he asks the nurse when she's going to be up again? Today, he asked my aunt if someone can give her a brain transplant because he wants his mommy," McHugh shared.
Gage remains in the Smith County Jail, held on $500,000 bond.
Patti's family will depend on each other to get through these next couple of days.Story highlights The summer of 2013 will see both sides square off in efforts to sell or roll back Obamacare
The administration is hoping to start signing up people for health plans October 1
Republicans are working hard to cripple existing measures and halt new ones
Many Americans are still confused, according to recent polling
In what may be the epic battle of the summer, the White House and Republicans are assembling their armies and sharpening their bayonets for a political fight over the selling of Obamacare.
On one side is the Obama administration, which is preparing to carry out the president's landmark health care reform law. It sees success directly linked to his legacy.
On the other side are House Republicans, conservative groups, GOP governors and tea party affiliates. They are reading the latest polls and are determined to make the repeal or severe crippling of the Affordable Care Act their top priority before the 2014 midterms.
"It's a very important battle and both sides are trying to come out on top," said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian and CNN contributor. "The first stage was about whether this passes or not.... Now the battle is over implementing it and there are all sorts of ways Republicans are trying to cause problems."
Zelizer said Republicans have been aggressively promoting the program's problems in the past few weeks.
"And the administration feels the pressure," he said.
The next phase of the fight for the White House, according to administration officials, is a series of initiatives aimed at using social media, websites, on-the-ground efforts and targeting Spanish speakers and young people in particular to convince as many uninsured as possible to buy insurance when it becomes available on October 1.
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"We've got to make sure everybody has good health in this country," President Barack Obama told Morehouse College's commencement ceremonies recently. "It's not just good for you, it's good for this country. So you're going to have to spread the word to your fellow young people."
Meanwhile, Republicans are continuing to whittle away at the law's impact and are hoping that Obamacare's failure could become a rallying cry.
"It's going to be an issue in the 2014 midterm elections," said Sally Pipes, president and CEO of Pacific Research Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank and author of "The Truth about Obamacare."
"When 2014 comes and the percentage of Americans that have employer-based insurance find out they could lose their insurance and be dumped into an exchange there will be an uproar," Pipes said.
Here's a glimpse into each side's playbook and the tactics they hope will win:
What the administration wants to do
This summer, the administration will launch several initiatives in its goal to sign up as many as seven million Americans over the next year.
They will hit the Internet. They plan to roll out Healthcare.gov as the go-to site for those signing up for insurance under the law, leading up to open enrollment starting on October 1.
They will take it to TV. The Health and Human Services Department will soon unleash a campaign to saturate the airwaves with ads pushing people to begin shopping for health care plans.
They are making it easier to sign up. To make it To make it easier for consumers to apply for coverage from private insurers under the Obamacare rules, the administration is touting a simplified online form that takes 21 pages and boils it down to three.
They will target minorities and young people. These groups are some of those most affected by a lack of insurance. This strategy will leverage Spanish language ads, public education and outreach campaigns targeting recent college graduates, young and diverse faces on its website and a heavy emphasis on digital media.
They are claiming it will be cheaper. The White House is pushing a recent surprise in California, where the cost of buying health insurance through the state's exchanges -- as required by the Affordable Care Act -- are coming in as much as half the price of what was initially expected. For instance, the state will charge an average of $304 a month for the cheapest silver-level plan in state-based exchanges next year.
What Republicans want to do
The GOP will continue to beat the drum on just how bad Obamacare is for the country.
They continue to keep it in the headlines. House Republicans have voted 37 times to repeal the law and some critics have suggested it's a waste of time.
"Well, while our goal is to repeal all of Obamacare, I would remind you that the president has signed into law seven different bills that repealed or defunded parts of that law. Is it enough? No. A full repeal is needed to keep this law from doing more damage to our economy and raising health care costs," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a recent press conference.
They are linking Obamacare to the IRS scandal. Leading Republicans, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, have also suggested suspending implementation of Obamacare until an investigation in completed into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups.
They are challenging it in the states. Several states with Republican governors and legislatures have threatened not to establish the required insurance exchanges -- and giving up millions in federal subsidies in the process -- in an effort to derail Obamacare.
Still, things are starting to get ugly.
Repeated requests by HHS for more money from Congress to implement the law have been denied. Ranking Republicans are now calling the agency's inspector general to investigate whether Health Kathleen Sebelius violated appropriations and ethics rules when she reportedly tried to raise funds for Enroll America, an organization that is working to help put the Affordable Care Act in place. Those actions are now also under investigation by two congressional committees.
The agency maintains she made "no fundraising requests to entities regulated by HHS."
Public has questions
Caught in the middle is the American public. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in April showed 49% of those surveyed didn't know how Obamacare would affect them and roughly 40 percent were unaware that the law was being carried out.
"In our research looking at barriers faced by families accessing available public insurance for their kids we found that families were often very confused about the requirements and the processes for enrollment," said Jennifer Devoe, a family physician, and professor at Oregon Health and Science University of such programs as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. "We also found confusion among families who believed their child to be covered when the child was actually uninsured, and vice versa."
A majority of Americans said they opposed the nation's new health care measure, three years after it became law, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday.The steep decline, reaching parity with whites, is particularly intriguing, experts say, because obstetrical services for low-income women in the county have not changed that much.
Finding out what went right in Dane County has become an urgent quest — one that might guide similar progress in other cities. In other parts of the state, including Milwaukee, Racine and two other counties, black infant death rates remain among the nation’s highest, surpassing 20 deaths per thousand in some areas.
Nationwide for 2007, according to the latest federal data, infant mortality was 6 per 1,000 for whites and 13 for blacks.
“This kind of dramatic elimination of the black-white gap in a short period has never been seen,” Dr. Philip M. Farrell, professor of pediatrics and former dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said of the progress in Dane County.
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“We don’t have a medical model to explain it,” Dr. Farrell added, explaining that no significant changes had occurred in the extent of prenatal care or in medical technology.
Without a simple medical explanation, health officials say, the decline appears to support the theory that links infant mortality to the well-being of mothers from the time they were in the womb themselves, including physical and mental health ; personal behaviors; exposure to stresses, like racism; and their social ties.
Those factors could in turn affect how well young women take care of themselves and their pregnancies.
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Karen Timberlake, the Wisconsin secretary of health services, said that in Dane County, the likely explanation lay in “the interaction among a variety of interrelated factors.”
“Our challenge is,” Ms. Timberlake said, “how can we distill this and take it to other counties?”
Only about 5 percent of Dane County’s population is black, and the sharp drop in the mortality rate also tracked larger declines in the numbers of very premature and underweight births for blacks, said Dr. Thomas L. Schlenker, the county director of public health.
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A three-year study, led by Dr. Gloria E. Sarto of the University of Wisconsin, is using tools including focus groups and research on pollution to compare the experiences of black mothers here with those in Racine County, which has the highest black infant mortality in the state.
It is not hard to imagine why death rates would be lower in Dane County than in Racine, which is more segregated and violent, or in Milwaukee, a larger city. Dane County has a greater array of public and private services, but pinpointing how they may have changed over the decade in ways that made a difference is the challenge.
Dr. Schlenker, the county health director, credits heightened outreach to young women by health workers and private groups. “I think it’s a community effect,” he said. “Pregnant women need to feel safe, cared for and valued. I believe that when they don’t, that contributes to premature birth and fetal loss in the sixth or seventh month.”
He pointed to services that started in the mid-90s and have gathered steam. For instance, a law center, ABC for Health, has increasingly connected poor women with insurance and medical services. He said local health maintenance organizations were now acting far more assertively to promote the health of prospective mothers.
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And a federally supported clinic, Access Community Health Center, which serves the uninsured and others, has cared for a growing number of women using nurse- midwives, who tend to bond with pregnant women, spending more time on appointments and staying with them through childbirth.
County nurses visit low-income women at high risk of premature birth, providing transportation to appointments and referrals to antismoking programs or antidepression therapies. Another program sends social workers into some homes. The programs exist statewide, but in Milwaukee, Racine and other areas they do not appear to have achieved the same broad coverage, said Ms. Timberlake, the state health leader.
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And community leaders in Dane County, shocked by high mortality rates, started keeping closer watch on young pregnant women.
“The African-American community in Madison is close-knit,” said Carola Gaines, a black leader and coordinator of Medicaid services for a private insurance plan.
Similar community efforts are now being promoted in other struggling cities.
Brandice Hatcher, 26, who recently moved into a new, subsidized apartment in Madison, spent her first 18 years in foster care in Chicago before moving two years ago.
When she learned last June that she was pregnant, Ms. Hatcher said, “I didn’t know how to be a parent and I didn’t know what services could help me.”
Over the summer she started receiving monthly visits from Laura Berger, a county nurse, who put her in touch with a dentist. That was not just a matter of comfort; periodontal disease elevates the risk of premature birth, increasing the levels of a labor-inducing chemical.
Ms. Hatcher had been living in a rooming house, but she was able to get help from a program that provided a security deposit for her apartment. She attained certification as a nursing assistant while awaiting childbirth.
Under a state program, a social worker visits weekly and helps her look for jobs. And she receives her prenatal care from the community center’s nurse-midwives. A church gave her baby clothes and a changing table.
Ms. Hatcher said she would not do anything to jeopardize her unborn baby’s prospects. She has named her Zaria and is collecting coins and bills in a glass jar, the start, she said, of Zaria’s personal savings account.One should never underestimate the emotional toll being lost takes on you. When it comes to survival the most important tool is a positive outlook and the will to survive. You will inevitably experience problems resulting from fear, despair, and loneliness. In a survival situation, you will experience immense highs and lows. It’s important to never lose your will to survive.
A great analogy for this is the relationship between a hawk and a rabbit. The rabbit will see a hawk and seek cover under a rock. The hawk will make a loud screeching sound as it flys overhead. The more the hawk screeches, the more panicked the rabbit gets. Eventually the rabbit will break down and make a run for it. However, if the rabbit had just stayed calm it would have survived.
The first thing to do in a survival situation is to find a source of fresh water. You can survive for several weeks without food, but you can only survive a few days without water. The Greek philosopher Miletus once notably declared “The first of things is water.” Without water your chances of living are nil, and all the food in the area means nothing. This is especially true in hot climates where you sweat a lot. Even in cold weather your body needs at least two quarts of water each day. Any lesser amount reduces your ability to function properly.
If you are concerned about the cleanliness of your water, you may find it advantageous to boil it in order to kill any harmful bacteria or parasites. This can be done without the use of a metal pot. All one needs is a container to hold water, a fire, and some small rocks. Heat the rocks over the fire and then place the heated rocks into the water.
It is also important to focus on using your energy wisely. For example, you don’t want to spend more energy trying to catch a small fish, than the energy that fish will provide. Hunger, cold and fatigue will lower your stamina and ability to make good decisions.
This may seem as if I am pointing out the obvious, but one should be sure to keep what they have, add to what they have, and take care of what they have. You should discard nothing and keep an eye out for things that may be of some use. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Gear and supplies can weigh you down and slow your progress. If you are sure of your destination and your route, then you may be better off dumping everything but your bare essentials (knife, food, fire starter) and making a run for it. This however is a risk that should not be made in haste. Your most important tool is your ability to use reason. Despair and anguish will only hurt your ability to reason.
How to build a fire:
Perhaps the most important survival skill is the ability to make a fire. Shivering from cold will cost you energy. Being cold will wear you down both mentally and physically. Making a fire will not only provide you with warmth, but it will also give you a feeling of accomplishment that will raise your spirits. If the weather it wet, you can often find dry tinder under trees. You can also try removing the bark in order to get to the dry wood underneath.
Once you have procured dry tinder, you will be ready to start your fire. In an ideal situation you will have either a lighter or matches. If not, you can create a hot ember by the use of friction. There are several ways by which this can be accomplished. One popular method is to use a bow fashioned with a shoe string. One can then twist the string around a dry stick. You can then work the bow back and forth a causing the bottom of the stick to quickly turn against your dry tinder.
If you have to build the fire on wet ground or snow, it is advisable that you first build a dry platform of logs or stones in order to create a dry area on which to build your fire. On should also build a windbreak or reflector that will reflect the heat of the fire toward you. It’s also important to note that it takes less energy to keep a fire going than it does to start another one.
Picking the best route:
If you are lost, you will undoubtedly want find your way out. However, picking the best route is easier said than done. The route that you select to travel depends upon the situation in which you find yourself the weather conditions and the nature of the terrain. Whether you select a ridge, stream, or dense forest the easiest route can often be the worst. You instinctively want to travel downhill since it is easier. In doing so, you may find yourself tired and surrounded by high hills. Your best decision is to first climb up a hill or ridge in order to get your bearings. From a higher vantage point you just might be lucky enough to spot a trail, road, or small town.
Traveling in mountains or other rugged country can be dangerous and confusing unless you know a few tricks. What looks like a single ridgeline from a distance may turnout to be a series of ridges and valleys. In extremely high mountains a snowfield or glacier that appears to be continuous and easy to travel over might cover a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. In densely forested areas, trees growing in valleys formed by streams reach great heights and their tops are at about the same level as trees growing on the valley slopes and hilltops where the water is scarce; this forms a tree line that from a distance appears level and continuous.
Wilderness survival food:
Procuring food is especially important during a survival episode when you need every ounce of energy and endurance that you can muster. It’s important for you to limit the amount of energy you use. The more energy you use, the more calories you need to consume in order to survive. Humans have adapted to thrive in almost every environment in the world. As such, there is a good chance of survival if you can keep your wits about you and focus on the task at hand. After you have found a source for fresh water and shelter, you will need to start thinking about food.
If you are lucky enough to either kill an animal, or come across one that is already dead, you can dry it’s intestines over a fire in order to convert them into a cord. This can be used to make a bow sting as well as a wealth of other uses. If you manage to kill some game it is important to start thinking about preserving it. The best way to preserve meat is to turn it into jerky. This can be done by smoking it. It’s of the utmost importance that you cut the meat into small thin strips.
It is generally safe to try wild plant foods you see being eaten by birds and animals. However, just because an animal is eating one part of a plant doesn’t mean that the entire plant in edible.
When fishing it’s important to note that fish tend to bite bait that is native to where they live. Generally worms and insects are your best bet. One can also use the fish’s intestines and eyes for bait. You can also try your hand a building a fish trap. The basic purpose of a fish trap is to funnel the fish into a confined area where they will either become trapped or easily speared. However, this can be a physically taxing endeavor. As such, you should be relatively certain of success and consciously limit the amount of calories that are expended.
Survival Shelter:
The “lean to” is perhaps the most commonly built and simplest timber shelter. No mater what kind of shelter you build, it is important that you locate it in an area where you can build a fire to spread warmth equally throughout the shelter. The proper placing of the lean to and fire in relation to prevailing winds is another consideration.
A “lean to” can be improved by the use of a fire reflector that is situated at the opening of the lean to. Large stones stacked behind the fire can also reflect heat.
One would do well to pick a campsite on a high spot of ground in an open place well back from swamps or wet ground. The ground will be drier. One should also make a bed. You do not want to sleep on the ground. You can easily make a bed from small branches covered in dry leaves.
A shelter can protect you from the sun, insects, wind, rain, snow, hot or cold temperatures. It can give you a feeling of well-being and safety. From a psychological standpoint it can help you maintain your will to survive.Preliminary voting on rockets for the game is happening NOW on the Abandon Planet website! Once the campaign is finished, only Backers will get the final vote!
Choose your White, Purple, Black and Green Rockets!
Choose your Red, Orange, Blue, and Yellow Rockets!
Stretch Goal #1: COMPLETE! At 55K we hit this custom insert!
Custom made plastic insert
Stretch Goal #2: COMPLETE! Custom resource tokens!!
Custom resource tokens achieved!
Stretch Goal #3: COMPLETE! 3D printing files for all 16 Rockets!
3D printing files for all 16 Rockets!
The complete rules to Abandon Planet and Black & White PnP are available HERE!
Check out the Updates for more info on insert, customs tokens, and all the news from the last month!
Kickstarter Pricing: Once the campaign is complete, Abandon Planet's price will increase for pre-order and retail. So if you're thinking about jumping on board, NOW is the time to do it for the best price and best shipping, which we have locked in for this campaign only! Thanks for being involved, and keep spreading the word about Abandon Planet!
From the creator of The Resistance and Avalon, Abandon Planet is a new game about escaping the meteor apocalypse. It's an experience of survival, betrayal, and fragile alliances in the moments before Earth is annihilated. Anyone who doesn't want to die on the soon-to-be-burning rock will have to team up with a partner to outfit their janky rocket transport for the interplanetary jump. But everyone's looking out for number one, and alliances can change at any time.
Each round players secretly decide which direction to send their rocket. They reveal their choices simultaneously, and then take turns flying out to the remaining chunks of earth, to pick up what they need or steal it from each other. This would all be safe and pleasant if it weren't for the deadly meteor that will strike at the end of the round, drastically altering the map and damaging any rockets in its path. One player knows in advance where the meteor will hit, but depending on who they choose to share that information with … well, let's just say you learn who your friends are pretty quick in a meteor apocalypse.
Abandon Planet is the latest work by Don Eskridge, and it's easily his most involved undertaking. Don is the creator of two other successful smart party games, The Resistance and Avalon. So he knows a thing or two about keeping players excited and engaged through simple rules and a focus on exploring unique, intense player interactions.
In Abandon Planet, each player has a rocket to trawl the wreckage of earth for resources. Unfortunately, no one player will have enough time to fix up their rocket alone - you need a partner. You can team up with someone right from the beginning, or keep your options open until the last second, but either way you'll want to strike a balance between making yourself an attractive ally and screwing over other players to get ahead.
To win the game, you and one other player will both need to set aside some resources to begin a countdown, and then make it through one more round with enough surviving components to actually launch. There's almost no limit on the number of teams that can pull this off – everyone can potentially win except for one player or team, as long as everyone plays nice. But once the first wave of rockets launch, anybody left on the planet is stuck. The players who made it to space win; everyone else is obliterated by meteors.
Before deciding on their moves each round, players can coordinate and share information by showing each other their numbered Path cards, which indicate where they'll be flying that round. Once decisions are locked in, everybody reveals their choices simultaneously, and everyone takes turns flying to their destinations – collecting resources if they're available, or stealing them from people you don't like so much.
At the end of each turn, a new meteor strikes, turning the land beneath it into a charred waste! Anybody unlucky enough to be in its path loses everything they collected that turn, plus the surface of the Earth is permanently altered. Farms become refugee camps, cities become junkyards, the horror is unbearable, etc.
If enough meteors strike the same place, it's wiped off the map altogether, reducing movement options for further turns and bringing Earth that much closer to annihilation. Use the remaining heap to scavenge for meteorites or explore the Aftermath and see if anything useful wasn't vaporized. Needless to say, if nobody makes it off the planet before it crumbles to cosmic dust, everybody loses.
CERTAIN ENEMIES/UNCERTAIN ALLIES — Abandon Planet doesn't tell you who your allies are in advance, but it does give you two definite enemies: the players on your left and right. This gives you two people who are definitely safe to screw over from the beginning, helping to avoid the decision paralysis that tends to crop up in other free-for-alls like Diplomacy or Risk. The fact that you can't win on your own also gives you a strong reason to build alliances with other players, encouraging more diplomatic (and devious) play.
SIMULTANEOUS ACTIONS — Each player gets six numbered cards that they can use to indicate which direction they're moving on a given turn. These cards double as a means of covert communication, allowing players to show each other where they're planning to move without getting up from the table and thus breaking the rhythm of play. This also means that a careful observer can see who's talking to whom, and which alliances to watch out for.
THE LEADER AND THE METEOR — At the start of the turn, one player at the table learns where the next meteor is going to fall. This gives them a bargaining chip that they can use to negotiate with other players. They can win favor by sharing the information with potential allies, or lie about where the meteor's going in order to get them blown up or scare them off where they want to go.
AFTERMATH TILES — The meteor itself isn't just a level hazard – it dynamically alters the map every turn, replacing the terrain it destroys with a random Aftermath zone. This creates a constantly new playing field for each of the 8-10 rounds of play. The Aftermath tiles have a wide variety of effects that can inform players' strategies, adding dynamic replayability to the game. And since there are 20 different tiles, players are guaranteed a uniquely explosive adventure every game.
Where does Abandon Planet fit in your game collection? Easy:
It's a smart party game, so right under The Resistance and Avalon.
It's a large group set collection game, so just next to 7 Wonders.
It's a simultaneous action selection romp, so above Cash n Guns.
It's a deal-making extravaganza, so between Bohnanza and I'm the Boss.
It's a unique, bitter slugfest of betrayal and survival in which you'll ally with your friends and then stab them in the back as you rocket off the planet leaving them behind to be annihilated... so, packed next to their copy in the mail!
SMART PARTY GAME — Most party games are fairly slapstick fun - which is fine, but wouldn't you like to play games with your group in which you laugh and plan their destruction? In a smart party game, you can have a great time a few beers in, or with no beers at all. Abandon Planet works beautifully at parties (it moves quickly, plays lively, and takes up to eight players) but it's also a full board game and has a lot going on under the hood. The decisions you make are simple enough to keep play moving, but nuanced enough to reward multiple play-throughs.
A EUROGAME WITH EXPLOSIONS — While we're calling Abandon Planet a party game, it's also got enough depth to appeal to the efficiency-engine gamers in your group. It's got classic worker placement and set collection elements mixed with fast-paced negotiation and deduction. There just aren't many games with this level of depth that take up to eight players - just this and 7 Wonders, and 7 Wonders doesn't have rockets or the apocalypse.
Don Eskridge designed Abandon Planet with the same goals in mind that lead him to create The Resistance and Avalon. The core tenets of Don's design philosophy are:
Organic win conditions – No tallying up victory points. The winner should be obvious. Constant engagement – Players should spend most of their time playing, not waiting for their turn. Winning Together – There's no reason why more than one person shouldn't be able to win. In fact, games are better when we win together. Don believes that people are what makes games fun, so why not have them be as involved as possible?
A great part of the experience of this game that Don never even dreamed of is the set of eight unique rockets designed by Bobby Reichle, who created the art for every aspect of the project. These rockets add a huge amount to the experience of the game. Choose your rocket, and make sure no other rocket makes it into space! The galaxy is only big enough for the most stylish rocket after all (yours, obviously).Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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The Republican Party has too rich and honorable a history to allow its future to be defined by fools like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Ad Policy
But it will have a future only if responsible Republicans distance themselves—rapidly—not just from the debacle that was the Romney-Ryan run but from the crude “47 percent” politics that have underpinned the party’s recent appeals.
Romney made the need of distancing more urgent Wednesday, at a point when defeated presidential contenders are supposed to be gracious or quiet—but certainly not bitter and bizarre.
Romney used a telephone conference call with big donors to claim President Obama was re-elected by 3.5 million votes and a 332-206 Electoral College margin because Obama delivered “gifts” to young voters, Latinos and people of color:
The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people. In each case they were very generous in what they gave to those groups.
Specifically, Romney griped that
With regards to African American voters, ’ Obamacare ’ was a huge plus—and was highly motivational to African American voters. You can imagine for somebody making $25—, or $30—, or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free healthcare—particularly if you don’t have it, getting free healthcare worth, what, $10,000 a family, in perpetuity, I mean this is huge. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free healthcare was a big plus.
The defeated Republican candidate for president’s remarks display a shocking disregard for the seriousness with which tens of millions of Americans approached the 2012 election. And it parallels the very public whining from defeated Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who complained: “The surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race.” (Emphasis added.)
With Romney and Ryan renewing the divisive messaging that so damaged their 2012 campaign—after Romney was recorded announcing he was unconcerned with almost half the American population and Ryan divided the country into “makers” and “takers”—the demand on responsible Republicans grows dramatically greater
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the incoming chairman of the Republican Governors Association, has stepped up and appropriately declared Romney’s latest outburst to be “absolutely wrong”:
We have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote. And second, we need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education.… So, I absolutely reject that notion, that description |
. The first is that writing a game engine from scratch is an absolutely terrible idea if you actually want to finish a game. It’s a great programming exercise and you’ll come out a far better programmer for it, but it’s a waste of time if you actually want to sell a game. It looks awesome on my resume though!
I think I’ve learned a thing or two about scope and planning, and that will be put to the test in the coming months. I’ve gained some artistic skills in the process as well. My pixel art is at least good enough for what I plan to do next, and can serve as a platform for improving my skills and branching out to new art styles.
I don’t regret working on Alpha Strike at all, though I do regret not stopping a little sooner though. For the past few months I’ve been losing the drive to work on it. It’s not fun to work on anymore, and I think that’s because I know it won’t be fun to play and it won’t be worth the massive amounts of time I’ve sunk into it.
Even though Alpha Strike is effectively dead, this is not the end! I have a plan, and this blog is a piece of that. At the very least, Alpha Strike proves I can stick with a project in the long run if there’s value in it. With better planning and foresight, I can still ship a game, even if it takes a lot longer than I thought it would.
Over the coming months and years, I’ll be writing about what I accomplish and learn, my successes and failures. And if I crash and burn, then at the very least I can be an example of how not to do game dev. Whatever ends up happening, stick around, it’s sure to be of use to you if you want to make games, or if you’re just interested in the process!
Like this: Like Loading...POLICE are hunting a South Sydney Rabbitohs’ fan after a commuter was left unconscious when his head was slammed against a railing in a brutal railway attack today.
A number of school students witnessed the apparently unprovoked assault which detectives described as “vicious”.
Officers are currently reviewing CCTV footage following the attack on a stairwell at Ingleburn train station at 8.30am this morning.
Inspector Brad Ainsworth, from Macquarie Fields LAC, said they were looking for a man believed to be in his 20s or 30s wearing a hooded jacket with a South Sydney Rabbitoh’s logo on the back who may be able to assist with inquiries.
A spokeswoman from NSW Ambulances said the victim was unconscious with facial injuries and heavy bleeding when paramedics arrived.
He was rushed to Liverpool Hospital in a serious condition.
A high school student called Alekhya was on her way to school and witnessed a man being bashed at Ingleburn train station on the stairwell about 8.30am this morning.
“I was at the top of the stairs and the victim was walking up to catch a train and the other guy was coming down from the stairs,” Alekhya said.
media_camera Police seal off the scene of the attack this morning.
media_camera The victim is transported to hospital.
media_camera Detectives look for clues.
“He just grabbed him and he was saying stuff like ‘shut up’ and ‘stay down’, he had his head locked up in the his legs, and every time he tried to get up he grabbed his head and slammed it against the railing,” she said.
“He was bleeding from his head and mouth and vomiting blood.
“One of my friends called the ambulance and another boy was holding the victim down to keep him safe, people from the station were giving him first aid.”
In the middle of the attack Alekhya was blocking other commuters from coming up to stairs to keep them away from the incident.
“I was trying to stop the people from coming up the ramp, I was just telling people to stay away from the incident while it was happening,” she said.
“I was very nervous but I was trying to stay strong to make sure no one else got injured.
“I’ve never witnessed anything like this before.”
Alekhya’s mother said she was glad her daughter was not injured during the incident when she called after the police arrived.
“I am proud of her,” Alekhya’s mother, who did not want to be named, said.
“She has been involved in a lot of social activity and helped people in the past who have been injured at the station,” she said.
“I am a bit worried there were a few incidents a few weeks ago at train stations, it just scares me.”
Police said they were searching for an offender who was last seen running down Oxford St who may have a female with him.Ralayzia Taylor said this week that men in Charlotte, North Carolina attacked her with a hatchet because of her gender identity.
Taylor, who is transgender, told WBTV that she was taking a walk near Arbor Glen Park when two people started chasing her.
“They probably just wanted to rob someone that day and then when they found out I was a transgender, it got worse,” she explained.
Taylor said that the men hurled anti-gay slurs as they attacked her, and that a man armed with a hatchet used it to cut her.
“I’m just laying there bloody and I’m like oh my God help me, just bout to die,” she recalled.
The men eventually stopped and Taylor said that she was able to run for help. The wounds required dozens of stitches.
Charlotte police arrested Destiny Dagraca, Dajion Tanner and a 15 year old in connection with the attack.
Taylor called the attack a “hate crime,” but police have not made that determination.
Although North Carolina has not repealed its HB2 law stripping transgender people of bathroom rights, Taylor said that she will continue to live in the state.
“I didn’t deserve this at all. I’m not a bad person,” Taylor insisted. “I just want to tell all the gays and trannys to keep their heads up – not just blacks, but whites Hispanics – it doesn’t matter. Just all keep their heads up.”
Watch video below:
RELATED STORIESDrive along Collins Road and you'll most likely find yourself sitting in traffic as you pass Rockwell Collinss sprawling complex, which houses the majority of its 8,000 Cedar Rapids employees, hundreds of residential homes, several schools and churches, and restaurants squeezed between store after store.
Theres not a lot of unused land, admitted Vern Zakostelecky, city of Cedar Rapids community development planner. Theres not a whole lot left, (the road) is pretty much developed out.
"The only other development," he added, "would be additions or conversions of uses, adding new tenants.
There are already about 90 retailers on the road, not including those in Lindale Mall, estimates Scott Olson, a Cedar Rapids councilman and commercial real estate agent for Skogman Commercial Group.
The area, a major commercial and industrial corridor, also is one of Cedar Rapids's most congested.
More than 30,500 cars drive across portions of the road each day, with delays during all peak hours of a normal weekday, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation. And because we're now into the holiday shopping season, traffic is increasing, by as much as 20 percent.
The high number of vehicles also means a high number of accidents.
A 2008 Iowa Department of Transportation environmental assessment, the most recent available, shows that Collins Road has three intersections F Avenue, Northland Avenue and First Avenue that have a crash rate above the statewide average. The current statewide average crash rate for urban intersections in Iowa is about 0.9 crashes per million vehicles entering the intersection, according to IDOT.
The majority of the crashes are rear-end collisions, which is typical on a roadway that is operating with traffic volumes that exceed its capacity.
More retail, more congestion
And the addition of new retailers in the 150,000-square-foot Kmart shopping center and Lindale Mall are likely to add to the problem, Zakostelecky said.
National retailers Hobby Lobby, HomeGoods, Fresh Market and Shoe Carnival will be replacing Kmart, which is closing its 43-year-old store, and the Iowa Department of Transportation, which is pursuing another location for its 7,000-square-foot drivers license station.
More retailers are anticipated to sign on for remaining, smaller spaces by the time remodeling is completed in the fall of 2014.
"There's lots of possibilities for redevelopment," said Joe Mailander, program manager for development services department for the city of Cedar Rapids."The Kmart redevelopment will probably spur more."
Across the street, Lindale Mall is undergoing a major 14,600-square-foot expansion that is adding shops and restaurants to the 53-year-old retail center.
Its also likely that more retail will replace Hy-Vee, 279 Collins Road NE near Lindale Mall, in the coming years. The company has said it will close the store once a new one is built.
And more retail will bring more congestion.
Providing relief
So when, if ever, will traffic relief come to Collins Road?
A project to expand Highway 100 would run that road across the Cedar River about 4 miles north of downtown, then turn south and connect with Highway 30, creating another north-south route away from Interstate 380.
The first phase of the $200 million project will begin in 2014 and should be complete in 2018, with entire project finished in 2020. However, this expansion will do little to alleviate congestion on Collins Road and will create more of a beltway around the city and provide more routes to Collins Road.
The expansion "will have very little affect. People go to the road for the attractions, the employment, restaurants and the mall, said Catherine Cutler, Iowa DOT district transportation planner. This will be just another option to get there and really provide relief to 380 and Edgewood (Road).
City plans to eventually widen Collins Road to six lanes to help ease the flow of traffic are closer to becoming a reality, noted Gary Petersen, engineering capital improvement project manager for the city's Public Works department. The final design is the next phase.
There have been talks about widening the road for years there was even a study back in 1999 that evaluated crash rates on the road to underline the need.
The joint project with the Iowa DOT will take several years and isn't slated to start until 2015 at the earliest, Petersen explained. It will take several construction seasons to finish, probably being completed by 2017.
The city's Mailander said Cedar Rapids also is working with property owners to build an underpass by Lindale Mall, lifting the section of Collins Road by Lindale Drive which runs north off Collins, just east of the mall and then extending Lindale Drive under Collins Road.
This project - along with the city's purchase of a handful of homes along C Avenue near the Northland Square shopping center to build a secondary access point and provide another way in and out of Collins Road - should help alleviate some congestion, he said.
The city tried to sell the structures, but Mailander doesn't believe anyone put forth any bids, and the homes soon will be demolished.
Before all of the shopping centers, it used to just be storage centers but that corridor has intensified over time. Most land that was underutilized was developed out, Zakostelecky said.Show full PR text
MOTO GUZZI V7 RANGE CHANGES EVERYTHING YET REMAINS FAITHFUL TO ITS HERITAGE
New engine, revamped design, and new components: a new chapter in the V7 legend is written
THE NEW MOTO GUZZI V7: AN EVOLUTION THAT RESPECTS TRADITION
Over 90 years as Europe's oldest continuously operating motorcycle manufacturer makes Moto Guzzi's V7 lineup the most unique among today's modern retro motorcycles. With an unwavering commitment to craftsmanship, unrivaled old school style, and technological progress, every V7 is dashing to the eye and thrilling to the heart.
Today the success of Moto Guzzi is further enriched by renewing the flagship V7 product range; keeping constant the authentic elements and values that have characterized the brand so far:
• Craftsmanship
• Italian spirit
• Legendary heritage
• Originality
The 2013 Moto Guzzi V7 is a completely new bike – leading with a more powerful, faster, smoother 90° V-twin engine. Yet, it is still driven by the cardan shaft drive and supported by the double cradle "Tonti" frame – cornerstones of the V7 tradition, a tradition that stays true to the characteristics of the Moto Guzzi tradition, that touring on a motorcycle at its most pure should be nothing but enjoyable.
The design aesthetic accentuates the fine Italian craftsmanship of a vehicle that can only be made 100% in Italy. These are the distinctive elements of a V7 tradition which was born in 1967 with the creation of the Moto Guzzi V7 700. And in this tradition we welcome the 2013 Moto Guzzi V7 Range, three different versions and a wide range of available accessories that meet the various needs of all riders.
V7 Stone
A completely new version designed to appeal to younger riders, complete with a competitive price point; trendy, agile, easy to customize with an array of accessories. The V7 Stone features the new and more powerful, 750cc, 90-degree V-Twin motor and new lightweight, six split-spoke alloy wheels. The simple color scheme combined with the six split spoke wheels enhance the chrome accents and make the Stone the ideal foil for a wide variety of Moto Guzzi accessories. The matte black or pure white tank and the chrome accents make the V7 Stone a showstopper on the road or at any café, bike night or local hot spot. The 2013 V7 Stone is available in Matte Black and Pure White. MSRP is $8,390 and will be available in mid- October at Moto Guzzi dealerships across the United States.

V7 Racer
The 2013 V7 Racer is an ode to café racer motorcycles from the '50s and '60s with the performance of a modern machine. The V7 Racer has a new 750cc, 90-degree V-Twin motor with increased torque, horsepower and throttle response for an enjoyable ride. The new V7 Racer features a myriad of unique style attributes-from a chrome fuel metal tank studded with red Moto Guzzi badges and finished with a handsome leather strap, to a suede leather seat with an aerodynamic seat cowl and '70s-style racer number plates. The V7 Racer is perfect for an adventurous rider with an eye for design and a wild streak. The 2013 V7 Racer is available in Chrome. MSRP is $9,990 and will be available at Moto Guzzi dealerships across the United States in early-October.
V7 Special
This is the closest to the original 1969 V7 Special, not only because it shares its name with the first V7 signed by Lino Tonti, but because it faithfully cites the same riding philosophy - that of a touring bike with a sophisticated fit and finish and uniquely "Guzzi" engine character. The new engine, significantly stronger in driving torque and especially in maximum power, which is increased by 12%, is perfectly suited for medium range touring and contributes to low fuel consumption and greater tank capacity with 5.8 gallons for an average range of 310 miles.
Just like its predecessor, it is wrapped in a two-tone paint scheme and equipped with aluminum spoked wheels reducing unsprung weight and improving handling. The V7 Special proves a worthy touring machine with bags and windshield, accessories which go well with the overall design of the V7 Special. The V7 Special is available in White/Red Metallic and Yellow/Black Metallic. MSRP is $8,990 and will be available in quarter 1 of 2013 at Moto Guzzi dealerships across the United States.NEW YORK-He’s had a gun put up to his head during a robbery. He’s been assaulted with a crowbar, and had every window in his car broken. He’s had a jagged beer bottle shoved into his neck. He was nearly maced.
All of this on the job.
Of colleagues he knows: One was stabbed in the lower neck with a hunting knife. One was choked by a woman. One was shot in the eye after being robbed. Another remains in a four-year coma after a violent assault. Still another, Ndiaye Serigne (pronounced “Jay Serene”), was beaten violently on Halloween by mask-wearing men.
Police officer? Soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan? What sort of job does he, David, as well as his colleagues, hold?
They work, according to the Department of Labor, the most dangerous job in the United States: New York City taxi driver. While New Yorkers tend to take cab drivers for granted, they perform the most dangerous, and one of the most grueling, jobs in the city.
In Serigne’s case, the four masked passengers jumped into his cab, one of them taking the front seat. Since it was Halloween, Ndiaye wasn’t surprised by the masks. But after crossing the bridge into Staten Island, the man in the front seat switched off the meter, and told Serigne that “now it’s a free ride.” Serigne, in a move that may have saved his life, ignored his assailants’ orders to pull down a narrow street and instead drove to a nearby gas station. It was there that he was beaten and the passengers-turned-attackers fled. Now when he looks at the security camera video, he can’t believe what he sees.
“I’m just thankful that I am alive,” he said, noting that a childhood friend from his native Senegal was murdered on the job only three years ago. “We are just workers, but some passengers treat us so badly.”
According to taxi workers and their representatives, this is a horrible story, but one that is neither an anomaly nor even surprising.
“Drivers are 60 times more likely to be killed on the job and 80 times more likely to be robbed on the job than any other worker in the United States of America,” said Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance yesterday.
Taxis move nearly half a million people each day, she added. “The airports, finance, restaurants, Broadway, every single industry in New York City, depend on taxi drivers for their bottom line. Our bottom line is our lives need to be protected.”
Now taxi drivers, united into the TWA and well as elected officials are going to do something about it. Standing next to Desai, New York State Assembly member Rory Lancman, D-Queens, announced that he would introduce a bill into the Assembly that would extend protection already won by bus and subway workers to taxi drivers.
“Men and women who drive these taxis are entitled to just as much protection as the people who run our trains, drive our buses,” Lancman, who chairs the Assembly Subcommittee on Workplace Safety, said.
Under recently-enacted laws, won after a sustained fight by Transport Workers Union Local 100 and its allies, anyone who assaults a bus driver, or subway or railroad worker, is to be charged with a felony and potentially sentenced to prison time. Lancman, the TWA and some transit workers present, want to see that protection extended to taxi workers. The law would also require a sign in each cab warning would-be assailants that any assault could lead to prison time.
The bill would send a signal, Lancman said, that “we in New York state will not tolerate [violence against drivers], and we will take every measure that we can to make sure that when these men and women get into their cab to start their shift, at the end of it, when they leave that cab to go home to their families, to go home to their children, that they come home safe and sound.”
Photo: Libero Della PianaPhotography Credit: Elise Bauer
Some things taste so much better than they look. This is an odd looking dish with the orangey pink shrimp and the light yellow-y green tomatillos, speckled here and there with white Cotija cheese and green cilantro. And you might be thinking, what kind of combination is that?
But hear me out. This odd assortment of ingredients is just a Southwestern riff off a shrimp saganaki, which is typically made with feta and tomato sauce. One of the best received recipes on this site is for baked shrimp in tomato feta sauce. It just works.
The onions and the shrimp provide the sweetness, the tomatillos or tomatoes the acidity, the Cotija queso seco or feta the saltiness, and the cilantro or parsley the bitter. Wrap some in a flour tortilla and you practically have a shrimp quesadilla with salsa verde.
From the recipe archive, first published Sept 2010.Amid conflict, Samaritans keep unique identity
By Dana Rosenblatt (Special to CNN)
HOLON, Israel (CNN) -- Every Thursday, Benyamim Tsedaka prepares for his weekly visit to the West Bank for the Sabbath.
Armed with coffee mug and cell phone, the newspaper editor departs his home in Holon for the lush hills of Mount Gerizim, near Nablus.
There, he'll gather with friends and family and relinquish his casual button-down shirt and jeans to don the flowing white robe and red headdress that is traditional to the Samaritan Sabbath.
Despite their ties to both sides of the border that separates Israel and the Palestinian territories, Tsedaka and the people in his community are a distinct group, neither Jewish nor Arab.
They are Samaritans, members of a culture whose roots also reach back into Biblical times.
Samaritans are descendants of the ancient Israelites who broke from Judaism some 2,200 years ago and were centered mainly in and around the region of Samaria -- now a part of the West Bank.
Even today, many people associate the group with the parable of the "Good Samaritan" from the New Testament, and the term is often used to describe a person who helps another unselfishly.
In modern times, as they try to maintain their distinct cultural identity, the Samaritans find themselves caught in the middle of the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
"We are in the heart of the problem, trying to find ways to exist with both," says Tsedaka.
Their community numbers less than 700 people and is split almost evenly between the Palestinian controlled area of Mount Gerizim in the West Bank and the Israeli town of Holon near Tel Aviv.
The Samaritans are Israeli citizens and recognized as Jews according to the law of return. Yet, those who live in the West Bank also are represented in the Palestinian legislature. Palestinians commonly refer to them as "Jews of Palestine." Overall, they seek to maintain neutrality between both sides.
As a people, they are united by a common religion, tradition and language. They are one of a few remaining cultures that speak, read and write the ancient Hebrew language Aramaic.
They have vowed to keep the language and culture alive for centuries to come, though they speak modern Hebrew and Arabic in daily conversation.
In fact, Aramaic is one of four languages -- along with Arabic, modern Hebrew and English -- that are used in Tsedaka's community newspaper, A.B. - The Samaritan News, which he edits and publishes every two weeks.
Neither Jew nor Muslim
The religious practices followed by Samaritans are closely related to Judaism.
Although their calendar is slightly different from the Jewish calendar, they celebrate Yom Kippur (the day of atonement) and Passover, traditionally marked by the sacrifice of a lamb at Mount Gerizim.
Unlike the Jews, however, the Samaritans do not celebrate Hanukkah or Purim. Religious ceremonies are led by a Samaritan high priest and recited in Aramaic.
Despite their acceptance by both the Israelis and Palestinians, the Samaritans have not been untouched by the troubles in their native land.
Before the first Palestinian intifada broke out in 1987, a small number of Samaritans lived comfortably alongside the Palestinians in Nablus. A year after the uprising, they sought the nearby refuge of Mount Gerizim, the place where, according to the Bible, Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son.
Still, Nablus remains the cultural and economic center for the Samaritans of Mount Gerizim. There, they attend public schools and universities, and hold positions in the Palestinian ministry.
"The Samaritans of Nablus are Palestinian citizens, with the same rights and obligations," says Ghassan Shaka, mayor of Nablus. "They are part of us... the same feelings, the same hopes, and the same destiny."
In 1996, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat granted the Samaritans a seat on the 88-member Palestinian Legislative Council.
At the same time, because they are Israeli citizens, the Samaritans from Holon are required to serve in Israel's military, a calling many of them heed with pride.
"A lot of people try not to serve in the Israeli army. But you will not find any of those to be Samaritan," says Tsedaka, whose 18-year-old son serves in the Israel Defense Forces. "For us it is a great honor."
Though they acknowledged the irony of holding a Palestinian legislative seat while many of their members also serve in Israel's army, the Samaritans were keen to accept the offer.
"We don't ask why.... When he [Arafat] first mentioned the idea... we were happy to," Tsedaka says.
A people divided
The Samaritans of Mount Gerizim are faced with the toughest challenges, says Daphna Tsimcchoni, a researcher at the Truman Institute for Peace at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
"In the West Bank, they are caught between the Israeli army and the Palestinian population. They must remain neutral in the face of Palestinian and Israeli politics, differentiating from the two sides, and also their neighbors, Jewish settlers."
Entrance to the Samaritan synagogue in Holon, decorated with a menorah and Aramaic script.
The Jewish settlement of Bracha, next to the Samaritan neighborhood, has been the target of several attacks from Palestinian militants.
Israel maintains a constant military presence in the area to ensure the security of the settlement and monitor Palestinian movement in and out of Nablus.
The Israeli military says the Samaritans pose no threat to the area and even serve as a peaceful buffer. But for the Samaritans, living in a militarized zone is not without hardship.
"The Samaritans know the value of having the IDF there, but on the other hand," says Tsedaka, "They are suffering from the situation."
Samaritans say the tanks have destroyed the sanctity of their neighborhood, making life unbearable.
"No one will help us," says Joseph Cohen, a Samaritan of Mount Gerizim. "The tanks remain in our front yard, and create dust and mess. When it rains, the mud is so bad, our children can't even go to school."
Beyond the inconvenience, transit through the Green Line, the border that separates Israel from the West Bank, can prove perilous, as Cohen lived to tell.
Last year, the father of three took an alternate route home on a road to Bracha.
He was ambushed by a group of Palestinian militants who mistook him for a settler, he says. Severely wounded, Cohen lost control of the car and rammed through an Israeli roadblock. Israeli soldiers took him for a terrorist and they, too, shot at him.
Left unable to walk without the aid of crutches, Cohen receives a small pension from the Israeli government for his wounds. But he says the money is not enough.
"We live here in a jungle," says Cohen. "I love the country of Israel. I know they have their own problems, but they need to pay attention to us. "
Asked if he would ever leave the mountain, Cohen remains adamant.
"We will not leave. This is our home."Imported beers on the shelves of a retailer in Seoul. The popularity of imported and craft beers in Korea continues to soar. [YONHAP]
Kang Hee-su, a 27-year-old office worker, often goes out for a drink with her colleagues after work. Kang and her coworkers always used to drink lager or soju to relax after a long day, but recently they’ve started to visit a new bar with craft beer on tap and a range of international ales chilling in the fridge.Kang isn’t the only one to have fallen in love with craft beer - technically beer that has been produced by an independent brewery using traditional techniques, although in Korea the term often encompasses all ale, both made at local breweries and foreign bottled beer that, until recently, was difficult to find.“I turn to craft beer when I want something other than the usual [Korean] beer or soju routine,” she said. “And ale is generally stronger than lager so it’s a good option when I want something stronger than Korean lager, but weaker than soju.”In the past, the local beer market was dominated by two local power brands: Cass and Hite - lagers which still account for more than 90 percent of the market. However, the recent trend among Korean beer drinkers has been to move away from these brands toward beers from overseas that have not always had a strong presence in the domestic market.Between January and July this year, beer topped the list of alcohol imports for the first time, surpassing wine and the long-time No.1, whiskey, according to the Korea International Trade Association.During this period, beer imports hit $143.9 million, a 50.5 percent increase year on year. The figure is notable considering it was only in 2014 that domestic beer imports first reached $100 million. For seven consecutive years since 2011, the growth rate has never fallen below 20 percent.Imports of wine and whiskey, ranked second and third this year, were relatively sluggish with wine increasing a mere 4.6 percent compared to last year and whiskey imports declining 14.8 percent.Japan and China were the top two exporters of beer to Korea, but smaller countries like Belgium and Ireland are rapidly increasing as ale, rather than lager, is becoming a popular drink among young consumers.In volume, beer imports hit 220.6 million liters last year, almost a threefold increase compared to 2012’s 74.7 million. Industry insiders say the figure may reach up to 300 million for the first time this year.One reason for the rapid increase in the popularity of imported beer is the promotional events at discount chains and convenience stores that offer bundles of beer from around the world at much cheaper prices, according to industry experts.“Whereas in the past there were many consumers that didn’t bother to pay higher prices for [local] beer, the lowered prices at discount chains motivated them to at least try products they wouldn’t have otherwise,” said an industry source who imports an Irish beer brand.Lotte Mart said the craft beer wave prompted a come-back for American beer, with its proportion among all global beer sales reaching 6.4 percent, an increase from 5.3 percent in 2015. The variety on offer has also increased from 46 to 69 in the same period.“In the early stages of the global beer boom, local consumers were able to recall only a limited number of brands like Budweiser and Miller,” said Lee Young-eun, the head of Lotte Mart’s alcohol merchandising teamMeanwhile, Korea’s shifting trend towards craft beer has surfaced not only on local sales reports, but on those of other countries as well. According to the U.K.’s Food & Drink Federation, the country’s beer exports to Korea jumped more than 420 percent year on year to ￡59.3 million ($78 million), pushing the entire food and drink export revenue to Korea up by 77 percent.“South Korea has become an increasingly important destination for UK beer exporters as young people get a taste for specialist brews such as Brewdog, following trends in the U.S. and Europe,” wrote The Guardian when it reported the increase in mid-August.Indulge, official importer of Brewdog to Korea, reported a sales growth of 226 percent year on year during the month of July. It was in July last year that the company started official distribution of the U.K. beer nationwide, as well as taking charge of local marketing and sales activities.A spokesperson for the brewery reported that Brewdog is on track to sell 3,000 hectolitres (79,251 gallons) of beer in Korea this year. The brand is planning to open a brewery in Asia in order to “help meet the crazy demand for awesome craft beer within the continent,” the spokesperson added.“Recent statistics show that individuals’ alcohol purchases in Seoul are on the decline while the costs for eating out are increasing,” said Hong Jun-suk, brand manager at Indulge. “This proves that the culture of heavy drinking for stress relief is dying out and people are looking for a more value-centered consumption pattern.“The craft beer trend falls in line with this because, in some ways, craft beer is similar to wine -there are various tastes and scents that consumers can enjoy. People nowadays want to escape from the limited local brands they’re familiar with and find new types that cater to different taste buds.”The changing tastes of Korean consumers can also be seen in the rapid rise of local craft breweries. Bars and tap houses selling domestic craft beer have started gaining popularity over the last few years, fueling the creation of more breweries across the country. Popular Korean breweries include 7Brau, which received a bump after being chosen as the drink of choice for a recent Blue House event, and Korea Craft Brewery.BY SONG KYOUNG-SON, JIM BULLEY [song.kyoungson@joongang.co.kr]Laurence Henry "Larry" Tribe (born October 10, 1941) is a China-born American lawyer and scholar who is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at the Harvard Law School in Harvard University. Tribe's scholarship focuses on American constitutional law. He also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters.[5]
Tribe is a constitutional law scholar[6][7] and cofounder of American Constitution Society. He is the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), a major treatise in that field, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times.[8]
Controversially, Tribe has promoted unreliable sources and conspiracy theories about Donald Trump.[9][10][11]
Early life and education [ edit ]
Tribe was born in Shanghai, China, the son of Paulina (née Diatlovitsky) and George Israel Tribe.[12] His family was Jewish. His father was from Poland and his mother was born in Harbin, to immigrants from Eastern Europe.[13][14][15] He was raised in the French Concession of Shanghai.[13] Tribe attended Abraham Lincoln High School, San Francisco, California. He holds an A.B. in mathematics, summa cum laude from Harvard College (1962), and a J.D., magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (1966), where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Tribe was a member of the Harvard team that won the intercollegiate National Debate Tournament in 1961 and coached the team to the same title in 1969.[16]
Career [ edit ]
Tribe served as a law clerk to Mathew Tobriner on the California Supreme Court from 1966–67 and as a law clerk to Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1967–68. He joined the Harvard Law School faculty as an assistant professor in 1968, receiving tenure in 1972. Among his law students and research assistants while on the faculty at Harvard have been President Barack Obama (a research assistant for two years), Chief Justice John Roberts (as a law student in his classes), US Senator Ted Cruz, Chief Judge and Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan (as a research assistant).[17]
In 1978, Tribe published the first version of what has become one of the core texts on its subject, American Constitutional Law. It has since been updated and expanded a number of times.[18]
In 1983 Tribe represented Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon in the appeal of his federal conviction on income tax charges.[15]
Tribe represented the restaurant Grendel's Den in the case Larkin v Grendel's Den in which the restaurant challenged a Massachusetts law which allowed religious establishments to prohibit liquor sales in neighboring properties. The case reached the United States Supreme Court in 1982 where the court overturned the law as violating of the separation of church and state.[19] The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well criticizes the opening of his brief as a "thicket of confusing citations and unnecessary definitions" stating that it would have been "measurably strengthened" if he had used the "more lively imagery" that he had used in a footnote later in the document.[20]
In the 1985 National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, Tribe represented the National Gay Task Force who had won an Appeals Court ruling against an Oklahoma law that would have allowed schools to fire teachers who were attracted to people of the same sex or spoke in favor of civil rights for LGBT people. The Supreme Court deadlocked which left the Appeals Court's favorable ruling in place, declaring the law would have violated the First Amendment.[21]
The Supreme Court ruled against Tribe's client in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986 and held that a Georgia state law criminalizing sodomy, as applied to consensual acts between persons of the same sex, did not violate fundamental liberties under the principle of substantive due process. However, in 2003 the Supreme Court overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas, a case for which Tribe wrote the ACLU's amicus curiae brief supporting Lawrence, who was represented by Lambda Legal.[21]
Tribe testified at length during the Senate confirmation hearings in 1987 about the Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination, arguing that Bork's stand on the limitation of rights in the Constitution would be unique in the history of the Court.[22] His participation in the hearings raised his profile outside of the legal realm and he became a target of right-wing critics.[22] His phone was later found to have been wiretapped, but it was never discovered who had placed the device or why.[22]
Tribe's 1990 book Abortion: Clash of Absolutes, was called "informative, lucidly written and cogently reasoned" in a review in the Journal of the American Bar Association.[6]
Tribe was part of Al Gore's legal team regarding the results of the United States presidential election, 2000. Due to the close nature of the vote count, recounts had been initiated in Florida, and the recounts had been challenged in court. Tribe argued the initial case in Federal Court in Miami in |
to hear Cuban pianist Ernán López Nussa on his iPod.
Former Los Angeles Laker, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (left) and the United States Attorney General Eric Holder share a laugh together after Holder joked about Kareem's bow tie at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. on January 29, 2015. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
“You know what they say,” Abdul-Jabbar says with a smile. “Once shared, twice enjoyed.”
And then there are the movies.
[Highlights in the life and career of NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on and off the court]
Abdul-Jabbar might be 7-foot-2, notoriously shy and so recognizable he laments that he once got swamped by fans when visiting Mecca. But he is no recluse.
As a kid growing up in Harlem, his mother, Cora, took him to see westerns, particularly anything with William Holden. As an adult, he still prefers a packed theater, a Hebrew National hot dog and a cherry freeze. Oh, and no hiding in back. Abdul-Jabbar likes a seat in the center.
“I want my eye-line to be right in the middle of the screen,” he says. “It’s wonderful. To be in a huge, dark room with strangers. It’s a shared experience.”
All of this would make sense except for one thing. For years, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was considered one of basketball’s most unpleasant personalities. Moody. Aloof. Taciturn.
“He was a jerk,” says Jackie MacMullan, the veteran sportswriter. “I have sympathy for Kareem because I’ve been around Bill Russell a bit. People always wanting a piece of you. I just always felt Kareem could have managed it better.”
In MacMullan’s 2009 bestseller “When the Game Was Ours,” co-author Magic Johnson recounted watching uncomfortably as Abdul-Jabbar turned away a boy seeking an autograph during a Lakers practice. Johnson smiled and signed.
And MacMullan’s take is echoed by an unexpected source: Abdul-Jabbar.
“It’s true,” he says. “I should have dealt with everyone better.”
It’s a subject Abdul-Jabbar, 67, bared in one his most revelatory pieces for Esquire, “20 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 30.”
His top wish: Be more outgoing.
“My shyness and introversion from those days still haunt me,” he wrote. “Fans felt offended, reporters insulted.... If I could, I’d tell that nerdy Kareem to suck it up, put down that book you’re using as a shield and, in the immortal words of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (to prove my nerd cred), ‘Engage!’ ”
If only it were that simple.
“Sometimes there’s that sense that he’s unapproachable,” says NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. “But having been around the world with Kareem, it’s clear he’s incredibly shy and that his shyness gets mistaken for aloofness.”
He is comfortable when a conversation starts naturally, with a police officer walking beside him or a driver taking him to his next appointment. He struggles when a stranger approaches, beaming, to tell him how much he admired his career on the court.
Abdul-Jabbar has been determined to engage more. In the old days, he would decline to sign an autograph, fearing it would lead to a frenzy. Now, he carries a stack of signed basketball cards in his bag, handing them out when a fan approaches.
There are limits. On a bitterly cold day in January, Abdul-Jabbar stood on the sidewalk outside the Department of Justice, filming a stand-up for his race documentary. A man walked straight into the scene, as the camera rolled, to ask for a photo.
“I’m doing something right now,” Abdul-Jabbar said, curtly and with good reason.
In the car a few minutes later, he talks about how he has tried to make peace with celebrity. He remembers meeting former Brooklyn Dodgers slugger Duke Snider at the baseball star’s Hall of Fame induction in 1980.
“What a wonderful guy,” he says. “And that really made me start thinking, ‘Have I been that wonderful guy?’ That’s what changed my attitude. I bled Dodger blue when I was a kid. When they left Brooklyn, I cried. I had heard someone else tell me a story about Carl Furillo. That he was a real a------. I don’t want to be remembered like that. That’s not me. I’ve got that much graciousness in me.”
The writing is not a way to make amends. It’s a passion, dating back to high school, when he worked as a journalist for a community publication in Harlem, and UCLA, where he graduated with a degree in history.
Abdul-Jabbar, who lives in Los Angeles, typically starts in the morning, after breakfast, and writes in cursive on a yellow legal pad. He’s not only open to editing, he embraces it.
“Any writer is actually a rewriter,” says Abdul-Jabbar. “You’ve got to have a structure that’s logical and explains the issue of your story.”
Why does he write? That’s easy.
“You get to be a storyteller,” he says. “And you get to share information in a way that can sometimes change people’s minds and at least make people open up and expand what they know to be true. I think that’s pretty neat.”
He now has almost 1.7 million followers on Twitter. He also has a following among the big names who knew him in his previous incarnation.
“This is not somebody writing a little column,” says Jerry West, the Hall of Famer who served as Lakers coach and general manager. “His language is unparalleled. It doesn’t surprise me. There is no athlete I’ve ever met brighter than Kareem.”
To hear Abdul-Jabbar tell it, he always had ambition. He just needed help. That’s what he found when Morales became his manager a decade ago.
His friends, he admits, do sometimes call her a “yenta,” the Yiddish word for busybody.
When fans approach Abdul-Jabbar, she shoos them off aggressively, sometimes to the point that her client, sitting nearby chomping a slice of cheese pizza, looks down with the mischievous smile of a schoolboy who has gotten a rival in trouble. She also likes to nudge.
At FBI headquarters, Director James Comey gives the star a baseball cap with the agency’s acronym.
“Put it on your head,” Morales nags as photographers ready their cameras. “It’ll look nice.”
Abdul-Jabbar, dapper in a dark suit and white scarf, resists. The cap would spoil that distinguished look.
“Come on,” Morales nudges repeatedly. “Put it on.”
The two met, by chance, in 1994 in Los Angeles International Airport. That led to a friendship. Eleven years later, Abdul-Jabbar replaced his management team.
“No one was stealing from me, but I was dying the death of a thousand cuts,” he says. “I had an accountant and a guy who repped me. All he did was sit around and wait for the phone to ring. Deborah’s proactive. And she has a greater grasp of what I can do and what I should avoid.”
She doesn’t take no for an answer, whether pushing for five more minutes to interview Holder, moving Abdul-Jabbar from Esquire to Time, or raising money for “On the Shoulders of Giants,” an acclaimed 2011 documentary adapted from Abdul-Jabbar’s book about the Harlem Rens, a talented all-black basketball team. Morales also directed the film.
“She can be very hard to get along with,” says Amir Abdul-Jabbar, 34, an orthopedic surgery resident in Louisiana who is one of his five children. (Abdul-Jabbar had three children with his ex-wife, Amir with onetime girlfriend Cheryl Pistono and a fifth with another woman. He now lives alone.) “But I think it may be good for my dad to have someone who is very aggressive and in your face and is very protective of him.”
Morales, for her part, considers Abdul-Jabbar more than a job. He is her mission. She remembers long conversations with the late UCLA coach John Wooden, one of Abdul-Jabbar’s mentors.
“Coach Wooden told me it was my responsibility to make sure Kareem was okay and that he was treated well by mankind,” she says. “He told me how Kareem has been treated because he’s so big and how they approach him and how sensitive he was.”
After his whirlwind D.C. tour, Abdul-Jabbar hops an Amtrak to New York. Late on Friday afternoon, he interviews NBA Commissioner Silver for the race program and meets HBO Sports President Ken Hershman for dinner. The network has commissioned a film about Abdul-Jabbar.
Then it’s back to the yellow pad. Abdul-Jabbar follows a Time column on sexual assault on college campuses to an analysis of Kanye West’s Grammy disruption, arguing against the attack on Beck. “It does a disservice to the very real struggle for racial equality to cry racism at every disappointment.”
That kind of fresh take is part of why Abdul-Jabbar headed off to Sacramento early in February. Mayor Kevin Johnson, the ex-NBA star, had asked him to speak on a panel about race and sports.
“You know what, coaching, I don’t think that was his calling,” says Johnson. “His calling is exactly what he’s doing now. He’s writing a new chapter for America.”Following a disappointing 29-53 season for the Orlando Magic, the team sought a new direction. Last week the Magic made the decision to fire general manager Rob Hennigan, who had been under increasing pressure throughout the season. The end of Hennigan’s tenure has marked a new beginning for the franchise, both on and off the court.
Orlando Magic Mock Draft 1.0: Malik Monk to Orlando?
The Magic failed to establish an identity on either end of the floor, ranking 29th offensively and 24th defensively during the regular season. Whilst the defense might not be such a concern, the front office will certainly need to fill the void in the teams offense. Whomever steps in as the new general manager in Orlando will be looking to add to the teams young core. Make no mistake, the situation for the Magic is certainly not a dire one. Orlando posses four picks in a draft class loaded with talent. With a variety of options available for the Magic, lets jump straight into the first mock draft of the off-season.
Note: The NBA Draft Lottery does not take place until the 16th of May. The first pick is based purely on the teams regular season standing.
Round One, Pick Five
In what appears to be a clear toss up between Jayson Tatum and Monk, the Kentucky guard comes out on top in this mock draft. Monk packs the offensive punch that the Magic lacked this season. Averaging a stellar 19.8 points per game on an impressive 45% from the field; Monk is a perfect fit in Orlando. Shooting a efficient 39.7 percent from deep, Monk has no problem knocking down shots from deep. With explosive play and agressive finishing at the rim, Monk seemingly has no problem scoring from anywhere. With consistent defensive play completing his forte, a backcourt constisting of Monk and Elfrid Payton, is an exciting prospect for Magic fans.
Round One, Pick 25 (via Toronto Raptors)
The Magic continue to bolster their offense with the addition of perhaps the best offensive player in the ACC. Kennard exploded for Duke during his sophomore year and was key to the teams ACC Tournament run. Shooting a 46.1 field goal percentage over his collegiate career, Kennard has also improved his three-point shooting. Hitting 44.8 percent on the three ball this season, Kennard can knock it down from beyond the arc both on catch-and-shoot attempts and off the dribble. A consistent threat, Kennard can have an impact as a starter or off the bench and Orlando should not miss the opportunity to add Kennard to the roster.
Round Two, Pick 33 (via Los Angeles Lakers)
With players such as Jeff Green and Damjan Rudez likely moving on this summer, the Magic will seek to add depth at the four spot. Whilst an improving Aaron Gordon is likely to see the majority of minutes at this position next season, Lydon would be a perfect backup. Lydon runs the floor well and is the type of ‘spread big’ that the Magic are in need of. Lydon has ideal size to create a mismatch against smaller opponents and his spot up shooting can help to further improve the Magic offense.
Round Two, Pick 35
Finally, the Magic continue to add efficient scoring players with Bacon. The Florida State wing had an impressive sophomore year in Tallahassee and was a big part of the Seminoles success. Averaging 17.2 points per game this past season, Bacon would likely slot in as a backup three behid Terrence Ross. His high octane play, court vision and improved shooting would provide a serious boost off the bench for Orlando.
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LOUISVILLE, KY – DECEMBER 21: Kentucky Wildcats guard Malik Monk (5) walks down the floor during the second half on December 21, 2016 at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, KY. Louisville defeated Kentucky 73-70. (Photo by Chris Humphrey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)WASHINGTON – President Obama declared a state of "emergency" for the U.S. economy Thursday and vowed to seek passage of his jobs plan piece by piece if Republicans in Congress block the full $447billion package.
The threat, posed at a news conference in the East Room of the White House, was Obama's way of saying he won't let Republicans quash the package of construction spending, tax cuts and jobless aid without paying what could be a political price.
"We will just keep on going at it and hammering away until something gets done," Obama said. "Each part of this, I want an explanation as to why we shouldn't be doing it."
The jobs plan has run into solid Republican opposition in Congress despite a coast-to-coast campaign by the president to build public support. Even Senate Democrats have changed plan by seeking a 5.6% tax surcharge on income above $1million rather than lesser tax hikes on income above $250,000 — a change Obama endorsed.
Even so, the president defended his effort to take his case to the American people rather than negotiate privately with Republicans on a compromise. He didn't argue when a reporter suggested it was reminiscent of President Truman's 1948 campaign against what he dubbed a "do-nothing Congress."
"If Congress does something, then I can't run against a do-nothing Congress," he said. "If Congress does nothing, then it's not a matter of me running against them. I think the American people will run them out of town."
Obama belittled Republican presidential candidates and those in Congress for focusing on rolling back regulations and consumer protections enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, rather than on stimulative measures that could create jobs now.
He contended that Republicans' job plans wouldn't pass muster with "independent economists" who have said the president's plan could boost economic growth by two percentage points and create 1.9million jobs.
Republicans immediately countered that they have offered to seek compromises on a number of the president's jobs proposals while offering suggestions of their own. But they have opposed the plan's major elements.
"We're legislating. He's campaigning. It's very disappointing," House Speaker John Boehner told National Journal.
Although the jobs bill took center stage at the news conference, Obama also was asked about Europe's debt crisis, street protests against Wall Street practices, risky federal loans to renewable energy companies, China's currency manipulation and Pakistan's links to insurgents inside Afghanistan.
• He said the European debt crisis that has racked financial markets worldwide must be resolved soon by the continent's leading economies, led by Germany and France. "They've got to act fast," the president warned, calling for "a very clear, concrete plan of action that is sufficient to the task" in time for next month's Group of 20 economic summit in Cannes, France.
• He sympathized with street protesters on Wall Street and elsewhere —including in front of the White House on Thursday — who are "giving voice to a more broad-based frustration" with financial practices. "The American people understand that not everybody's been following the rules, that Wall Street is an example of that," he said.
• He defended his administration's loans to renewable energy companies, most notably solar-panel maker Solyndra.
• He refused to endorse Senate Democrats' effort to retaliate against China's currency manipulation with tariffs and penalties. But he said there was a "strong case to make" to the World Trade Organization that Beijing has kept its currency artificially low and should let it rise against the dollar.
• He said Pakistan's intelligence agency maintains links to "unsavory characters" fighting the Afghanistan government. "They should not be feeling threatened by a stable, independent Afghanistan," Obama said.Justice Monsters Five Is Ending Its Service On March 27, 2017
By Sato. December 27, 2016. 12:00am
Square Enix originally released Justice Monsters Five on smartphone as a way to further expand on the world of Final Fantasy XV, and the company announced that it is shutting down on March 27, 2017.
While no reason was mentioned for why they’re shutting it down, Square Enix apologizes to fans for any inconveniences and that they’ll stop selling the Gold Orbs used for micro-transactions on February 27, 2017. They’re also going to reimburse Golden Orbs that haven’t been used, and will share more about that later.
Justice Monsters Five originally released on August 30, 2016. A Windows 10 version was also planned, but it looks like we won’t likely see that one now.President Donald Trump meets with people impacted by Hurricane Irma during a tour at Naples Estates, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017, in Naples, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
NAPLES, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump doled out hoagies and handshakes in the sweltering Florida heat on Thursday as he took a firsthand tour of Irma’s devastation and liberally dispensed congratulatory words about the federal and state recovery effort.
Trump, who was in and out of the state in about three hours, got an aerial view of the water-deluged homes along Florida’s southwestern coast from his helicopter, then drove in his motorcade along streets lined with felled trees, darkened traffic lights and shuttered stores on his way to a mobile home community hit hard by the storm.
Walking along a street in Naples Estates with his wife, Melania, the president encountered piles of broken siding and soggy furniture sitting on a front porch, and residents and volunteers who were happy to get a presidential visit.
“We are there for you 100 percent,” Trump said before donning gloves and helping to hand out sandwiches to local residents from a lunch line under a canopy. “I’ll be back here numerous times. This is a state that I know very well.”
As he left the state, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he planned another hurricane-related trip, to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which were both badly hit by Irma.
“I spoke to both governors. We’ve got it very well covered,” Trump said. “Virgin Islands was really hit. They were hit about as hard as I’ve ever seen.”
The president brushed off a question about whether the recent hurricanes had made him rethink his views on climate change, which he has previously dismissed as a “hoax.” He said: “If you go back into the 1930s and the 1940s, and you take a look, we’ve had storms over the years that have been bigger than this.”
Trump earlier met with federal and state leaders in Fort Myers, where he was brimming with enthusiasm for the state and federal response effort, calling it “a team like very few people have seen.”
The president couldn’t resist injecting a political flavor into his visit, telling reporters in Fort Myers that he was hopeful that Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a two-term Republican, would run for the Senate, where Democrat Bill Nelson is up for re-election next year.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do. But I know at a certain point it ends for you and we can’t let it end. So I hope he runs for the Senate,” Trump said.
Trump’s visit offered him the chance to see how people are coping with Irma’s aftermath and how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is responding. Many Florida residents remain swamped and without electricity. Nearly 2.7 million homes and businesses, about 1 in 4 Florida customers, were still without power Thursday.
But as Trump’s comments about Scott suggested, politics wasn’t far from the surface in Florida, the largest and most pivotal state in recent presidential elections. Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Florida last year by about 1 percentage point.
Vice President Mike Pence, who joined Trump on the trip, promised Floridians: “We’re with you today. We’re going to be with you tomorrow and we’re going to be with you until Florida rebuilds bigger and better than ever before.”
Trump’s trip to Florida was his third in less than three weeks to the storm-ravaged South.
After Harvey struck Texas, Trump drew criticism for having minimal interaction with residents during his first trip in late August. He saw little damage and offered few expressions of concern.
On his second visit, to Texas and Louisiana, he was more hands-on. He toured a Houston shelter housing hundreds of displaced people and walking streets lined with soggy, discarded possessions.
This time, Trump made sure to connect with a community in recovery. He hewed toward hearty handshakes and enthusiastic promises rather than hugs and tears, but he was well received by people grappling with the storm.
Florida’s southwestern coast is a haven for retirees seeking warm weather and beautiful sunsets across the Gulf of Mexico.
In Lee County, which includes Cape Coral and Fort Myers, the Florida Emergency Management Agency said 66 percent of the area’s 290,000 electrical customers were still without power Wednesday. Widespread outages led to long lines outside of the relatively few stores, gas stations and restaurants that had reopened.
The situation was even worse to the south in Collier County, home to Naples. Days after Irma passed, almost 80 percent of homes and businesses were still without electricity, and floodwaters still covered some communities entirely.
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Thomas reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman in Washington contributed to this report.
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HURRICANE NEWSLETTER — Get the best of the AP’s all-formats reporting on Irma and Harvey in your inbox: http://apne.ws/ahYQGtbAdvertisement Board hears debate over reclassification of marijuana Share Shares Copy Link Copy
An Iowa Board of Pharmacy committee listened to debate Monday over reclassifying marijuana.Watch this storyReclassifying marijuana from Schedule 1, highly-abused drugs with no medical use, to Schedule 2, drugs that have medical use, could be a step toward legalizing medicinal marijuana production and distribution in the state. This is the next step proponents said must be taken to allow them to utilize a new state law that currently they cannot.Last year, the Iowa legislature approved a limited law allowing possession of cannabis oil for people with severe epilepsy, but when medical marijuana cards are handed out early next year, the cards will not provide protection from prosecution in other states or on a federal level for trying to transport or mail the cannabis oil.“We will basically be unable to access any high CBD-oil, low-THC anywhere in the United States. So I’m not sure what we will do with the card,” Sally Gaer said at the Monday meeting. Gaer’s daughter has severe epilepsy.Proponents will be lobbying legislators to take the next step to allow production and distribution of medical marijuana in Iowa. A special marijuana review committee heard comments Monday before deciding if they will recommend reclassifying marijuana to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy later this week.A board member with Drug Free Iowa said such a move would send a mixed message to young Iowans.“CBD oil and THC oil is very hard to discern, that using an e-cigarette is a very easy way to consume them and that we see an increasing amount of children using marijuana through e-cigarettes,” said Peter Komendowski, of Partnership for a Drug Free Iowa.Another group will be lobbying for more diseases and ailments to be included in the law in addition to epilepsy. One woman said she wants to be able to treat her cancer with cannabis oil.“I have four kids I have to be here for, with my youngest who just turned 8. I have to be here. I have to do anything in my power to live,” Lori Tassin said Monday.The committee will make its recommendation on whether to reclassify marijuana to the Iowa Board of Pharmacy on Wednesday. The board will then either agree, disagree or table for further analysis. The legislature and governor have final say.Share. In brightest month... In brightest month...
With this year being Green Lantern's 75th anniversary, DC Comics is rolling out 25 variant covers with a Green Lantern theme.
While most covers feature the classic Green Lantern Hal Jordan, you can also find some with John Stewart, Alan Scott, or even the GL of the future, Kai-Ro. The GLs join heroes and villains like Batman, Harley Quinn, Deadshot and Starfire on the cover, striking action poses or battling head-to-head.
Some notable highlights:
Retro Batman dual-wielding guns alongside Alan Scott drawn by Cliff Chiang for Detective Comics #44
Green Lantern, Superman and Wonder Woman doing neat costume changes by Joe Quinones for Superman/Wonder Woman #21
Wonder Woman getting ready to race jets with Hal Jordan by Terry Dodson & Rachel Dodson for Wonder Woman #44
All of these covers are meant to whet readers' appetites for the release of the Green Lantern: A Celebration of 75 Years hardcover on September 30, which features a collection of stories from the best Green Lantern writers and artists over the character's long history.
Take a look at all 25 covers by clicking through our slideshow gallery:
Green Lantern 75 Variant Covers 10+ IMAGES Fullscreen Image Artboard 3 Copy Artboard 3 ESC 01 OF 25 Teen Titans #12 illustrated by Mike McKone 01 OF 25 Teen Titans #12 illustrated by Mike McKone Green Lantern 75 Variant Covers Download Image Captions ESC
Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments!
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Game of Thrones, Green Lantern, or Super Smash Bros. are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter and IGN.It’s an age-old idea that our increasing reliance on mechanical help and artificial intelligence might backfire on us. From the original Terminator movies to this year’s Ex Machina, we’ve known that getting robots to do our chores is probably a bad idea. Even Stephen Hawking thinks so, and he seems like the sort of person who’d know about this stuff.
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That’s where Channel 4’s stylish new drama Humans comes in, a remake of Swedish original Real Humans co-produced with American network AMC and which came to attention here with its creepy TV spots (below) appearing to advertise buying a mechanical pal all of your own. In the series (set in an “alternative present’), Robots are once again rampant in our society, though now they’re called synthetics and look just like us – but the “What if robots overthrew humanity?” question has changed.
Instead, the question of the day is: “What if something artificial made you completely irrelevant – and would you still buy one anyway?”
“What you’re dealing with here is how direct a threat or benefit to humanity artificial intelligence is,” former Merlin star Colin Morgan tells me on the suburban set of Humans. “How would you feel if a synth human being was in your house and doing the things that you do, but better? And everyone acknowledged that they’re better than you at doing it.”
That’s the problem facing Katherine Parkinson’s Laura, a busy lawyer with little time for her three kids who’s furious to return home one day and find her husband Joe (Tom Goodman-Hill) has bought a beautiful robot woman (Gemma Chan) to pick up the slack. Less bombastic than the next robot uprising blockbuster perhaps, but this smaller-scale interpretation is a refreshing approach to a well-used trope, bringing science-fiction ideas to a domestic level without sacrificing the wider questions about our own society that the genre excels at.
After all, how would you feel if a younger woman turned up, performing your role in the household and becoming your kids’ favourite? Despite her husband’s assurances, Laura can’t shake the feeling she’s being replaced, or that there’s more to the synthetic (named Anita) that meets the eye. And her feelings might be more than paranoia…
“Anita’s really an enigma when you first see her,” Chan says. “She’s been quite cleverly set up. When she comes into the family, everyone’s needs and expectations are reflected in her.”
She adds: “You’re not sure what’s she’s about. You don’t really know if she is a threat to the family. You don’t know if she has her own agenda. It’s been really interesting to play, there’s lots of levels to her. There’s what’s going on on the surface but there’s a lot of other things going on underneath that get revealed later in the series.”
Chan’s transformation into a synthetic is subtle, the only difference between her and humanity the colour of her eyes and her more fluid motions, but the latter in particular is hugely effective at giving the synths the so-called “uncanny valley” effect that makes human-like robots so unsettling in real life.
“There’s a physical language that we wanted to have so people weren’t just doing their own thing,” Chan explains. “These things are ultimately machines and they run on battery power so every movement has to have an economy and a grace to it.”
And of course Chan isn’t the only synth around, with the series following several storylines related to the robotic helpmates. Oscar-winning actor William Hurt’s storyline is something of a counterpart to Parkinson’s, with his ageing engineer Dr Millican (who actually helped build some early models of the synthetics) reluctant to part with his old malfunctioning synth due to its stored memories of his dead wife, which he has trouble recalling himself. It’s surprisingly touching, and a good way, to show the more positive side of what the synths can do – even as Hurt’s having a Nurse Ratched-esque new model (Rebecca Front) forced upon him.
Another plotline even moves into more traditional science-fiction fare, with a mysterious arc dealing with a group of synths that seem to have gained consciousness led by Colin Morgan’s troubled human Leo. Could Gemma Chan’s Anita secretly be one of them – and does she even know it?
Still, when it comes down to it the series’ strength definitely lies in its domestic approach, the stories of science-fiction cuckoos in the nest who are probably a mix of good and bad just as people are, but might be bad for us even if they do have good intentions.
As Utopia’s Neil Maskell (who plays a policeman investigating synth-related crime) puts it: “For me, the series isn’t so much like ‘what if there were robots’. It’s ‘what if the robots we’ve got looked like humans?’”
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Maybe we’d be better off sticking with our iPhones after all…WASHINGTON — In a decision likely to bolster the Washington Redskins’ efforts to protect their trademarks, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the government may not refuse to register potentially offensive names. A law denying protection to disparaging trademarks, the court said, violated the First Amendment.
The decision was unanimous, but the justices were divided on the reasoning.
The decision, concerning an Asian-American dance-rock band called the Slants, was viewed by a lawyer for the Washington Redskins as a strong indication that the football team will win its fight to retain federal trademark protection.
Lisa S. Blatt, a lawyer for the team, said the decision “resolves the Redskins’ longstanding dispute with the government.”
“The Supreme Court vindicated the team’s position that the First Amendment blocks the government from denying or canceling a trademark registration based on the government’s opinion,” she said.Xbox 360 tops consoles in US in March with 261,000 sold Microsoft's system continues its impressive run of consecutive months of dominance over other consoles
James Brightman Editor, North America Thursday 18th April 2013 Share this article Share
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Microsoft has just announced that the Xbox 360 sold 261,000 units in March in the US, marking the 27th consecutive month as the best-selling console in the US. The total retail spend on the Xbox 360 platform in March reached $402 million, (hardware, software and accessories), which was the most for any console in the US.
Microsoft noted that Xbox 360 held six of the top 10 console game titles in March with games like BioShock Infinite, NBA 2K13, Gears of War: Judgment, Tomb Raider and more.
Although it's not been officially announced, many are expecting Microsoft to finally announce its next-gen Xbox at a special event next month, prior to E3 in June.The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has said it is shutting down two of the five cameras on its planetary probe around Venus due to power glitches.
The Akatsuki craft has been in orbit around the acid-death world since 2015, five years after it was due to get there. The satellite's main engine failed mid-flight and it took careful maneuvering using the auxiliary thrusters to finally get it into position. Unfortunately, the long trip may have caused other problems.
On December 9, 2016, the probe began to report unexplained power fluctuations in its 1-µm and 2-µm cameras that made them difficult to control, which meant they could end up draining much-needed power from the rest of the Akatsuki's instruments. As a result, JAXA has shut them down, and will try turning them on then off again over time to see if the problem has fixed itself.
"Several possible causes, likely related to deterioration of electronic parts, are identified and reproduction of the symptom in the laboratory is performed," JAXA said in a statement today.
"It is almost 7 years since Akatsuki was launched in May 2010. In addition, between the failed VOI-1 in 2010 and the successful VOI-R1 in 2015, instruments were exposed to higher radiation environment than anticipated. This likely caused deterioration of instruments."
The extra-long trip to Venus has exposed the probe to much more solar radiation than it was originally designed for. When it was launched the probe was built with a minimum lifespan of two years, but it's now seven years old and starting to show it.
So far the now-defunct cameras have been producing good science. The probe is trying to investigate the complex weather systems around Venus and spotted the first ever localized cloud vortex in the second planet for the Sun.
First look at new swirl
"Although similar vortices are seen in the earth atmosphere, this is seen for the first time in Venus' atmosphere with IR2," said JAXA.
"The phenomenon suggests existence of strong meridional flow blocked by something (high-pressure system in the earth cases). It is mysterious how this could happen while Venus atmosphere is dominated by "super rotation", a strong westward flow that reaches 100 m/s at the cloud top."
But the shutdown won’t be too bad, as the probe has three other cameras to fall back on. Akatsuki's longwave-infrared camera, ultraviolet imager, and lightning and airglow camera to get further observations. ®Last year at CES we were introduced to Onewheel, a crazy new self-balancing skateboard built by electromechanical engineer and board sports enthusiast Kyle Doerksen. Less than a year after the project went up on Kickstarter, Onewheel is shipping to early backers and those who pre-ordered the device.
A few weeks ago, we got a tour of the Onewheel assembly line to see how it gets put together and to sneak a peek at some new features the team has added to the device’s mobile app. Onewheel is assembled in a factory in San Jose, where the different components are pieced together and tested out before being shipped out to customers.
While the hardware has made strides since the earliest prototype the team put together last year, some of the biggest changes have come in the software that helps control the board. By connecting to Onewheel via Bluetooth, the app can be used to customize the way the board handles.
For the novice rider, Onewheel has a basic setting that restricts the speed and handling to help users get used to the board. But as they get more advanced, they can change to a more advanced setting, which allows them higher speeds and more control over it.Written by Shaun Waterman
More than five million students and others interested in a cyber career have registered with the National Security Agency’s “Day of Cyber” website since its launch just over a year ago, the agency confirmed this week.
Registered visitors to the site — which is aimed at aspiring cyber-professionals aged 13 and up — can “test-drive cyber careers and live a day in the life of six leading NSA cyber professionals,” the NSA said when it launched just over a year ago.
Students and other users, who have registered themselves or been signed up as part of a class by their teacher, get to virtually explore simulated real-life cyber scenarios and discover the skills and tools used by the NSA hackers, analysts and cyber-defenders. They also get to explore various career paths in cybersecurity and generate their “cyber resume,” according to LifeJourney USA, the company whose “career exploration” technology runs the platform.
“The rapid growth of the NSA Day of Cyber reflects an appetite by educators around the country to connect what they’re teaching in the classroom to one of the fastest growing career paths in the world,” said LifeJourney CEO Rick Geritz.
“This had never been done before, so we didn’t really know how to calibrate our expectations … but this was well above what we anticipated,” he told CyberScoop.
“By equipping our nation’s math, science, technology and business educators with these tools, it expands opportunity for a new generation of Americans,” he added.
The program provides approximately two hours of content, LifeJourney says — an an interactive, self-piloted, and fully automated guide to cyber science, including cybersecurity, IT and information security.
The NSA gets basic aggregate demographic information on registrants, the company said — the state they live in and their age — but no personal information.
“Cybersecurity is the new ‘space race,’ and cyber skills are the coming generation’s new |
dilemma, because the West’s allies do not share its priority of defeating the Islamic State.
Turkey’s priorities are suppressing Kurdish nationalism and hastening the fall of Assad, whom it considers — with some justification — the source of all its recent troubles. The Islamic State might even be a useful last-ditch asset against the Syrian dictator.
The Arab states supporting the rebellion similarly put bringing down Assad first, given that he is the only Arab ally of their nemesis Iran.
The Kurds, the world’s largest stateless people, naturally put defending their own land ahead of defeating the Islamists.What do We Learn from the Missing Piece in Hillary Clinton’s Energy Plan?
This week Hillary Clinton rolled out an ambitious policy proposal on energy and climate change. It sets the goal of generating a third of US energy from renewable resources by 2027. It builds on the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, but regards that plan’s goals as a floor, not a ceiling. It calls for extensive federal investment in research and infrastructure. It proposes generous tax incentives for private industry. Yet one piece is conspicuously missing: There is no carbon tax or any other mechanism for putting a price on carbon emissions.
Any energy policy that does not include a carbon price is deeply flawed. As her primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders put it in a Huffington Post op-ed last year, “A carbon tax is the most straight-forward and efficient strategy for quickly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” The Clinton plan intentionally omits the best way to limit carbon emissions in favor of others that are both more complex and less efficient.
Leveling the playing field?
Clinton’s fact sheet pays lip service to leveling the playing field for clean energy, but the only way to really do that is by putting a price on carbon. A carbon tax puts pressure on both users and producers of all forms of energy that is proportional to their contributions to total emissions. It treats energy used for all purposes equally. At the same time, it allows users or producers to respond flexibly, cutting back use by a greater or lesser amount according to how easy it is technically to do so, and how valuable the foregone production or consumption is.
No combination of subsidies, tax breaks, and mandates can do the job. One problem is that subsidies, tax breaks, and mandates always target a particular set of energy suppliers or users. The magnitude of the incentive provided for each abatement measure will be different. The dollar incentive per ton of carbon saved for photovoltaic will be different from that for wind; for clean energy generation it will be different than for lighting efficiency; for home insulation different from that for energy-efficiency of appliances. The targeted nature of administrative measures makes them inherently political. The technologies that get the biggest incentives are not those that have the greatest abatement potential, but those that have the best lobbyists or the most money to contribute to campaigns. There is nothing level about that playing field.
A second problem is that even if regulators’ intentions are of the best, mandates and subsidies are too blunt an instrument to make fine distinctions within categories. A tax break for insulating your home? Fine. But the payoff of insulating a home in Minnesota, in terms of carbon abatement, is a lot different from that of insulating a home in Oregon. Even within Minnesota, the payoff of insulating a house on an isolated hillside is different than for one tucked into a sheltered suburb. We don’t want to give those two homes equal incentives to insulate; we want each to have an incentive that is appropriate to its circumstances, as is the case for a price-based policy.
Third, mandates, subsidies, and tax breaks are inherently biased toward the established and against the new. Suppose you subsidize photovoltaic power. Fine, doing so encourages the spread of that technology. But what if some dreamer has the idea of a fuel cell run on bio-methane? It’s not listed in the relevant legislation, so it gets no subsidy. Even if its technical merits turn out to be strong, it faces an uphill battle to break through against subsidized incumbent technologies. Instead, a universal price signal that penalized high-carbon energy at a uniform rate, thereby rewarding all low-carbon energy equally, would genuinely level the playing field between conventional photovoltaic and the unheard-of bio-ethane fuel cells.
Finally, mandates, subsidies, and tax breaks are notoriously hard to get rid of even if they later turn out to be ill conceived. The ethanol mandate is a case in point. When it was first introduced, many environmentalists believed it would spark a bio-fuel revolution that would dramatically cut carbon emissions. Now no one does. As a Senator, Clinton opposed ethanol. Now, facing a battle with Sanders in the Iowa primary, her new line is “support and improve” the mandate. Even Sanders’ resolve seems to be weakening. In 2011, he voted against extension of the ethanol mandate and issued a strong statement explaining why. In March of this year, however, he gave a disappointingly evasive answer to a question about ethanol during an interview with Iowa Public Television.
Incentivizing the consumer
Still another problem with the kind of subsidies and mandates Clinton supports is their failure to incentivize consumers. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE standards) for automobiles are a good example. They mandate the production of fuel-efficient cars, which are all well and good in themselves. The problem is, compared with the alternative of a higher fuel price, CAFE standards give no incentive for people to drive less—to ride share, to consolidate shopping trips, to take public transportation, to live closer to work, or whatever.
In fact, they actually create a perverse incentive to do less of those things. If you are forced to buy a high efficiency car, that reduces your incentive to car pool or take the bus to work. So more driving partially undercuts the effectiveness of the CAFE standards. Economists call this the rebound effect.
The same goes for appliance efficiency mandates or home insulation standards. If you are forced to buy a more efficient hot water heater, that reduces the cost of taking longer showers. If you upgrade your home insulation, you will find it less expensive to turn up the heat in winter or use more air conditioning in summer.
It is unlikely that the rebound effect is strong enough to entirely offset intended reductions in energy use, but even a partial offset significantly increases the cost of meeting any given conservation goal. The least costly way of achieving a given reduction in energy use is to split the cost burden between more efficient technology and reduced consumption. In economic terms, the idea is to equate the cost at the margin of saving fuel through better design or less intensive use. Instead, CAFE standards, insulation mandates, and energy efficiency requirements wastefully give us super-efficient cars that are driven too much; super-insulated homes that are heated or cooled too much; and super-efficient appliances that are used more hours or at higher settings than they should be.
What does Clinton’s energy plan tell us about the candidate?
So much for the economic merits of Clinton’s energy plan. Turning to politics, what does the plan tell us about her candidacy and potential presidency?
First, it tells us that either she is not getting good economic advice, or that she is not heeding it. According to news reports, among other economists, she talks to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, to Columbia University professor and Nobel memorial prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, and to the economics staff at the Center for American Progress. All three have strongly endorsed a carbon tax. (See here, here, and here.) Evidently, she is not listening.
Second, her aversion to a carbon tax shows a bias against transparency and a preference for policies whose costs are high but less visible. Perhaps Clinton thinks that the widespread concern about climate change that is revealed in opinion polls is broad but shallow—that people really care less about the planet than about their electric bills. If so, she may think they need to be manipulated into backing an energy policy that keeps pump prices and electric bills “affordable,” even if such a policy is less effective and more expensive in the long run. Realistic? Cynical? Take your choice.
Above all, what it tells us is that Clinton backs policies that she thinks will get her elected, rather than wanting to be elected so that she can back policies she believes in. That, at least, is what the New York Times seems to think. “Mrs. Clinton’s strategists see climate change as a winning issue for 2016,” the Times says in a recent article. “They believe it is a cause she can advance to win over deep-pocketed donors and liberal activists in the nominating campaign, where she is facing Democratic challengers to her left on the issue. It is also one that can be a weapon against Republicans in a general election.”
The same article claims that her energy plan is not drawn up by economists like Summers or Stiglitz, but rather, by her campaign manager (and her husband’s former Chief of Staff) John Podesta. Podesta was founder and is now Chair of the Center for American Progress, so maybe he is in a position to keep his candidate away from that organization’s economists.
The Times also notes that the Clinton plan is crafted to fit within parameters set by the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, who spent $74 million on political races in 2014. To receive Steyner’s support in 2016, candidates must propose policies that would lead the nation to generate half its electricity from clean sources by 2030, and 100 percent by 2050. Although subsidies, tax breaks, and mandates are an inefficient way to cut carbon emissions, the Clinton campaign evidently considers them just as good as a market-based approach for attracting contributions.
There is hope, though. Speaking in Iowa, Clinton promised to flesh out her energy and climate policies with more specifics soon. If you go to her website and dig deep enough, past the invitations to contribute to her campaign, volunteer, and buy Hillary-branded merchandise, you eventually come to a contact form. I’m going to forward a link to this post as soon as it is up and running. If you agree that the Clinton plan should add a carbon tax, please do the same!
Related posts
Why Conservatives Should Love a Carbon Tax—And Why Some of Them Do
Why Progressives Should Love a Carbon Tax—Although Not All of Them Do
Why Libertarians Should Support a Carbon Tax—Even if They Can’t Love It
The Myth of Affordable EnergyAsk the Scientists
Join The Discussion
What is the context of this research?
The cryptic and inconspicuous Sahamalaza sportive lemur, Lepilemur sahamalazensis, stands out against the majority of nocturnal lemurs. Hardly anything is known about them except for a three-month long study last year that has uncovered that in comparison to other lemurs, this species seems to be fairly unsocial.
Preliminary home range analysis and behavioral observations indicated that the Sahamalaza sportive lemur lives solitarily. This is something that needs to be investigated further, especially since this species is one of the rarest lemurs in the world. This project will thus be the first long-term study that will look into the sociality of this nocturnal lemur species, with the aim of providing new information to help conservation efforts.
What is the significance of this project?
The Sahamalaza sportive lemur was classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN and is one of the rarest lemurs in all of Madagascar today. Populations decline due to deforestation and active hunting, leaving this species fighting for survival. As the efforts to protect the habitat continue, we need to conduct more research on this species to understand its needs.
Researching the social structure and mating system of the Sahamalaza sportive lemur provides us with the means to monitor the remaining populations. It also gives us information that is needed for breeding and re-introduction programs in the future.
This project will forward the scientific research, and with the help of this campaign, hopefully evoke popular interest in a cryptic species that might otherwise be overlooked.
What are the goals of the project?
The overall goal of this project is to determine the social system of the Sahamalaza sportive lemur, through:
Gaining understanding in the composition of Sahamalaza sportive lemur populations
of Sahamalaza sportive lemur populations Determining the seasons that govern behavior: When and how long are pre-mating, mating, gestation and birth season for this species?
that govern behavior: When and how long are pre-mating, mating, gestation and birth season for this species? Looking into the formation of social bonds and territorial behavior
and Determining the mating system
All these topics remain to be studied for the Sahamalaza sportive lemur and I, as part of the Madagascar Programme of the Bristol Zoological Society and working together with the Lemur Conservation Association (AEECL), hope to shed light on this lemur through behavioral observations and by collecting data on home ranges during an upcoming long-term field study.I typed up this explanation of some of the magic in ember/ember-cli on the Ember Slack this morning, and felt it would probably be useful to leave it somewhere more permanent.
Sometimes Ember feels more magical than it really is, and the transitions and the resolver are probably the most magical piece of Ember for those that don't know about them.
This is a TL;DR crash course of this process in Ember, it's not very in depth, and it skims past a few things (such as cached resolutions, cached instantiations, and nested routing) which are also useful to understand.
The Magical Transition
Transitions can be triggered either programmatically or by a physical change to the URL.
Programmatically
The link-to component, or some method with access to the router will invoke the router.transitionTo method.
Usually this occurs following a user action, such as a click on a link. router.transitionTo accepts either a url, or a routeName coupled with params or full models for each dynamic route segment you defined for that route in router.js.
Via URL change
URL Changes and the back button emit events (basically just like a click), which the router listens to and uses to start a transition if necessary.
The Router assembles the Route
In your router.js file, you defined a map.
This map is used to generate url patterns that match a routeName.
During a transition, the router will determine the routeName associated with a given url if it doesn't already have it based on these patterns.
Then the router looks up (or "resolves") the route associated with that routeName, and instantiates it if necessary.
The router next calls hooks on the route to allow the route to perform setup and give it the chance to abort or redirect the transition.
Hooks are just methods with specific names such as beforeModel and afterModel.
Only once these hooks have had a chance to do work does the transition complete (or fail).
Some of the hooks are "promise aware", meaning that if the method returns a promise, then the router will wait for that promise to resolve or reject before continuing the transition to the next hook.
This is also how the router knows to transition to a loading route, because it can start a timer and see how long it's been waiting for the status of a promise to change.
The router will lookup the controller and template for the route (matched because they have the same name as routeName), and it will give the model returned by the route to the controller. The controller then gives the model to the template along with any other properties you defined on it.
Magical Generation
If you don't explicitly create a route for a routeName, the router won't find one when it goes to look it up, and when this happens the router will instead utilize a generic route.
E.G.
Ember.Route.create({});
If you don't explicitly create a controller for a route, the router won't find one when it goes to look it up, and when this happens the router will instead create a generic controller to serve as a container for the model.
E.G.
Ember.Controller.create({});
The only file the router MUST be able to find (else it will throw an error) is a template matching the routeName, because otherwise it would have nothing to render at all, which is sort of the point of the whole ordeal.
By now you are probably nodding your head and still feel this is magical, and that's probably because telling you that "X" is "looking up" or "resolving" "Y" is great in theory, but how does this happen in practice?
The Magical Resolver
The resolver is what all of these objects are using to "lookup" the module they want. Let's peer in the box to see how the resolver works.
In your config/environment.js file, set:
ENV.APP.LOG_RESOLVER = true;
Now, while your app is running, you can open the inspector in safari/firefox/chrome etc. and each "lookup" will be logged. This is useful for seeing the patterns the resolver is using to look for modules, as well as for debugging if a module is (for some reason) not being correctly found.
With this flag, and the console open, you will see the various patterns of module names the resolver looks for, and whether that pattern found a module or not.
The "Magic"
The "magic" is that at build time each file becomes a module, whose name is basically it's file path.
A module located at app/components/foo-bar/component.js will have the name app/components/foo-bar/component.
Those modules are loaded via require (this is likely a different require than you are used to, it's loader.js, available here)
In the console, if you type require.entries, you will see a list of all the modules by name, where their name is a file path that should look familiar to you, as it's the path that file has in your project.
So basically, the resolver process isn't actually that magical, it's just a lot of simple steps combined together:
convert your js files to modules whose names match their file paths concat all these modules into a vendor.js and app.js file add a little "app boot" script which looks up the main app module and starts running the app (by finding the router, having it load the first route etc.) have the router "resolve" (e.g. find) the current route have the router call various methods on the current route to fetch data / perform setup tasks (beforeModel, model, afterModel etc.) have the router resolve the necessary controller and template give the controller the model returned by the route render the template with the content supplied by the controller
The "resolve" at each point in the process is a bunch of sugar for converting module names (e.g. route:application ) to possible file paths for that module and looking in requirejs.entries for potential matches.
Once a module has been found, that "resolution" is cached so that it can be found faster the next time:
e.g.
resolver._cache['route:application'] = SomeModuleWeFound;
And there you have it,a crash course in the Ember "magic".CLOSE Monta Ellis and Nate McMillan talk after Pacers practice on Monday. Clark Wade/IndyStar
Pacers assistant coach enters 20th season with new challenges
Indiana Pacers play the Washington Wizards in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals Monday, May 5, 2014, at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Pacers associate head coach Nate McMillan, right, and assistant coach Dan Burke look on from the sideline before their game. (Photo: Matt Kryger / IndyStar 2014 file photo)
INDIANAPOLIS – Larry Bird made a statement on May 16 that was both surprising and revealing.
Bird was introducing Nate McMillan as the Indiana Pacers’ new coach, and the future of the roster was brought up. Free agency was looming yet Bird did not mention which position he wanted to bolster or what particular type of player he hoped to acquire.
Instead, he mentioned assistant coach Dan Burke.
“He’s been a very important part over 19 years of what we’ve done here,” Bird said of Burke then. “It’s important for me that he would be my first free agent.”
Yes, the first free agent Bird signed to a contract after hiring McMillan in the offseason was Burke, the Pacers’ defensive savant. Entering his 20th season with the Pacers, Burke is the longest tenured assistant with the same team in the NBA.
Burke, though, is not the typical assistant. He is the constant influence who has helped the Pacers remain one of the better defensive teams in the league. The roster changes, the style of play changes and the superstars change. Burke, many in the franchise say, however, has not changed. He is still the tough tactician whom Bird and the Pacers trust most.
Dan Burke, behind Rick Carlisle on the left in a 1997 game versus Sacramento, has been in the background for the Pacers since Larry Bird's coaching tenure. (Photo: KELLY WILKINSON, KELLY WILKINSON)
With a philosophical shift this season from defense-first to an emphasis on up-tempo offense, McMillan and the Pacers are putting their defensive hopes and expectations on Burke.
He must get Jeff Teague and Monta Ellis, a smaller than usual backcourt, to use their speed to be effective on defense, not destructive. He has to groom Myles Turner from a talented shot-blocker into a well-rounded rim protector. He has to figure out how to get even more perimeter defensive talent out of Paul George.
But before Burke, 57, began solving such obstacles, he reflected two weeks ago on how he reached two decades with the Pacers.
“I just go from year to year,” he said. “When people would say, ‘Wow, it’s your 10th year,’ I used to joke, ‘Yeah, I’m tricking them.’ Now, I’m thinking Larry is just trying to wait until I get it right.
"To me, it’s a job I love. It worked out well. It doesn’t seem like 20 because I just love every minute of it.”
Not only has Burke dissected opponents on video, but he has also built impactful relationships with his players. Mention Burke’s name to any Pacer this season, or from several in the past, and their reaction is usually a smile and the reference to D.B., Burke’s nickname.
Ellis joined the Pacers last season as a 10-year veteran known for his offensive talents, not his defense. But Ellis and Burke became friends almost instantly. Ellis said Burke, in many ways, reminds him of Jonas James, who coached Ellis in middle school and high school.
“I love D.B. to death,” Ellis said two weeks ago. “One thing about it, he don’t shy away from any guy, no matter if you’re the top (of the roster) down to the bottom. He always calls you out when you’re wrong. He always pushes you to get better. You can’t do nothing but respect a coach like that.”
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Burke, who is from Sherwood, Ore., began his NBA career with the Portland Trail Blazers. He was a video coordinator and scout for eight years, with the Trail Blazers making the NBA Finals twice during that time. Dick Harter was the defensive guru in Portland, and he mentored Burke.
Bird hired both men when he became the coach of the Pacers in 1997. Since then, Bird has made it a priority to ensure that Burke remains in Indiana.
“Dick Harter is the best defensive coach I’ve seen in this league,” Bird said in September. “Nobody can replace Dick. But (Dan) is very similar and he demands guys to play hard on the defensive end. You’ve got to win with your defense, and Dan’s proven that over the years his defenses get things done. A few years ago, when we were winning and getting to the Eastern Conference finals, we were guarding people and that’s what we've got to do. I’m not saying Frank (Vogel) didn’t have something to do with that neither, but Dan’s always been my guy and I hope he’s here forever.”
Burke’s resume is as impressive as how people speak of him. With Burke, the Pacers have reached the NBA Finals once and the conference finals five times. He scouted for Bird, survived the Isiah Thomas years, teamed up with Rick Carlisle, served Jim O’Brien and nurtured Frank Vogel. He has created defensive schemes around limiting Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd and LeBron James. Over the past 19 seasons, only the Spurs have a better defensive rating (points per 100 possessions).
“When you got a guy with that much knowledge, you don’t second-guess that,” C.J. Miles said. “Why would you? I have no reason not to trust him. When you’ve got Larry Bird putting people in those (coaching) seats, you don’t second-guess.”
One of Burke’s best qualities, through all the years, is his loyalty.
“You’re committed to each player and each coach,” he said. “When a Jim O’Brien or even an Isiah come in and say, ‘Look, I’d like to keep you, but I don’t know if you’ll be on the bench.’ That’s fine. What’s my role and whatever you want me to do I’ll do it. You’re grateful being part of something.”
Burke’s loyalty to the Pacers was tested this summer. His contract expired in May after the Pacers were eliminated by the Toronto Raptors in the first round of the playoffs. Bird decided to not retain Vogel, and Burke’s future became uncertain. He told his wife, Peggy, it might be time to start thinking about moving.
Indiana Pacers coaching staff on the bench in the third quarter. From left, Jim Boylen, Brian Shaw, Frank Vogel and Dan Burke. As the Pacers let Cleveland get a 20-point lead, Vogel got ejected from the game and Brian Shaw took over, as the Pacers came back to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers 99-94 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse Tuesday April 9, 2013. (Photo: Joe Vitti / IndyStar 2013 file photo)
Several teams called Burke in the offseason to try to persuade him to leave the Pacers. He refused to mention the teams or which head coaches reached out to him. But a few minutes later, Burke did reveal one coach with whom he had a conversation.
“Have you signed anything with the Pacers?” asked Vogel once he became the coach of the Orlando Magic.
“Nothing is signed,” Burke responded. “But I gave my word.”
“Whatever they’re doing, I’ll do more.”
“I gave my word."
When Bird fired Vogel, Burke said he was stunned — just as stunned as when Bird walked away from coaching the Pacers after his third season and a trip to the NBA Finals. Matching his personality, Burke’s reason for why he stayed in Indiana to join McMillan was simple and short.
“Larry and Nate jumped on it fast,” he said. “Why leave?”
Faced with new challenges, Burke’s job is to help McMillan ensure that these Pacers play at a higher standard than a year ago, even if they were third in the league in defensive rating per 100 possessions. The Pacers’ pace is expected to increase this season — as are the points — but George stressed that the team still needs to have the defensive DNA that Burke has instilled all these years.
“It’s his principles, it’s his philosophy, it’s his tenacity, his edge,” George said in explaining how Burke helped create the team’s defensive reputation. “Everything that we’ve been so great defensively, he’s kind of anchored that; from being hard-nosed, playing hard, being tough, having that grit. That all stems from D.B.”
When Burke began working for Bird in 1997, he soon learned that a dependable work ethic, not some innovative scheme, would impresse and please his boss. Bird demanded the best from his coaches, then demanded that his assistants do the same to the players. Burke has never forgotten that in his 20 years — and he believes Bird has always remembered such.
“Knowing him, he just likes people that come in and work,” Burke said of Bird. “You don’t (expletive), you just work.”’
During Monday’s practice, Burke was at work. He watched the Pacers scrimmage and began teaching every time McMillan blew his whistle to stop the action.
Purdue's E'Twaun Moore, left, and Butler's Matt Howard listen to Pacers assistant coach Dan Burke set up a play at the Indiana Pacers pre draft workout at Conseco Fieldhouse Tuesday June 7, 2011. Joe Vitti / The Star (Photo: Joe Vitti/IndyStar)
Burke explained, and then showed Glenn Robinson III — with his forearm — how to better deny the ball on an inbound pass and how to neutralize the opponent’s movement on the perimeter. A few plays later, he joked with Turner about how he was beat, rather easily, by veteran Al Jefferson when it came to post positioning. Then Burke put his feet in the paint and showed Turner where he needed to be before the ball is passed into the post. Later, he praised Ellis for how loud he barked defensive assignments at his teammates as the starters ran back on defense after a transition basket.
Burke, always one of the last people to leave the practice court, cherishes these moments in training camp, as he builds the foundation for yet another year.
“I’ve been blessed,” he said, “and lucky.”
The Pacers, year after year, say the same about having Burke.
Call IndyStar reporter Nate Taylor at (317) 444-6484. Follow him on Twitter: @ByNateTaylor.
Get all the insight on the Pacers by downloading our app: http://bit.ly/1BR4fDs
Bucks at Pacers in Evansville, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, FSIThere have been numerous Ghost in the Shell trailers released over the past few months, but today Paramount Pictures released a batch of moving posters to introduce the various characters in the film.
Naturally, Scarlett Johansson’s Major is represented, but it’s also the first detailed look at the other characters in the movie. Even in the trailers, the focus has continuously been on Johansson. The posters introduce other important characters to the film, including Chief Daisuke Aramaki, Batou, Togusa, Ishikawa and more. Some of these characters are specialists in Section 9, the counter-terrorist organization the Major leads, and others are a variety of field agents and specialists.
Ghost in the Shell, which is based on the award-winning manga and anime by Masamune Shirow, follows the agents in Section 9 who are tasked with taking down a life-threatening hacker. The film will be released on March 31.
All of the character posters can be seen below.Bristol Palin finally — finally — weighed in on President Obama's same-sex marriage stance and, guess what? She's against it.
Didn't see that coming, huh?
In a new blog post entitled "Hail to the Chiefs – Malia and Sasha Obama," Bristol takes issue with the influential role Obama's daughters supposedly played in helping him "evolve" his opinion on same-sex marriage.
"In this case, it would've been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that's not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage," she writes. "Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids' worldview."
Says the unwed single mother of one whose baby daddy is the living embodiment of Goofus from Highlights.
Sadly, she goes on:
Sometimes dads should lead their family in the right ways of thinking. In this case, it would've been nice if the President would've been an actual leader and helped shape their thoughts instead of merely reflecting what many teenagers think after one too many episodes of Glee.
OK, enough.
Go after the president, fine. Object to his worldview, no sweat. Use an antediluvian argument about an institution that has been constantly shaped and reshaped — even within Christianity itself — in order to excuse your blatant discrimination of taxpaying American citizens, that's your thing. But don't you dare speak ill of Glee.
That show is great.
[photo via AP]I deleted my post about corrosion as it was wrong/misleading. Not sure what I was thinking when I posted it but it was really off. The replies to that post are spot on correct. My apologies to the OP and other posters.
./shame mode ON
Pure alum or a 1xxx series does corrode instantly but only on the surface. This surface layer then stops any further corrosion. Other grades of alum do the same but at different speeds. Some like 6061 are considered corrosion resistant which is why 6xxx series is used in salt water and fresh water boats and all sorts of places.
Alum does suffer from a few forms of destructive corrosion and these either look like bubbles under the surface or a white powder. The nice thing about the instructable is replacing any bad shingles is soooooo cheap. Lol. If you don't experience any of these destructive corrosions you should get many years out of a pop can roof!
Years later I still think this is a great instructable!I’ve visited three cities that have bike share programs, and it absolutely transformed my experience in each. It wasn’t just the money saved on car rental or cab fare: having access to a bicycle opened up the cities for me.
There are about 530 bike share programs worldwide (and about 30 in North America according to the The Stranger). Stands of a dozen or so bikes are sprinkled throughout the city. Anyone can check one out for a short ride. When you’re done, you check in back in to any stand. The cost is minimal: $12 gives you 24 hour membership, but $85 gives you a year’s membership. Rides under thirty minutes are free (after the initial membership costs) and then a few dollars per half hour after that.
As a tourist, it transforms your visit. Instead of watching the city go by from behind a glass, you can get out into it, stop and peer in shop windows or take detours through tree-lined neighborhoods. In Washington, DC, it meant being able to wend through the monuments, parks and out into the neighborhoods, long past the tour busses idling hotly while sweating tourists filed on. In Toronto, I uncovered a shaded park with musicians: I slotted my bike into a nearby station and spent a day with a book and a bench, far my convention center hotel. In Boston, I left time before my morning meeting for a stroll through the Public Gardens. None of that would have happened without a bike.
Now, Seattle is on its way to offering a bike share system, as well.
Last week, the Seattle City Council approved two bills that set the stage for Seattle to join the ranks of bikesharing cities: one approved bike share vending as an allowed use in public rights of way and the other granted Puget Sound Bike Share (PSBS) conceptual approval for their proposed bike sharing program.
According to the Puget Sound Bike Share web site, Phase I of the project will involve 30 stations in the University District, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill and downtown. Hopefully, Wallingford won’t be too far behind.
I’m an unabashed fanboy of the bikeshare systems from the tourists perspective. I’m curious to see what the experience is like as a resident. Generally, I have my bike with me when I’m out and about, so I’m not sure whether I’ll end up being a user. But I appreciate that it could impact the culture of the city. The Stranger quotes Holly Houser, executive director of the program, on the topic:
“I think that the beauty of this program is that it has the potential to change the culture around cycling—to break down assumptions that it’s only for these more serious, hardcore cyclists with fancy bikes who ride every day.”
The bikes used are certainly not the ridiculously refined models you see the lycra set on: they’re heavy, practical and durable. (But I was heartened to see that the normal three speeds the bike share program bikes are equipped with will be upped to seven speeds to accommodate Seattle’s hills.)
Launch is projected for Spring 2014. That’s just one Seattle winter away!EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Even though it's been a rocky start to the season for the 15-15 Los Angeles Lakers, the play of Kobe Bryant has been on point.
After shooting 50 percent or better from the field in each of the first four games to start the 2012-13 campaign, Bryant has proved the increased accuracy wasn't a fluke as his team is more than a third of the way through the season and his field-goal percentage is still a lofty 47.8 percent -- the highest mark of his 17-season career.
Just how good is the 34-year-old Bryant, the league's leading scorer at 30.1 points per game (his highest scoring average since 2006-07) playing?
"This is probably the best I've played in a while," Bryant said after practice Monday. "I've had years the last few years where I've felt pretty good but we kept my minutes down so the numbers didn't look the same, but this year I feel pretty good."
The evidence is in the numbers. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the month of December Bryant just finished playing was historic for him, as he had never reached the averages of at least 33.79 or more points, 5.57 or more rebounds and 4.64 or more assists all at the same time for an entire month before in his career.
Along with Bryant's improved scoring and efficiency, he's playing 38.7 minutes per game, slightly up from the 38.5 minutes he played last season under Mike Brown and significantly higher than the 33.9 minutes per game he logged in his final season under Phil Jackson.
"I think it's just the minutes," Bryant said. "I'm playing more. And I'm also extremely healthy. I had a whole summer to really be healthy, to be in shape, to get stronger and I think that has a lot to do with it. Diet has a lot to do with it, too. Watching what I eat."
Bryant said he was playing on "one leg" in Jackson's farewell season in 2010-11 and the Hall of Fame coach tried to manage Bryant's health by cutting his minutes, something that led critics to declare Bryant's career was on the decline.
"I played OK considering I was on one leg, but the minutes were also down too so the numbers were down," |
-EC tie-up, EC insiders had begun to point out why the commission did not consider approaching the Union home ministry and technical experts to vet the impending deal. At Thursday’s full commission meeting, a view was expressed that the discussions on Google’s proposal could have been more detailed, with all aspects being carefully examined.“The EC now agrees that it is too much of a risk to allow a US-based private internet giant full access to the Indian voters’ database. Though the NIC cannot match Google’s capabilities by any measure, the advantages of engaging the latter appear to far outweigh the risks involved. Hence, the commission has decided not to pursue the arrangement with Google any further,” a top EC functionary told TOI.Google, on its part, said on Thursday that it was “unfortunate that our discussion with EC to change the way users access their electoral information, that is publicly available, through an online voter lookup too, were not fruitful”. In a statement issued soon after EC announced the end of its talks with Google, a company spokesperson recalled that Google had helped governments in the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico and Kenya to “help make public information on the web easily accessible to internet users across the country”.According to Google’s proposal to the EC, the internet giant had offered its search engines to help voters find out their enrolment status online, and locate their respective polling booths, complete with directions through Google Maps.Matthew Coutts, CTV Toronto
A group of seven protesters from Hamilton, Ont. are suing Toronto police for $1.4 million, claiming they were unfairly profiled, arrested and mistreated during the G20 summit.
Lawyer Davin Charney served the Toronto Police Service with a 44-page statement of claim on Wednesday, outlining a litany of allegations against the police force.
The lawsuit claims his clients were arrested without reason, held for more than 24 hours in a detention centre and, in some cases, sexually assaulted, before they were released without charges.
Charney said Toronto police unfairly profiled his clients, and arrested them because they appeared to be protesters based on their clothing and physical features, which included women with hairy legs.
“They followed a profile that was created by senior Toronto Police Service officers in targeting these seven individuals,” Charney told reporters outside Toronto police headquarters Wednesday.
“That profile included markers such as people who have backpacks, lawyers’ numbers on their arms, people with Quebec licence plates, people speaking French, people wearing black clothing.
“My clients fit into that profile, to some extent. And that is why they were arrested, and that is why many people were arrested during the G20.”
The group of seven claims they were wrongfully arrested on June 27, 2010, one day after protesters rampaged in downtown Toronto as world leaders gathered for a summit.
Charney said the group had just come out of a downtown pizza shop when they were surrounded by police, handcuffed, and held for more than 24 hours at a makeshift detention centre. They were eventually released without charges.
Plaintiff Alicia Ridge further alleges she was sexually assaulted during a roadside strip search.
She told reporters she was frisked by a male officer, despite there being female officers in the near vicinity, before she was arrested.
“It was a fairly pathetic rendition of a search, in that it was just a quick run of a hand up the leg followed by a swift ass grab. And there were lots of sexualized comments that went along with it,” she said on Wednesday.
Officers shouted derogatory and homophobic slurs, and told her to shave her legs, she said.
Charney says that one of his clients asked officers for the reason they were being arrested and was told police “would make one up.”
Charney said that the lawsuit went beyond profiling his clients and accused senior officers of creating a dangerous climate with their order to reclaim downtown Toronto from protest groups.
“This claim is not about hairy legs. This claim is about orders from the senior Toronto Police Service officers, from the chief, from other officers, to take back the streets,” Charney said, claiming police Supt. Mark Fenton characterized demonstrators as “protester terrorists” and created a climate within Toronto police of a “reckless disregard for people’s fundamental rights.”
Charney added, “It is about the abuses that hundreds, or perhaps thousands of people suffered, during the G20. Innocent people suffered at the hands of the police during the G20.”
None of the claims in the lawsuit have been proven in court.
The Ontario Independent Police Review Director has conducted an investigation into the incident and noted in its report that a constable wrote in his arrest notes that "all parties appear to be protesters; back packs; clothing and females all have hairy legs."
The officer told investigators that he wrote “hairy legs” as a general observation, calling it an indicator he associated with female G20 protesters.
OIPRD investigators concluded that the note gave “reasonable grounds” to a complaint of discreditable conduct alleging that the officer swore at the woman and shouted to "shave your legs, you dykes."
The statement of claim, originally filed in court on June 24, claimed senior officers were frustrated at the amount of vandalism during the G20 summit and gave orders authorizing “more assertive and aggressive police tactics."The Kingdom of Bahrain has been chosen to host an Arab Human Rights Court. Activists predict that instead of protecting human rights the court would rather persecute those seeking civil society and prosecute tenacious leaders like Syria’s President Assad.
The decision to place the new court’s HQ to Bahrain’s capital Manama was taken by the Arab League’s foreign ministers at a meeting in Cairo late on Sunday.
In the final communiqué neither the jurisdiction nor the opening date for the planned regional court is specified. But Bahrain's Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said that the court would operate within the framework of the Arab Charter on Human Rights (in force since March 2008), a document ratified by a number of Arab countries including Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
However, human rights activists believe the move with pan-Arab human rights court is nothing but a PR stunt of the ruling Khalifa dynasty and eventually it could be turned against the protesting citizens it is supposed to protect.
Maryam AlKhawaja, the acting head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, believes the newly-established court would be impotent to improve the soiled image of the human rights in the states of the Persian Gulf.
“The Gulf states are not held accountable for their human rights abuses. No one will take this seriously. For them to have a court such as this is a slap in the face to those who have documented abuses in Bahrain, for which there have been no consequences,” she told Al Jazeera.
AlKhawaja predicted that Arab Human Rights Court would become a political tool to settle accounts with obstinate leaders like Syria’s President Bashar Assad.
“It will probably file against people like Bashar al-Assad,” she said, adding that “it will have no role in the Gulf countries and I would not be surprised if it was used to go after those who are actually trying to promote civil society.”
Bahrain is internationally recognized as an oppressive state where freedom of speech and freedom of gathering have been violated countless times over the last several years and police have been not once witnessed applying excessive force on demonstrators, causing multiple deaths.
Dissidents in Bahrain such as prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab are being persecuted and imprisoned easily, while police remains absolutely immune to all accusations, from using excessive force to torture on protesters while the UN torture investigator was blocked from a planned visit to the Gulf Arab state.
In the meantime, the Bahraini FM, a member of the ruling Sunni monarchy, called the Arab League’s decision a “positive step in the right direction” on the way to “promoting and protecting human rights in the Arab world.”
“The initiative to establish the court stems from the King's firm belief in the importance of human rights and basic human liberties,” he added as cited by Al Jazeera.
Bloody clashes beget human rights concerns
An idea to set up human rights court for all of the Arab states was announced in November 2011 by Bahraini King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa following political unrest in the country accompanied with clashes between the protesters and police.
The order in Bahrain was restored with the help of Saudi Arabia and the UAE which sent troops to control the situation in the neighboring country. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are notorious for dissident witch-hunts.
Since the protests in Bahrain began in 2011, the number of dead exceeded 80, while the number of injured nearly reached 3,000; over 3,000 protesters were arrested.
After an independent investigation into the disorder came to a conclusion that both the police and the demonstrators had committed abuses, the king proposed the creation of a Pan-Arabic Human Rights Court.
The king cited the examples of the European Court in Strasbourg and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica as organizations that “set the standards for modern international human rights.”
“I will propose to our fellow Arab states that we now move concretely toward the creation of an Arab Court of Human Rights to take its proper place on the international stage,” the king said.
Last year the Arab League endorsed the Bahraini proposal.
“The court will be a civilized move that will contribute to the efforts of Arab states to support and encourage human rights,” the AL’s Secretary-General Nabeel Al Arabi said in Cairo last September.
The news has been praised by Ali bin Saleh Al-Saleh, the chairman of Bahrain’s Shura Council (Consultative Council), who congratulated the King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, asserting the King's “keenness to guard the constitutional rights and all matters relating to the development of human rights,” Bahrain News Agency reports.A previously unpublished piece by Emma Goldman on the persecution of political opponents within the Soviet Union.
Fifteen years have passed since comrade A Chapiro [Schapiro], my old pal Alexander Berkman, now gone from me, and myself came out of Soviet Russia to give to the thinking world the disclosures of the political grinding machine we found there. It was only after a long conflict that we decided to do so. For well we knew the price we will have to pay for speaking openly about the terrible political persecutions that was a daily affair in the so called Socialist Republic. The price we paid for our determination was high enough, but was nothing compared to the avalanche of abuse and vilification hurled against me, when my first ten articles about Soviet Russia appeared in the public press. Since I foresaw as much, I was not very shocked over the fact that my own comrades misunderstood what I had to say and the motive which induced me to appear in the NEW YORK WORLD. Much less did I care for the poison that oozed out against me from the Communists in Russia, America, and other countries.
Even while yet in Russia we protested against the grinding mill as we saw it in its sinister force. For myself I can say, and I can say the same for my comrade Alexander Berkman, we lost no opportunity to go from Bolshevist leader to leader; to plead for the unfortunate victims of the Cheka. Invariably we were told “wait till all our fronts are liquidated and you will see that the greatest political freedom will be established in Soviet Russia.” This assurance was repeated time on end so convincingly that we began to wonder whether we had understood the effect of Revolution on the rights of the individual as far as political opinion was concerned. We decided to wait. But weeks and months passed and there was no letup in the relentless extermination of all people who dared disagree even in the least with the methods of the Communist State. It was only after the massacre of Kronstadt, that we, our comrades Alexander Berkman and Alexander Chapiro [Schapiro] felt that we had no right to wait any longer, that it became imperative for us old revolutionists to cry the truth from the very housetops. Nevertheless we waited until the fronts were liquidated, though it was bitter hard to keep silent after 400 politicals were forcibly removed from the Boutirka prison and sent to remote places. When Fanny Baron and Tcherny [Lev Cherny] were murdered. At last the holy day arrived, the fronts were liquidated But the political grinding mill ground on, thousands being crushed by its wheels.
It was then that we came to the conclusion that the Soviet promise reiterated to us again and again, was like all promises coming from the Kremlin - an empty shell. We therefore came to the conclusion that we owed it to our suffering comrades, to all revolutionary political victims as well as to the workers and peasants of Russia, to go abroad and place our findings before the world. From that time on and until 1930, comrade Berkman worked incessantly for the political prisoners and on raising funds to keep them alive in their dreadful living tomb. After that, comrade [Rudolf] Rocker, [Senya] Fleschin, Mollie Alperine [Steimer], Dobinski [Jacques Doubinsky] and many other faithful comrades kept up the work which our beloved Alexander was forced to discontinue. I can say that until this day the devoted efforts to bring our hapless comrades in Soviet Russia some cheer and a few comforts have never ceased, which merely goes to prove what devotion, love and solidarity can do.
In justice to the heads of the Soviet Government be it said that there was still a semblance of fair play while Lenin was alive. True, it was he who issued the slogan that Anarcho-syndicalists and Anarchists are but like the petit bourgeoisie, and that they should be exterminated. Nevertheless it is true that his political victims were sentenced for a definite period and were left with the hope that they would be set free when their sentence expired. Since the advent of Stalin, that bit of hope, hope so essential to people in prison for an idea, and so necessary for the continuation of their morale has been abolished.
Stalin, true to the meaning of his name, could not bear to think, that people given 5 or ten years, should be left with the expectation that they would one day see freedom again. Under his iron rule, people whose sentence expires are re-sentenced and shipped to another concentration camp. Thus we have today numerous comrades who have been shoved from exile to exile since 15 years. And there is no end in sight. But why should we be surprised at the relentless grinding mill Stalin has inaugurated for such opponents as Anarchists and Social Revolutionists? Stalin has proven that he is as cruel with his former comrades as with the rest who dare doubt his wisdom. The latest purge, quite equal to the purge of Hitler ([handwritten addition in margin] and the latest victim arrested and perhaps exiled, Zensl Muehsam) should prove to all who are still capable of thinking, that Stalin is determined to exterminate everybody who has looked into his cards. We need not hope, therefore, that our Anarchist comrades or any of the Left wing Revolutionaries will be spared.
I am writing this from Barcelona, the seat of the Spanish Revolution. If ever I believed, even for a moment in the explanation of Soviet leaders that political freedom is impossible during a revolutionary period, my stay in Spain has completely cured me of it! Spain too is in the clutches of a blood stained civil war, she is surrounded by enemies within and without. No, not merely by fascist enemies. But by all sorts of social exponants, who are more bitterly opposed to Anarcho-syndicalism and Anarchism under the name of CNT and FAI, than they are to fascism. Yet in spite of the danger lurking in every corner of every city, to the Spanish Revolution, inspite of the imperative necessity to concentrate all the forces on winning the antifascist war, it is yet amazing to find more political freedom than ever was dreamt of by Lenin and his comrades.
If anything, the CNT-FAI, the most powerful party in Catalonia, is going to the opposite extreme. Republicans, socialists, Communists, Trotzkists, in fact everybody daily marches through the streets heavily armed and their banners flying. They have taken possession of the most elaborate houses of the former bourgeoisie. They merrily publish their papers and hold huge meetings, Yet the CNT-FAI has never once even suggested that their allies are taking too much advantage of the tolerance of the Anarchists in Catalonia. In other words our comrades are demonstrating that they would rather prefer to give their associates the same right to liberty as they take for themselves than to establish a dictatorship and a political grinding machine that would crush all their opponents.
Yes, 15 years have passed. According to the glad tidings from Russia one hears over the Radio, in the Communist press and on every occasion: “Life is joyful and splendid” in the Socialist Republic. Did not Stalin issue this slogan and has it not been reechoed over and over again. “Life is joyful and splendid”. Not for the tens of thousands of political victims in prison and in concentration camps. Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, Intellectuals, masses of the workers and tens of thousands of the peasantry know nothing of the new joy and splendour proclaimed by the Torquemada on the Communist throne. Their lives, if they are still alive, continues hopeless, drab, a daily purgatory without end.
The more reason for us, comrades, and for all who are sincere Libertarians, to continue the work for the political prisoners in the Soviet Union. I do not appeal to the Libertarians who shout themselves hoarse against fascism or against the political abuses in their own countries and yet remain silent in the face of the continued persecution and extermination of true Revolutionaries in Russia. Their senses have become blunted. They therefore do not hear the voice that rises to the very heavens from the hearts and the stifled throats of the victims of the political grinding machine. They do not realise that their silence is a sign of consent, and that they are therefore responsable for Stalins acts. They are a hopeless lot. But the Libertarians, who oppose every dictatorship and fascism, no matter under what flag, they must continue to rouse human interest and sympathy in the tragic fate of the political prisoners in Russia.
[Handwritten]
Barcelona Dec 9/36 Emma Goldman
[Typed article with handwritten corrections from Folder 18, G.P. Maksimov (Maximoff) papers, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam. This is an unused appendix for The Guillotine at Work and previously unpublished.]
Retrieved from the Kate Sharpley Library on 4 March, 2012.Lexus doubles its “F” performance line by bringing those trappings to the GS midsize sedan.
The Lexus GS is a midsize luxury sedan and prior to this year no performance variant was offered. But two things were changed for 2016: a turbocharged four-cylinder 200t model was introduced and a high-performance GS F sedan was rolled out.
Currently, the GS line consists of four-, six-, and eight-cylinder gasoline engine choices, effectively matching what some of its competitors offer, minus a diesel. Instead of a diesel, the GS line lays claim to a hybrid. And that should be hardly surprising as Lexus has more hybrid models than any other luxury brand.
2016 Lexus GS F
My test model for the week was the 2016 Lexus GS F, the second “F” product in the Lexus stable. Joining the RC F, both models share a normally aspirated 5.0-liter, V-8 engine making 467 horsepower and 389 foot-pounds of torque. Paired with an 8-speed automatic transmission with paddle shifters and a manual mode, this powertrain combination enables the Lexus GS F to take on such praiseworthy competitors as the Audi S6, BMW M5, Cadillac CTS-V and Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG.
Think “F” and “fast” may come to mind. F also represents Lexus’ high-performance brand, what has also yielded the limited-edition and exclusive LFA sports car. The line is a step above “F Sport,” a performance-oriented sub-brand big on looks, but lacking the consummate substance or execution of true F models.
The 2016 Lexus GS F is formidable in two departments: looks and performance. As for its countenance, several unique to the line modifications are present.
(See Also — F Sport Fun: 2018 Lexus GS 350)
Muscular and Assertive Demeanor
To begin, the now familiar hourglass (spindle) grille features a one-piece mesh spread with a narrow upper section and a much larger lower section. The headlamps offer a three-jewel design with L-shaped daytime running lights underneath. On both sides of the lower grille are oversized embrasures, covered with the same mesh layering. As for the hood, it flows into the front end and features creases and accents to complete this sedan’s muscular frontal presentation.
From the sides, the GS F has a look of always being in motion or is ready to take off. A long, sweeping profile is accented with upper character lines as well as distinctive boomerang side vents aft the front wheels and connecting with the lower body sculpting. All models are outfitted with 19-inch, forged aluminum wheels set within Michelin Pilot Super Sport summer tires. The test model came with color-coordinated brake caliper covers — the available orange calipers would have been my choice.
From the rear, the Lexus GS F presents a carbon fiber spoiler matching the sedan’s patina. Wrap around combination lamps with marque-familiar L-shaped LED lights, reflectors, and body sculpting are present. A quad exhaust rear diffuser provides the perfect exclamation point on this potent and sybaritic performance sedan.
Driver-Oriented Controls and High-End Materials
Inside, the indulgence continues with a cabin fit for five. No flat-bottomed steering wheel here — the GS F exudes speed and doesn’t need such a token embellishment. What is present are aluminum pedals, including a generously proportioned left foot rest pedal.
Lexus spared nothing in dressing the interior in the finest materials. Carbon fiber elements are found here and there, including on the door trim, at the base of the remote touch interface, and on the center register. Spread across the top of the instrument panel, on the door trim, and covering the center console is Alcantara. Exquisite stitching, decorative rivets, and LED lighting illumination are among the other touches in view.
Lexus describes the interior design as “driver-centric” and I’m in full agreement with that declaration. The cabin is substantial enough for all displays and controls to be sufficiently spaced — nothing is cluttered and every section is wisely used.
I especially liked that the tachometer is the larger of the two analog dials and is centered in the display. To the right is a smaller speedometer display. To the left is a digital driver’s information center. It is a clean, attractive layout and one unlike any other I’ve found thus far.
Lexus Enform Telematics
My favorite interior feature beyond a doubt was the color display. This massive 12.3 inch display sits within an alcove located near the top of the dashboard. Essentially, it is a two-part layout with the left three quarters showing navigation, media, and radio information. The right portion offers a map of the road ahead. The arrangement synchs with Lexus Enform, the brand’s telematic system.
Working your way down the center stack a pair of vents hem in an analog clock, followed by a CD player with radio knobs present. Beneath that are an assortment of switches for managing climate control, seat heating and cooling, and the vents.
The carbon-fibered section between the front seats include a covered compartment revealing a pair of cup holders. To the left and immediately between the seats is a transmission shifter and drive mode knob. To the right is an armrest and toggle knob for controlling the telematics display. Further, a sliding storage compartment with a removable tray, a pair of USB ports, an auxiliary audio input and a 12-volt outlet inside rounds out the center compartment.
Smooth leather seating surfaces are found front and rear with high back, ergonomic sport seats up front. The seats were designed with comfort and support in mind with pronounced bolstering to support the hip and thighs. Some may find the seats a bit stiff for their tastes, but lumbar adjustment should rectify any complaints they may have.
Three adults can sit in comfort side-by-side on the rear seat. Of course, two is better with the armrest pulled down from the center position to reveal a pair of cup holders and a storage compartment for a smart phone. A pass through grants access to the trunk and its 14 cubic feet of storage capacity.
No spare tire is offered — if you have a flat, an electric pump takes care of that problem, except if a nail embeds in the sidewall. In that case you’ll have to call for assistance. And that is precisely what happened when the GS F was en route to my house — a nail was discovered in the sidewall and the tire had to be replaced. That replacement took several days to accomplish as a hard-to-find tire had to be ordered and delivered to the dealership. Fortunately, Johnson Lexus of Durham (NC) rose to the occasion and the sedan was delivered to my home four days later. So much for not having a spare!
Normally-Aspirated V-8 Engine
I am a fan of performance boosting, in an effort to squeeze more power out of an engine’s footprint. My boosting preference is a supercharger, but if twin turbocharging is used I’m usually good with the latter as lag is essentially negated. Engine experts and enthusiasts may prefer a single, large turbo, but I have found that lag is still present.
Lexus could have taken the boosted circuit with its beefy V-8, but it opted for the normally aspirated route and that was a smart decision. Delivering 467 horsepower and 389 foot-pounds of torque, the 5.0-liter V-8’s performance numbers are well-suited to this sedan.
In any case, power is just one of three essential ingredients found in the GS F — the other two are style and handling. All three make the Lexus GS F what it is — a compelling alternative to Europe’s finest performance sedans.
Driving Dynamics and a Torque Vectoring Differential
At the heart of the GS is its driving dynamics. In particular, the drive mode select control offering Normal, Eco, Sport S, and Sport S+ choices. While you may prefer to have the mode set to Normal or even to Eco to maximize fuel economy (a good idea as the sedan has a thirsty side), it is the two sport modes that unleashes the beast contained within.
Choose Sport S and the acceleration quotient improves as engine output and throttling are modified. Choose Sport S+ if you want all that and improved communication through the steering wheel. Choose the latter and it feels like a pair of weights are hung on either side of the wheel.
Also at work is a torque vectoring differential (TVD), what manages rear wheel torque and is especially welcome when cornering. Torque is sent to the appropriate rear wheel in a bid to help the driver maintain control and do so in confidence. A switch located on the center console controls the TVD, enhancing the drive during standard, slalom, and track driving conditions. Add in an already rigid body, a performance-tuned double wishbone front and multi-link rear suspension, Brembo brakes, and electric power steering, and you have one heck of a fun driving experience at the ready.
Fast and Furious, Lexus GS F Style
That experience comes fast and furious, provided you have a place to “open her up” and let the GS F strut her stuff. Under normal and eco driving conditions, she purrs. Make the switch to Sport S and the GS F roars. So, let’s change the “F” to represent ferocious.
Indeed, that roar comes by stomping the pedal and keeping your foot on it as the GS F continues to pick up speed. It feels as if you’re hitting the red line as the engine revs high and hard. The moment you take your foot off the pedal, the exhaust system shrieks like a banshee — one or two hollers later and the GS F calms down.
Estimates of the GS F’s 0-to-60 mph comes in around 4.3 seconds. That seems about right. I allowed the transmission to do all the work as I wasn’t especially interested in flicking the manumatic stick to get the results I sought.
Certainly, the Lexus is fast. But where it shines brightest is on the twisty roads. I set the “diff” to slalom and the driving model to Sport S+ and had at it. Cornering was a snap — more than once I tackled 90 degree turns going at least 40 mph without braking (I was driving in the country where visibility was excellent and traffic nonexistent).
Shut down traction control and your anti-lock brakes won’t interfere — that button is on the lower lip of the dashboard and to the left of the steering column. Then, navigate the twisties and you’ll enjoy the Lexus GS F unimpeded. I don’t have a raft of luxury performance sedans to draw from to compare to the Lexus. Then again, various Americans sport coupes, the Corvette, Jaguar F-TYPE, Porsche Cayman and 911, Nissan GT-R, and BMW M6 have each been tested by yours truly. This Lexus is definitely a commendable model in its own right.
Lexus GS F Considerations
Should you consider the Lexus GS F? Yes, if you have $85,390 to spare. It is a mono-spec model, although there are a few upgrades worth considering, including the aforementioned orange brake calipers ($300) and a Mark Levinson premium sound system ($1,380). Your best GS F alternatives come from Cadillac and the top European brands, but when it comes to measuring prestige, quality and reliability, it is simply too hard to easily beat Lexus.
If you can live without the “F” the standard GS comes in at a very reasonable $50,000 and also offers optional all-wheel drive. For $45,615 you will enjoy even greater savings, provided you dispense with the standard and normally aspirated 3.5-liter, V-6 (GS 350) and go with the available 2.0-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder engine (GS 200t). Also, decorative F Sport trim on the GS 350 model adds just over $4,000 to the base price.
In all, Lexus makes a strong case for its own line of performance models. Another candidate for all things “F” would be the IS sedan, a compact model that aligns with the current RC. Whatever plans Lexus has for future F development, the current two-prong approach is an effective strategy and is worthy of serious consideration by performance enthusiasts who give equal consideration to all things luxury.
2016 Lexus GS F Sticker price from $84,400
Price as tested: $86,770
Seats 5 occupants
5.0-liter 32-valve V-8 gasoline engine
467 horsepower @ 7,100 RPM
389 foot-pounds of torque @ 4,800 to 5,600 RPM
3.70 inches bore by 3.52 inches stroke
Engine compression ratio: 12.3-to-1
8-speed automatic transmission
Wheelbase: 112.2 inches
Length: 193.5 inches
Width: 72.6 inches
Height: 56.7 inches
Passenger volume: 90.8 cubic feet
Storage volume: 14.0 cubic feet
Towing capacity: NR
EPA: 16 mpg city, 24 mpg highway
Premium grade gasoline required
Fuel tank: 17.4 gallons
Curb weight: From 4,034 pounds
IIHS safety rating: Good: moderate overlap front, side, and roof strength
Limited vehicle warranty: 4 years/50,000 miles
Powertrain warranty: 6 years/70,000 miles
Corrosion warranty: 5 years/unlimited miles
Vehicle assembly: Motomachi, Japan
See Also — Chrysler 200C: The Last Hurrah?
2016 Lexus GS F photos copyright Auto Trends Magazine.5 the recent growth in algocratic systems can be said to raise two moral and political concerns: Hiddenness concern : This is the concern about the manner in which our data is collected and used by these systems. People are concerned that this is done in a covert and hidden manner, without the consent of those whose data it is.
Opacity concern: This is a concern about the intellectual and rational basis for these algocratic systems. There is a worry that these systems work in ways that are inaccessible or opaque to human reason and understanding. For the purposes of this discussion,the recent growth in algocratic systems can be said to raise two moral and political concerns:
The first of these concerns has given rise to a rich literature,6 a contentious political debate7 and a range of legal regulations and guidelines.8 For example, in 2014, the European Court of Justice delivered a verdict striking down a European data retention directive.9 The directive required telecom operators to store data about their customers for up to 2 years. The court struck this down on the grounds that it ‘entail[ed] a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data.’10 As is apparent from this statement, the normative grounding for the hiddenness concern lies in concepts of privacy and control over personal information.
The opacity concern is rather different and has generated less debate (although this is now beginning to change). I will explain this normative grounding first before proceeding to defend an argument in relation to the opacity concern. This argument will constitute the threat of algocracy. The opacity concern has nothing to do with privacy and control over personal information, although it is testament to the overpowering nature of the hiddenness concern that those few theorists who have begun to discuss opacity often couch their analysis in terms of privacy or personal information (Morozov 2013; Crawford & Schultz 2014). The opacity concern has to do with our participation in political procedures and how this participation is undermined by growing use of algocratic systems. The normative grounding for this concern is in concepts of political authority and legitimacy.11
Legitimacy is the property that coercive public decision-making processes must possess if they are to rightfully exercise the requisite authority over our lives. There are many different accounts of what it is that makes a decision-making procedure legitimate (Peter 2014). Broadly speaking, there are three schools of thought. The pure instrumentalists think that a procedure gains legitimacy solely in virtue of its consequences: Procedures are instruments that have normative aims (reducing crime, increasing well-being etc.), and the better they are at achieving those aims, the more legitimate they are.12 Contrariwise, the pure proceduralists think that it is difficult to know what the ideal outcome is in advance. Hence, they tend to emphasise the need for our procedures to exhibit certain outcome-independent virtues (Peter 2008). For example, they might argue that our procedures should create ideal speech situations, allowing for those who are affected by them to comprehend what is going on and to contribute to the decision-making process (Habermas 1990). It also possible to adopt mixed or pluralist approaches to legitimacy, which focus on both the properties of the procedures and their outcomes.
I favour the mixed approach. There are two reasons for this. First, because I believe pure versions of instrumentalism and proceduralism can lead to odd conclusions about the legitimacy of a procedure.13 If all you cared about was the outcome of a decision-making procedure, you might be able to justify an evidence-gathering process that included cruel or inhumane treatment of human witnesses, provided that such treatment facilitated a more accurate decision. Likewise, if all you cared about was the procedure itself, you might be able to justify a process which clearly led to a decision with bad consequences simply because it treated people with respect and allowed them some meaningful participation. Neither of these is intuitively appealing. Second, the concept of an ‘outcome’ or a ‘procedure’ is sufficiently fuzzy to allow for plenty of debate about what counts as being part of an outcome and part of a procedure. Is an evidence-gathering procedure that treats someone inhumanely but gathers accurate information warranted because of its outcomes? Or should the longer term suffering of the person from whom the information is gathered be included in any assessment of those outcomes? The answer is not entirely clear, but instrumentalists might be inclined to favour the latter view since inhumane treatment feels like something that should undermine the legitimacy of a decision-making process. The advantage of the mixed approach is that it does not need to concern itself with such debates. The treatment of the witness is relevant either way. This is important because in favouring the mixed approach, one sometimes needs to assess decision-making processes in light of the trade-offs between their instrumental and procedural virtues.
2003 2008 2009 2012 1. There are procedure-independent outcomes against which the legitimacy of public decision-making procedures ought to be judged. (Cognitivist thesis) 2. In any given society, there will be a group of people with superior epistemic access to these procedure-independent outcomes. (Elitist thesis) 3. If there are people with superior epistemic access to these procedure-independent outcomes, then procedures are more likely to be legitimate if those people are given sole or predominant decision-making authority. 4. Therefore, in any given society, decision-making procedures are more likely to be legitimate if authority is concentrated in an epistemic elite. (Authority thesis) With the normative grounding clarified, the opacity problem can be articulated. It helps to do this by way of analogy with Estlund’s threat of epistocracy argument (Estlund; Machin; Lippert-Rasmussen). Estlund’s argument is that those who are enamoured with outcome-oriented approaches to legitimacy may be forced to endorse the legitimacy of epistocratic systems of governance. These are systems that favour a narrow set of epistemic elites over the broader public. He points out that if we assume (plausibly) that legitimacy-conferring outcomes are more likely to be achieved by those with better epistemic abilities, then the following argument seems compelling:
The argument depends on a normative claim (viz. outcomes confer legitimacy on decisions) and two factual claims. The first is that there is such a thing as an epistemic elite, a sub-group of the population with superior epistemic access to the legitimacy-conferring outcomes; the second is that handing over decision-making authority to this sub-group is likely to get us closer to those outcomes. There are ways in which we could critique these factual assumptions (Lippert-Rasmussen 2012). But, I will not do so here since my goal is not to defend Estlund’s argument but to develop a similar but different argument.
To do this, I need to consider in more detail what is meant by an ‘epistocracy’ and how it relates that of algocracy. Estlund defines the concept of epistocracy (2003, 53) by reference to sub-populations of human societies with generally superior epistemic capabilities. For him |
24 Missouri Aug. 10, 1821 14 Years
313 Days Jul. 4, 1822 -
Jul. 4, 1836 14 Years Extremely Rare
Period flags in this star count are extremely rare. Although the period for 24 stars lasted for a relatively long time, flags in this star count are extremely rare, since militarily the nation was at peace and flag making for home use was uncommon. Some flags were made during this period to welcome Lafayette on his visit to the United States in 1824, but of the few flags that are believed to be from this period, possibly to celebrate that event, most feature 13 stars. 25 Arkansas Jun. 15, 1836 225 Days Jul. 4, 1836 -
Jul. 4, 1837 1 Year Extremely Rare
Period flags in this star count are extremely rare. Some later period exclusionary flags from the Civil War period appear in this star count, but they too are extremely rare. 26 Michigan Jan. 26, 1837 8 Years
38 Days Jul. 4, 1837 -
Jul. 4, 1845 8 Years Rare
Period flags in this star count are rare but less so than other star counts of the era because the number of states remained at 26 for more than 8 year and a new type of flag, the printed parade flag, emerged during this time. 27 Florida Mar. 3, 1845 301 Days Jul. 4, 1845 -
Jul. 4, 1846 1 Year Extremely Rare
Period flags in this star count are extremely rare. Most likely, there are ten or fewer period flags in this star count known to exist. 28 Texas Dec. 29, 1845 364 Days Jul. 4, 1846 -
Jul. 4, 1847 1 Year Extremely Rare Period flags in this star count are extremely rare. Most likely, there are ten or fewer period flags in this star count known to exist. 29 Iowa Dec. 28, 1846 1 Year
153 Days Jul. 4, 1847 -
Jul. 4, 1848 1 Year Extremely Rare Period flags in this star count are extremely rare. Some printed parade flags in a medallion configuration exist in this star count, but they are very rare. Pieced and sewn flags are even more rare. This period spans the Mexican war (Apr. 1846 - Feb. 1848) 30 Wisconsin May 29, 1848 2 Years
103 Days Jul. 4, 1848 -
Jul. 4, 1851 3 Years Rare
Period flags in this star count are rare. Printed parade flags in a medallion configuration exist in this star count, but they are very rare. Pieced and sewn flags are also rare. 31 California Sep. 9, 1850 7 Years
246 Days Jul. 4, 1851 -
Jul. 4, 1858 7 Years Rare
Period flags in this star count are rare. With the wide spread mass production of sewing machines in the 1850s, machine stitched flags begin to emerge. The earliest sewing machines produce a "chain stitch". The 31 star flag shown here has both stars and stripes sewn with a very early sewing machine chain stitch. Hand stitching remains the more common way of affixing stars to flags until the 1890s due to the higher degree of skill required to do the task efficiently and well using a sewing machine. 32 Minnesota May 11, 1858 279 Days Jul. 4, 1858 -
Jul. 4, 1859 1 Year Rare
Period flags in this star count are rare. Large flags with clamp-dyed stars appear in this star count, with a somewhat common trait of being updated with the addition of two sewn stars to 34. I speculate that this was because many people purchased new flags after nearly 8 years of 31 stars being accurate, only to have Oregon and Kansas added in the course of less than three years. Furthermore, the patriotic sentiments of the Civil War era are beginning to emerge by this time. 33 Oregon Feb. 14, 1859 1 Year
350 Days Jul. 4, 1859 -
Jul. 4, 1861 2 Years Rare
Period flags in this star count are rare. 33 star printed parade flags, many in various medallions or scattered patterns are overprinted with campaign candidates for the 1860 presidential election. 33 star pieced-and-sewn examples are very rare. 34 Kansas Jan. 29, 1861 2 Years
142 Days Jul. 4, 1861 -
Jul. 4, 1863 2 Years Scarce
Period flags are scarce. They were produced in large quantities at the outset of the Civil War both for military and personal use, but few survive. Although some Civil War units that muster into service early in the war bring earlier flags of 33 stars or fewer, may are provided with newly sewn presentation colors of 34 stars made by the women of their home communities. 34 star flags remain with the units throughout the war, though later in the war those that are badly damaged or lost may be replaced with flags of 35 or even 36 stars. 35 West Virginia Jun. 20, 1863 1 Year
134 Days Jul. 4, 1863 -
Jul. 4, 1865 2 Years Scarce
Period flags are scarce. The secession of West Virginia from Virginia, which resulted in the introduction of another state in the Union, carved from one of the southern states, lead to great tension between various sympathizers of either cause, especially along the Virginia-West Virginia and West-Virginia-Ohio borders. 35 star flags are the only count that falls squarely into the active period of the war. Although the flags are scarce today, they were made in sizeable numbers in the patriotic fervor of the war. 36 Nevada Oct. 31, 1864 2 Years
121 Days Jul. 4, 1865 -
Jul. 4, 1867 2 Years Scarce
Period flags are scarce. the actual period of the 36 star flag spans almost six months of the war, though the official period follows the end of open hostilities. Although generally a reconstruction era flag count, because of the date of Nevada's introduction, flags are considered Civil War Era flags and it is known that 36 star flags were used by military units during the course of the war. 37 Nebraska Mar. 1, 1867 9 Years
156 Days Jul. 4, 1867 -
Jul. 4,1877 10 Years Scarce
Period flags are scarce. Despite the fact that the period for 37 stars lasted for more than nine years, the star count is relatively scarce compared to other post-Civil War star counts. This is because of the general lull in patriotic sentiment, when compared to the Civil War which precedes the count, and the Centennial era that follows. Most flag manufacturers, ahead of the Centennial in July, 1876, were anticipating the introduction of Colorado, and therefore produced 38 star flags rather than 37 star flags ahead of the celebration. 38 Colorado Aug. 1, 1876 13 Years
96 Days Jul. 4, 1877 -
Jul. 4, 1890 13 Years Occasional
Period flags are occasionally encountered, but are generally uncommon. Because of the large number of flags made for the Centennial celebration and the long period for which 38 stars were official, 38 star flags are not as scarce as the Civil War and Reconstruction era counts of 33 through 37. Printed 38 star parade flags in the medallion pattern, in many cases with two outlier stars, are a common format. By this period, though, certain patterns such as the Grand Luminary pattern, fell out of common use. 39 North Dakota Nov. 2, 1889 0 Days Unofficial Unofficial Occasional
Period printed parade flags are occasionally encountered, but generally are uncommon. Flags of pieced and sewn construction in this count are extremely rare with likely less than ten known examples. 39 stars is an unofficial count, because of the introduction of North Dakota (39) and South Dakota (40) at one time, instead of as a single state (formerly the Dakota territory). Despite the fact that we went from 38 stars to 40 stars in a single event, 39 star flags are actually more common than 40 star flags, which are extremely rare. Since people anticipated a single state, rather than two, manufacturers produced reasonably large numbers of new flags of the 39 star count, only to find that they would never be official. 40 South Dakota Nov. 2, 1889 6 Days Unofficial Unofficial Extremely Rare
Period flags are extremely rare. Most people anticipated the 39th state to be the Dakotas, not two states of North Dakota and South Dakota. Therefore, 39 star flags are relatively easy to locate. The jump to 40 stars required people to rapidly adjust to the two Dakotas, but before many people could produce 40 star flags in response, Montana's introduction just 6 days later made 40 star flags obsolete almost immediately. Therefore, very few 40 star flags exist today because very few were produced. 41 Montana Nov. 8, 1889 3 Days Unofficial Unofficial Extremely Rare
Period flags are extremely rare. In even less time than the 6 days between 40 and 41, 41 became obsolete, being advanced by Washington State to 42 stars after just 3 days. Like the 40 star flag, 41 is extremely rare In fact, it is more rare than even 40, because although some people may have anticipated a two-Dakota induction, the rapid fire succession of South Dakota to Montana to Washington State, in less than ten days, barely gave time for any flag making to occur. 42 Washington Nov. 11, 1889 243 Days Unofficial Unofficial Occasional
Period flags are occasionally encountered, but generally are uncommon. Although the count is unofficial, the count remained the actual count for more than 8 months. During this time of relative settling, compared to the ten day jump from 38 to 41, both printed and sewn flags were produced in the 42 star count. Also, many people expected Washington to become official on July 4, 1890, but that was not to be, with Idaho's introduction just one day prior to Independence day. 43 Idaho Jul. 3, 1890 7 Days Jul. 4, 1890 -
Jul. 4, 1891 1 Year Extremely Rare
Period flags are extremely rare. Just one day prior to 42 becoming official, Idaho was introduced as the 43rd state one day before July 4, 1890, and therefore became official the following day. Unlike previous star counts where unofficial counts were rare and unusual, this official count is extremely rare, because of Wyoming's introduction as the 44th state just six days after Idaho became official. Not wanting to produce obsolete flags, most flag manufacturers and homemade flag makers simply skipped 43 stars to produce 44 star flags. 44 Wyoming Jul. 10, 1890 5 Years
179 Days Jul. 4,1891 -
Jul. 4, 1896 5 Years Occasional
Period flags are occasionally encountered, but generally are uncommon. Although 44 stars span a period of 5 years, the period was post Centennial and pre-Spanish American War. Although flags were made for events such as the Columbian Exposition in 1892, generally 44 star flags are less common than their later counterpart of 45 stars. 45 Utah Jan. 4, 1896 11 Years
319 Days Jul. 4, 1896 -
Jul. 4, 1908 12 Years Common
Period flags are common. Official for 12 years, and spanning the Spanish American War which incited great patriotism, 45 star flags are relatively common and can be acquired readily. Flags in the count with unusual characteristics such as unique star arrangements, overprints or constructed entirely by hand are less common and more desirable. 46 Oklahoma Nov. 16, 1907 4 Years
52 Days Jul. 4, 1908 -
Jul. 4, 1912 4 Years Common
Period flags are common. Official for 4 years, flags of 46 stars were produced in large quantities by manufacturers of the early 20th century. They are readily available to collectors. 47 New Mexico Jan. 6, 1912 39 Days Unofficial Unofficial Extremely Rare Period flags are extremely rare. Most Americans barely had time to react and produce stars for New Mexico before Arizona followed to make the 48th state. As a result, very few 47 star flags exist today. They are a rare unofficial star count and are sought after by collectors as a star count that is very difficult to obtain. 48 Arizona Feb. 14, 1912 46 Years
335 Days Jul. 4, 1912 -
Jul. 4, 1959 47 Years Common
Period flags are common. This is the star count widely known to most Americans when they think of an "antique" flag. Because this is the flag that most grandparents and great grandparents would have from their youth, it is commonly found in estate sales and among the possessions of veterans of World War I, World War II and the Korean War. President Taft's executive order of June 24, 1912, which standardized the canton of the stars on the flag to 6 even rows of 8 stars makes unusual star configurations relatively uncommon and often indicative of an early flag, circa 1920 or before. 49 Alaska Jan. 3, 1959 230 Days Jul. 4, 1959 -
Jul. 4, 1960 1 Year Common
Period flags are common. Although only official for one year, large quantities of 49 star flags were produced to welcome Alaska into the Union, and many survive today. 50 Hawaii Aug. 21, 1959 50+ Years Jul. 4, 1960 -
Present 50 Years Common
Period flags are common. Our current canton of 50 stars has been official for more than 50 years, and millions of flags in the 50 star pattern have been produced and are flown today. The flag pictured has personal meaning to me. I received it for work performed in Afghanistan in 2003. The accompanying certificate, presented to me along with the flag, reads: "So that all shall know, This flag was flown in the face of the enemy, and bears witness to the capture, interrogation, and detainment of terrorist forces threatening the freedom of the United States of America and the World. It was present for 9 hours and 11 minutes on the 21st day of November 2003 during Operation Enduring Freedom at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan In Honor Of Anthony Iasso" >50 Future Future Future Future Future Rare
Future star counts on antique flags are an unusual area of flag collecting, and are generally rare. Flags with greater than 50 stars might have been produced by mistake or in expectation of the addition new states from territories such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines which did not occur. The flag pictured here with 54 stars is an early 20th century flag, most likely circa 1912 when 48 stars were introduced. It is not known whether the maker simply made a mistake and added an extra row of 6 stars to the 48 pattern, or was of the expansionist movement then prevalent in the early 20th century and expected other states or territories to be added to the Union along with Arizona. Next:
Printed Parade FlagsThe picture is a bit old, but you can see where RCD Mallorca played their matches. It’s a garden which emerged once the team moved to more modern facilities at the end of the 1990s. The youth team played some games there, but the stadium was definitely abandoned. In 2014, after the complaints of several people, it was established that this historical place had to be demolished as they considered it dangerous, but it seems nothing has happened since. The best about all it is that the area was said to have become a very touristic place, especially for those who like football and want to visit a place only seen by TV. This is not the typical museum in which you can visit every single room, because many doors were sealed, but you can sit on one of those plastic seats and contemplate a piece of wild nature in the middle of a town. ID1541580Police arrest man accused of throwing acid on pitbull
Ignacio Sanchez Alvarez, 45, was taken into custody at the home Rosie, a pit bull who was burned with acid, was discovered on the Southeast Side, said Audra Houghton, Animal Care Services Field Operations Supervisor. less Ignacio Sanchez Alvarez, 45, was taken into custody at the home Rosie, a pit bull who was burned with acid, was discovered on the Southeast Side, said Audra Houghton, Animal Care Services Field Operations... more Photo: Mariah Medina/San Antonio Express-News Photo: Mariah Medina/San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 53 Caption Close Police arrest man accused of throwing acid on pitbull 1 / 53 Back to Gallery
A man accused of pouring acid on Rosie, the 5-year-old pit bull, was arrested Tuesday.
Ignacio Sanchez Alvarez, 45, was taken into custody at the home where the dog was discovered on the Southeast Side, said Audra Houghton, Animal Care Services Field Operations Supervisor.
ACS reported she was found with chemical burns to 100 percent of her face towards the end of July. Her right ear dissolved by a caustic liquid and her left ear partially consumed.
RELATED: North Texas police officer arrested on animal cruelty charge involving 5 dogs
She was left with possible permanent blindness and had indications she may have gone several weeks with no medical care, officials said.
Alvarez faces a felony charge of cruelty to a non-livestock animal, Houghton said, adding he could face a misdemeanor for animal cruelty of failing to render adequate care.
"This is the suspect in a case we've been investigating for the last week and a half," Houghton said, adding that SAPD property crimes detectives assisted in acquiring an arrest warrant.
Alvarez was living at the home when the dog was discovered, she said.
Police said he attempted to flee when officers went to the home to arrest him.
Houghton said she did not have specifics as to how acid was poured on her face.
"I honestly don't know why he did it," Houghton said, noting the details would be most likely be revealed in court.
Alvarez was quiet as police walked him to a squad car at the East Side Police Station on Tuesday.
Houghton said surgery is planned to help Rosie regain her sight. Until then, she finds her way around by smell.
"We are really grateful for support everyone gave for Rosie, and hope the surgery is successful and she'll see again."
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The list of supporting arguments go on for a while and I encourage you to give the video below a watch. It's certainly an exciting prospect to consider going forward with Episode VIII next year. Let me know your thoughts on this theory in the comments section below!
As the video below illustrates, Kylo Ren is seen using Mace Windu's signature "back spin and slice" move. A move no other Jedi really exhibited in previous films. It makes a lot of sense that Kylo would have learned this move if Snoke, his teacher is I'm fact Mace Windu.
Mace Windu was betrayed by Anikan Skywalker when he was about to execute the Emperor. This would have been more than enough to solidify his hatred and push him to the dark side. Speaking revenge on the Skywalkers by infiltrating the minds of their offspring, turning them to the dark side as well.
This means Snoke would have been present in the prequel trilogy - like Mace Windu was. Windu, if still alive would have gone into hiding like the few remaining Jedi and would have witnessed the rise and fall of the Empire.
As the video below points out, the moment Snoke mentions to Ren that there has been an awakening, Rey had not yet exhibited any Force sensitivities, however Finn had. If Finn is Windu's son, he would be a Force sensitive as well, but due to not exhibiting any Force sensitivities at an early age, Snoke sought out a different pupil who he could train instead - Kylo Ren.
Finn was a garbage collector, who's first real mission was a rather important one, accompanying Kylo Ren. Kylo also seems to treat Finn differently and oddly manages to keep specific tabs on him throughout the film.
The theory suggests Finn is a child of Windu's and that as Snoke, ensured he could keep an eye on Finn as he grew up. It's suggested that Kylo Ren was instructed to keep an eye on Finn as well.
It's documented that Mace Windu was one of the few to possess the ability to utilize both light and dark aides of the Force during combat. Snoke also shows a serious obsession with balance between both the light and dark sides, as shown in The Force Awakens.
Mace Windu used a purple lightsaber - a symbol of balance between light and dark sides of the Force. Even combining the colors blue and red make purple.
The Force Lightening the Emperor used on Windu could also attribute for Smoke's disfigurement and pale complexion.
Samuel Jackson himself is a firm believer that Windu didn't die when he was cast out a window by the Emperor in Revenge of the Sith. He argues Jedi have the ability to fall great distances, even injured and not die - he's right.
This theory covers many supporting arguments to solidify the claims. I've jotted a few of the main ones below, but be sure to give the video a watch at the foot of this article for an even more in-depth analysis.
A Star Wars fan theory has emerged and has ignited debate within the fan community. Supreme Leader Snoke is Mace Windu? At first the prospect of such a claim seems ludicrous, but after watching the video below, the possibility seems more and more likely.
Gavin Sep-16-2016 2:47 PM There are many suspects when it comes to Supreme Leader Snoke's true identity, Mace Windu is a long shot possibility. Here's a list of some of the other possibilities that have been theorized... General Leia Organa Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker Kylo Ren (from the future) Darth Sidious Darth Plagueis Darth Maul Boba Fett Jar Jar Binks (I shit you not) Yoda and even... Luke Skywalker...It seems fans are pointing fingers at almost all the main characters from the saga so far, but for me, my money remains on Plagueis.
Durp004 Sep-17-2016 5:46 AM Wow these fan theories are really stretching if now Snoke is Windu and Finn is his supposed to be his son. Chances are Snoke is no one from any of the past movies. Like high chances, very very high.
Xenotaris Sep-17-2016 11:21 AM also first snoke has a different voice than Windu: Snoke has an english accent while Windu has an american accent. Also Snoke and Windu's facial structures are completely different.
Centauri Sep-17-2016 2:30 PM I don't think snoke is anyone but Snoke...... A. Hes a giant B. He doesn't look or sound like Mace Windu C.
Shiro Sep-18-2016 6:20 AM If you look closely at Windu and Snoke's heads you will see the same scar!
BigDave Sep-18-2016 12:49 PM Finn being Windu's Son maybe or he could be Lando Calrissian's (what i think he is). Windu as Snoke? Nope... I think Snoke is someone from behind the scenes... we maybe not seen yet, it is said he is maybe ancient and so is not Human but then Force Powers could keep someone alive for longer. But Snoke is supposed to be Tall.... I think he is someone NEW... Otherwise i would go with either Sim Aloo ----- Long Time close advisor to Palpatine and his personnel errand to the Emperor so to speak, he would have been around during the Rise of the Empire but the Fall? He was assumed to had died with the destruction of the 2nd Death Star... but what a place to explain his scars. He was Human but Pale, Gaunt and Tall. Or The Grand Inquisitor---- leader of the Inquisitors who were tasked with hunting down the Jedi.... and Inquisitors are Force Sensitive. He was a Pau'an and they are Pale, Gaunt and Tall. But i still think Snoke will not be either of them. But i think they fit the bill more than the other names being branded about... The Grand Inquisitor had a hatred for the Jedi, but he also seemed to have a jealously over the powers and rank of Vader. And as for Sim Aloo not many where as close to Palpatine as he was. Vader being one of the few.
BigDave Sep-18-2016 12:53 PM Then i could buy into maybe Grand Moff Tarkin being a possibility. You have the Vader Rumour due to the Scars... But Luke Burnt Vaders Body and Vader was only Tall due to the Cybernetics as Anakin was not too tall and how did Vader/Anakin Regenerate his Arms but not his Facial Scars?
Durp004 Sep-18-2016 8:55 PM Snoke is only seen through a hologram. We have no idea his actual height and specs. Palpatine projected a huge head when he appeared in Empire Strikes Back, but ended up being shorter than Luke. Snoke is almost 100% someone new. I haven't read the second aftermath book, or leia's bloodties yet, buuuuuut since the aftermath trilogy is being labelled as the bridge between episode 6 and 7 at one point one of Palpatine's advisors mentions the outer layer of the galaxy as somewhere the Imperial remnants should go as he thought that was where Palpatine got his power. My guess is that after continuing to lose to the new Republic the empire eventually does go to the out reaches of known space and there they they find Snoke, or he finds them, I would bet any sum of money that anyone wagered that Snoke definitely isn't Windu though, I don't care what Sam Jackson says it doesn't make sense for Windu thematically to survive, and not immediately climb the stairs and go back to Palpatine's office for round 2.
Durp004 Sep-18-2016 9:58 PM Didn't know but Snoke's height is confirmed here to be 7 ft. Well that eliminates most potential older characters outside the fact they somehow got a new body.
Shiro Sep-19-2016 5:06 AM Durp004 7ft tall is enormous!But hiw will he use a lightsaber i mean really!
BigDave Sep-19-2016 10:19 AM Indeed that 7ft could be potentially 7 ft.... It does not rule out him being a Tall Human, like Sim Aloo or a Pau'an like the Grand Inquisitor. I think with a lot of theories people are forgetting some of the basics and that is that Snoke is Tall, Thin and looks Frail which could imply he is very ancient. I still think he would be someone very new however
Shiro Sep-19-2016 10:23 AM If he is 7ft tall we will need an XXL lightsaber for him :D lol!
Durp004 Sep-19-2016 12:38 PM At 7 ft he stands pretty noticable over Vader so I think that would discount the Grand Inquisitor or Sim, or really anyone that ever got the limelight Vader and even Anakin were noticably taller than most other onscreen characters. @Shiro I doubt he'll use a lightsaber he'll probably follow the ancient dark sorcerer approach Palpatine did in Episode 6.
Shiro Sep-20-2016 5:07 AM Okay thanks Durp004....but still an XXL lightsaber would be hilarious :D
Matterbratter Sep-20-2016 3:57 PM Snoke could possibly not only one who saw the rise and fall of the empire but was indeed a key element of it, Sifo-Dyas. Said to have died some time after comissioning a clone army, he would have ideally been a great Jedi master who went against Jedi precepts to create an instrument of war. Sifo-Dyas is an unknown barely mentioned in the series, but definitely more deserving of recognition due to his creating the great downfall of Jedi by hiding a planetary system and army from the Jedi for nearly 30 years.
B1azingPh03nix Sep-21-2016 6:27 AM I have a hard time believing it to be Sifo-Dyas... The clone wars established pretty well that he was dead. I think he's a new player, that happened to be around during the clone wars. He said that he "saw the empire rise and fall." All that really tells us is that he was old enough to remember when it happened. I remember 9/11 happen vividly, but I was 10 years old. So for all we know he could've been a kid. (I know, unlikely given how old the guy looks, but you could come up with a thousand explanations to make that story work, that are more plausible than Mace Windu becoming a Dark Lord) I don't think it's Plagueis either. Palpatine killed him personally, and I highly doubt he'd have made the mistake of leaving him alive. He was meticulous enough that I'm sure he'd have taken painstaking measures to ensure he was really dead. Even if Plagueis somehow survived his assassination, you'd think he'd be out for blood against Palpatine for betraying him. The only real logic I can see that supports Snoke being Plagueis, is that almost nothing is known about him anymore that's cannon, and that reveal would make for some shock value, revealing a name people recognize. I still highly doubt it though. There are so many names getting thrown around that don't make any logical sense, other than the fact that they hung out with Palpatine, or were a part of the empire. Tarkin would make no sense, since he not only blew up on the Death Star, but he had an indifferent attitude towards the force in general... Palpatine's stooges wouldn't make much sense either, since they were all brown nosing drones, and Palpatine would've been able to sense force sensitivity from them being that close to them so often, and being a follower of the "Rule of two" would've either taken Snoke as an apprentice, or had him killed. Boba Fett makes the least amount of sense because he has an active disdain for the force, and you don't bring Boba Fett back to life just to make him a grumpy old man with a jacked up face. I also highly doubt he's Mace Windu. I can see some logic, and I did notice that forehead scar, but I have a hard time buying that Mace would pull such a 180. Mace Windu was a Jedi master, and he had a ton of fortitude, and an ability to keep a level head. I could buy that he's still alive, but if he did survive, I don't see him declaring a vendetta against every Skywalker in existence just because Anakin cut off his right hand. That's completely against his character, and wouldn't make any sense for him to do. Even Anakin, a completely irrational, whiny, pitiful excuse for a Jedi didn't just go full Vader when his mom died. He just freaked out on some tuscan raiders, because he was an irrational, whiny teenager. Mace Windu kept a level head, and could control his anger. Sure, he'd be jaded AF. But becoming the next Palpatine? No sir. Most likely a new character that hasn't appeared in the series before.
JodyGeorge Sep-21-2016 4:53 PM Remember though when Windu said "You know Dooku was once a jedi. He could not assassinate anybody...its not in his character" He was wrong about that. He could blame the skywalkers for the fall of the jedi, not just the loss of the hand. Overall, probably not Windu but it would be interesting.
schmittpipe Sep-24-2016 10:33 PM So I'm watching the Force Awakens. The part in the beginning where they say that Kylo Ren stares down Finn; Well they were watching the storm troopers shoot the village people. They obviously saw he was the only one not shooting. Next, Rey decides not to sell the BB droid. The force was guiding her. She also exhibits extraordinary fighting skills, she has INCREDIBLE Piloting skills which we know Anakin showed even as a young boy. She was able to pilot a ship she's never flown before with pin point accuracy, even lining up Finns shot. Also, Finn says "That's the only name THEY ever gave me" Implying that all he remembers is the First Order. Apparently Jakku was his first mission, so he's probably never killed before or even been in combat. He says he was a a sanitation worker. Finn cannot shoot (just like a storm trooper), cannot fight hand to hand, cannot recover as fast as a force sensitive being can, He gets his but whooped by a storm trooper while he's armed with a lightsaber. However, Rey can take on the likes of Kylo Ren with a weapon she's never held in combat. We all know that only Force Sensitive beings can properly handle a lightsaber. Rey handles it with poise and grace, but Finn can't take on a storm trooper? No, I don't think Finn is force sensitive. HOWEVER!!!! I Hope like heck that Snoke is Mace Windu!! The rest makes perfect sense. He absolutely could have survived the fall, could have turned to the dark side, could have plotted this incredible scheme to get back at the Skywalkers. I would LOVE for this to be part of the trilogy, he was such a great character.
I Meme Everything Oct-01-2016 10:54 AM maybe if they add legends and screw around with it for a bit, Snoke will end up being the dark half of Revan, but in a different body. I mean, Vitiate was able to transfer his consciousness a TON of timesBy Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) —
Republican House Majority leader John Boehner secretly invited Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Washington to address Congress and then once it was set up he let Barack Obama know about it.
The reason for bringing Netanyahu is that Boehner wants to craft a super-majority in Congress that can over-ride Obama’s veto of new sanctions on Iran. He doesn’t have enough Republican votes to do so, but if he can get Democrats beholden to the Israel lobbies of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to join the veto over-ride effort, he might succeed.
Obama has spent a great deal of time and effort trying to negotiate with Iran over its civilian nuclear enrichment program, intended to allow Iran to replicate the success of France and South Korea in supplying electicity. (That would allow Iran to save gas and oil exports for earning foreign exchange).
Because nowadays producing enriched uranium for fuel via centrifuges is always potentially double use, this program has alarmed the US, Europe, and Israel. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given several fatwas (akin to encyclicals) orally in which he forbids making, storing or using nuclear weapons as incompatible with Islamic law (a position also taken by his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini). So maintaining that Iran is committed to making a nuclear bomb is sort of like holding that the Pope has a huge condom factory in the basement of the Vatican.
But, there are no doubt Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders and maybe some engineers and scientists who really wish Khamenei would change his mind (he won’t).
So if you wanted a compromise between Iranian nuclear doves (the hard line leadership) and Iranian nuclear hawks (the subordinates who have to take orders from the doves), what would you do? You’d keep options open. And keeping options open also has a deterrent effect, so it is almost as good as having a nuclear bomb. That is, if Iran has all the infrastructure that would be needed for a nuclear weapons program but didn’t actually initiate such a program, you’d put enemies on notice that if they try to get up a war on you the way Bush-Cheney got one up on Iraq, they could force you into going for broke and abruptly making a bomb for self-defense. This posture is called in the security literature “nuclear latency” or colloquially “the Japan Option” (we all know Tokyo could produce a bomb in short order if they felt sufficiently threatened).
I started arguing that this policy was what Iran was up to some 7 or 8 years ago, and I think |
should I do with my money to get the most happiness?" And maybe a smaller house makes perfect sense because you can use that money for something else that makes you happy.So is it worth sacrificing some happiness now to invest in something that might make you happy in the future?It can be. So if you think about your future happiness, that can be great. So if you're like, "When I retire, will I have enough money?" But one of the things that people of course don't do is, they can't project into the future anyway. So we just wrote a little op-ed for Prudential, for their retirees. We asked them, "How much money do you think you'll need a month to be happy when you retire?" And they give a number. And then we said, "Well, what do you want to do every month?" And they wrote, I want to do this, I want to do this. And they were underestimating by like half, how much they would need to be happy. So we're bad -- we're kinda good at thinking about the future, but we also just have no idea what we're doing. So now we're trying to get them to think about, "What would you need to be happy when you retire, every month?" Okay, well that's what you're saving for.Mike Norton, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and co-author of Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending. Thanks for joining us.Thank you.Pakistan hopes to sign a free trade agreement with Turkey by the end of summer, the country's ambassador in Ankara has said.
Sohail Mahmood told Anadolu Agency the deal should be finalized by September. Talks were launched in October last year during a visit to Turkey by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
"Many Turkish firms are operating in Pakistan, mainly in the construction and energy sectors, and there should be more trade activities between the two countries," Mahmood said in an interview conducted on Friday during a visit to the central Anatolian city of Konya for an art award ceremony.
"The free trade agreement could help to boost economic cooperation between Turkey and Pakistan. We expect to get a result and sign the agreement in September."
Last year, trade between the countries reached $600 million. Turkish exports around $289 million worth of goods to Pakistan, mostly telecommunications, televisions, textiles and industrial machinery.
Mahmood also reiterated Pakistan's support for Turkey's fight against terrorism. "Turkey is a very strong country," he said. "I hope that this fight will be finalized and Turkey will defeat terrorism."The field of psychology is in the middle of a painful, deeply humbling period of introspection. Long-held psychological theories are failing replication tests, forcing researchers to question the strength of their methods and the institutions that underlie them.
Take Joseph Hilgard, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
In a recent blog post titled "I was wrong," he fesses up to adding a shoddy conclusion to the psychological literature (with the help of colleagues) while he was a graduate student at the University of Missouri. "[W]e ran a study, and the study told us nothing was going on," he writes. "We shook the data a bit more until something slightly more newsworthy fell out of it."
This a bold and honest move — the type that gives me reasons to be optimistic for the future of the science. He's confessing to a practice called p-hacking, or the cherry-picking of data after an experiment is run in order to find a significant, publishable result. While this has been commonplace in psychology, researchers are now reckoning with the fact that p-hacks greatly increase the chances that their journals are filled with false positives. It's p-hacks like the one Hilgard and his colleagues used that gave weight to a theory called ego depletion, the very foundation of which is now being called into question.
Ego depletion is a theory that finds when a task requires a lot of mental energy — resisting temptations, regulating emotions — it depletes a store of internal willpower and dulls our mental edge. A forthcoming paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science finds no evidence of ego depletion in a trial of more than 2,000 participants across a couple dozen labs.
The study from Hilgard and his colleagues was a spin on a classic ego-depletion experiment. In their test, participants were assigned to play video games of varying levels of violence and difficulty, and then later took a brain teaser to test how much of their willpower had been sapped. The researchers wanted to find out if it was the game's violent content that led to a decrease in willpower or if it was the game's difficulty.
But there was a problem: The experiment found no effects for game violence or for game difficulty.
"So what did we do?" Hilgard writes. "We needed some kind of effect to publish, so we reported an exploratory analysis, finding a moderated-mediation model that sounded plausible enough."
They found that if they ran the numbers accounting for a player's experience level with video games, they could achieve a significant result.
This newfound correlation was weak, the data was messy, and it barely touched the threshold of significance. But it was publishable. What's more, upon drafting the report, the researchers changed their hypothesis to match this finding.
There are a few big problems with this. The biggest is that their experiment was not designed to study experience level as a main effect. If it had, they perhaps would have done a better job of recruiting participants with varying ranges of experience. "Only 25 people out of the sample of 238 met the post-hoc definition of 'experienced player,'" Hilgard writes. Such a small sample leaves the study with much less statistical power to find a real result.
The other big problem is that it adds a confirmatory finding to the ego depletion literature, when in actuality there's a greater chance that the study is inconclusive. On Twitter, Hilgard points out the paper was recently mis-cited to make it seem even more impactful than it really was.
Amusingly, the one citation to this paper is a miscite. (We did not measure aggressive responses.) pic.twitter.com/dlaTw0Cbq0 — Joe Hilgard (@JoeHilgard) March 21, 2016
All of this goes to show how individual instances of p-hacking can snowball into a pile of research that collapses when its foundations are tested.
It's for this reason that many research psychologists are calling for the preregistration of study designs. This would lock researchers into their hypotheses before the first line of data comes in. It would hold them more accountable for recruiting the right type of participants and drawing solid conclusions from them. It would also make it more acceptable to publish a negative finding. Because in the case of ego depletion, it's looking like the negative findings are the most solid.
"It's embarrassing that we structured the whole paper to be about the exploratory analysis, rather than the null results," Hilgard writes.
Ultimately, as I've argued, the fact that people like Hilgard are embracing transparency and publicly admitting to their errors will be good for the science.
He continued: "In the end, I'm grateful that the RRR [registered replication reports] has set the record straight on ego depletion. It means our paper probably won't get cited much except as a methodological or rhetorical example, but it also means that our paper isn't going to clutter up the literature and confuse things in the future."
A growing number of scientists like Hilgard don't want the public's trust just because they wear lab coats and can figure out a way to get published in a fancy journal. They want to earn it by being more honest and open. By making their data more accessible, by preregistering experiments, and by frankly admitting to errors, they just might achieve their goal.
Correction: This article originally misidentified the name of the journal that will publish a replication report on ego depletion. The paper will appear in Perspectives on Psychological Science, not Social Psychological and Personality.I have had the bones of this blog post almost ready to go on the site for some time, but hadn't gotten around to posting it. I was also a little unsure as to how it would go down, but wanted to share some views on performing with the ukulele and the dreaded issue of the cold, dirty cash.. File this down in another of my 'rant' posts that tend to put the proverbial cat amongst the ukulele playing pigeons! (I fear these are becoming a regular feature!!)
strict
willing
What prompted me to write it however was that I had been speaking to some gig and festival promoters for my band and came across the increasingly common response of 'oh no, we don't pay the bands'. I had a bit of a moan about this on Facebook, and what followed were hundreds of responses all supporting my point of view. Since then I see regular rants about the same subject (in fact one is running today where the same point of view is being agreed with). But do all ukulele players share that point of view? I am not so sure. And if there are so many people who agree that bands and performers shouldn't be ripped off, then why is it still happening?So, back to the post...If you are developing your uke skills and your club is looking at getting out there and performing, you are taking a step into a wider musical circuit in which ukulele players form only a small part. How should you approach that? I must say at the outset that you are all, of course, entirely free to approach such things exactly how you want to. It is not for me to tell you what to do. But, I hope reading this may give you some things to ponder.So what is a gig? Pretty basic starting point but an important one as I see a lot of reports of bands playing gigs that are not really that at all. I personally think that a 'gig' is the step up you take beyond busking at events or in the local town. I am also not talking about club nights, jam nights and general get togethers - they are something else entirely. I would class a gig as being booked and billed in a pub, venue, function or event in your own right (or perhaps part of an event), but definitely something that was arranged by not just the band themselves. Something you promote, something you work up a set for, perhaps you take your gear and rig with you. Something where the venue see the 'value' in you being there and perhaps do their bit to promote you as well. I am seeing more and more uke players taking these steps now, and that has had me thinking on the issue of,'should we charge'? Quite simply - yes you should.As I said in the opening, it is becoming increasingly common that venues are expecting the artists at their events to perform for nothing, not even expenses. In my experience this tends to be backed up with comments such as 'we have no budget' or, 'no, this is a free festival or event'. Both upset me greatly. The reason is simple. What they actually mean is, 'we don't value the musicians in this, but of course we had to pay for the stage guy, and the promotion, and the security staff etc'. Even if an event is a no profit affair, I would wager that there are very few that have no people on their books being paid for their services in some way. With pubs and clubs it's a slightly different affair, but the same thing applies. A pub introduces extras such as entertainers to their venue to bring more people through the door and to make more money. It is simply business. So, they may hire a fruit machine or a pool table. They pay for that. They pay for them in the hope that they will keep people in the venue, spending more money. Why is booking a musician different?For our band, the only times we will play for free is where the event is a genuine charity affair - and by that I mean it is a charity where everybody involved - crew, staff etc are giving their services for free as well. I mean, if the bar staff are getting paid, why shouldn't the entertainment? Sadly I have come across a few events we have initially considered where the excuse for no pay comes on the back of a very vague reference to charity. What it actually amounts to is that the bands are expected to donate their services to charity, but nobody else. Don't get me wrong, charity events can work, and we play them regularly. But don't insult me by saying that the musicians are the only ones in on the charity thing. Charity events can work in pubs too and we have played for nothing, but on thecondition that our normal fee goes in the charity bucket. At our annual N'Ukefest we charge the venue a fee, and our fee goes into the charity bucket. I know lots of venues who are pleased to do this. Playing a charity gig in a pub passing around the buckets, but the venue not contributing is NOT the same thing. For those venues, they are merely getting more beer money over the bar at your expense. And don't tell me their contribution is the venue - they are delighted to have live music in - it means more punters and more sales. Think about that a bit more. If you play a charity event in a pub that normally has live music - if they put their normal band fee in the bucket then everyone is a winner (they would pay that to another non charity act anyway). If they don't, then they are getting a free band. Ask them - if they refuse, find another venue!In one of the comments on my post on Facebook, one chap said that it should be about the love of music, not the money. That is admirable and if only life could be like that. What it should really be about is being 'fair', and not having the musicians being taken advantage of. Sure - if nobody got paid for anything at all, then fine, but that is ultra utopian! How about this - I know some chefs whose sole passion in life is cooking, but would we expect them to give their meals away for free? Of course not. Just like that, playing music comes with costs. Not just the physical - the cost of gear, strings, fuel to get to the venue, but also time and effort in preparing the set and delivering it. Would you expect a plumber to fix a burst pipe for nothing? No. The examples are, of course endless.Another increasingly common response I am seeing from venues is, "you have to do the first gig for nothing, and if we like you we will book you again". On the face of it, that looks like an audition, but I am not so sure. Put it another way - try responding to that pub and tell them "I will be in your pub next Friday and I am going to sample your beers, perhaps have a bite to eat. I am not going to pay you though, but if I like what I try, then I may come back...."And then there is the huge corporate event type affair - totally driven by money, and during the planning someone thinks it would be a good idea to have live music on, but the committee agree that 'bands don't need paying'. Sound crazy? Earlier this year we were 'booked' at a pretty large Christmas Extravaganza to play on a couple of days. The event was expecting a footfall of about 500,000 people, and every one of those people pay £5 to get in (do the maths). Beyond that, activities inside such as ice skating, santa etc were charged extra. They put up stages, hired security, bar staff, promotion, glitzy brochures, websites, and took sponsorship money from one of the leading High Street Department Stores. What part of that (huge) budget did they put towards musicians? Not a penny. News on this broke and they faced a backlash from musicians in the UK. They suddenly changed their position claiming that the musicians they had booked were just amateurs, schools and the like. Were that true (it wasn't - they went on a drive through various Facebook music groups looking for 'bands'), I am not entirely sure it makes one jot of difference. This was a high turnover, totally corporate event that simply did not assume that bands should even get their costs paid. Their response to me was that it was their 'policy'. Laughable. We pulled out, though sadly I am aware of a ukulele outfit who are agreeing to play it on those terms...So why am I having this rant? Well it goes back to the reason I posted on Facebook. It is becoming increasingly common that venues are expecting performances for free. Perhaps it started with Open Mics (something I am kind of in two minds about, but will save that for another post), but I think it is also fuelled by performers who areto play for free. Think about it. If you play venue X for nothing, those venues DO talk to each other and when you approach venue Y, they may well think you are free as a matter of course. This then builds and builds. In our locality there are three fairly sizeable music festivals. In one (the one we play at) every band is paid by the individual venues. It isn't a lot of money but it does cover the costs. At another festival the bands are based in very similar pubs, but because they bill it as a 'free festival', the bands don't get paid. Therefore the venues, which are packed with revellers are getting free promotion. At the third (and this one really irritates me), they put up stages in a village (stage crew get paid) they provide PA (engineers get paid), they have traders and stallholders (who pay the event). The bands on the other hand get nothing. Not a penny. Quite ridiculous I am sure you will agree. The festival we agree to pay at proves it can work.And why does that matter - 'who cares?' you may think. If I want to play for free, I will do so - not up to you Barry.... Well, sure, but I'd suggest you bear in mind other performers. As I said above, performing in local venues puts you on the circuit with other bands. Some of those bands perform for a living. I mean it - that is their JOB. Gig money pays their bills and puts food on their table. If you support going in to venues and playing for nothing, that venue may start to realise that, 'hey - this is good! Free entertainment!!". And then that spreads. For the band that gig for a living, opportunities for them to make a dollar and keep gigging get squeezed out. It's actually happening, and if you are playing for nothing in a pub then I am sorry, but you are part of the problem no matter how you dress it up.I could get a bit more deep and meaningful too. I could point out that playing for nothing means you are placing zero worth on your skills and talent. That you are worthless. Is that how you feel about yourself? Perhaps you don't think you are ready for a booked live performance - that is fine - but don't go and take a slot that a band that relies on payment could fill by playing for nothing. (In some of the responses I have seen online on this subject, many people point out that if you are in a band that are continually playing venues for nothing, then you probably shouldn't be playing live in the first place..). And if you don't think you will get the money or are 'worth' the money, then, well... that is kind of the same point.In that regard, one comment I have had back on this subject represents an understandable concern many new bands or performers have. 'If I give them a price, they won't book me... I need to start somewhere'. Maybe, maybe not, but I know many venues that DO pay, and WILL give new bands a chance. If you are good you will get more bookings and get paid again. If you are not you won't. If you are in a band and cannot get a gig that pays you then as I said above, I would respectfully argue that you are probably not very good. That may sound blunt, but I can't see it any other way. Getting that first gig can be tough and that is where a website, Facebook page and sound recordings / videos will help you. All of that said, I am not against a loss leader if you are desperately looking to get that first gig. Reason with the venue if they reject your price. Offer perhaps a cut rate, or to get drinks and expenses. Then after performing go straight back (assuming it went well!) and ask for another booking but at the original rate you first asked for. If they like you I am sure you will get it. And remember if you step on the ladder and perform well, you will then get the very best form of promotion there is. Word of mouth.But hang on Barry - you are sounding a little obsessed with all this - very Capitalist of you.... is it all about the money?? Well that is unfair. In our band, we are never going to be rich doing this as there are 7 of us. In fact we do well to break even. But if we take our full set to a venue, it will involve hiring a van or taking three cars (and the fuel). We carry gear worth a few thousand quid, and we give our time. Those are actual costs. If we do make a profit, it gets ploughed back in to the band for improved gear. I see nothing wrong with that, and everything wrong with a venue who expects all that cost to be taken on the chin by the performer.So yes, this all concerns me. I know a lot of clubs who are performing for nothing. That coupled with the common misconception of the ukulele as something of a novelty is only adding to the struggle for it to be taken more seriously. If you think about it, it makes sense - 'oh yeah we had this band in, playing these little toy guitars... good fun, and they are free too of course...Just a bit of fun... You should book them at your place! (free of course). That perception IS out there. I have had it thrown back at me when trying to get a gig booked.So. Please don't devalue yourselves and exacerbate the problem. The point of this post isn't to criticise, but to make you think about what is fair. If you are playing your 30th gig for no recompense then that is surely nowhere near as impressive as being on your third that you are being booked and paid for in my view. In those cases the venue wants you and values you and that means something. And no, this isn't about holding venues to ransom, or money grabbing whilst forgetting the fun of playing the music. It's just about not being taken for a ride.Have fun!In reaching out to the N.S.A., which has extensive abilities to monitor global Internet traffic, the company may have been hoping to gain more certainty about the identity of the attackers. A number of computer security consultants who worked with other companies that experienced attacks similar to those of Google have stated that the surveillance system was controlled from a series of compromised server computers based in Taiwan. It is not clear how Google determined that the attacks originated in China.
A Google spokeswoman said the company was declining to comment on the case beyond what it published last month. An N.S.A. spokeswoman said, “N.S.A. is not able to comment on specific relationships we may or may not have with U.S. companies,” but added, the agency worked with “a broad range of commercial partners” to ensure security of information systems.
The agency’s responsibility to secure the government’s computer networks almost certainly was another reason Google turned to it, said a former federal computer security specialist.
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“This is the other side of N.S.A. — this is the security service that does defensive measures,” said the specialist, James A. Lewis, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s not unusual for people to go to N.S.A. and say ‘please take a look at my code.’ ”
The agreement will not permit the agency to have access to information belonging to Google users, but it still reopens long-standing questions about the role of the agency.
“Google and N.S.A. are entering into a secret agreement that could impact the privacy of millions of users of Google’s products and services around the world,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based policy group. On Thursday, the organization filed a lawsuit against the N.S.A., calling for the release of information about the agency’s role as it was set out in National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23, a classified 2008 order issued by President George W. Bush dealing with cybersecurity and surveillance.
Concerns about the nation’s cybersecurity have greatly increased in the past two years. On Tuesday, Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, began his annual threat testimony before Congress by saying that the threat of a crippling attack on telecommunications and other computer networks was growing, as an increasingly sophisticated group of enemies had “severely threatened” the sometimes fragile systems behind the country’s information infrastructure.
“Malicious cyberactivity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication,” he told the committee.
The relationship that the N.S.A. has struck with Google is known as a cooperative research and development agreement, according to a person briefed on the relationship. These were created as part of the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 and are essentially a written agreement between a private company and a government agency to work together on a specific project. They are intended to help accelerate the commercialization of government-developed technology.
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In addition to the N.S.A., Google has been working with the F.B.I. on the attack inquiry, but the bureau has so far declined to comment publicly or to share information about the intrusions with Congress.Your customer service resume should include a list of.These should be tangible skills, not just run of the mill things that everyone puts on their resume.For a customer service job, you’ll need to show off both hard and soft skills (skills related to technology/software as well as people skills).To create your customer service skills list, it helps to first write down all the work-related skills you can think of, just like you did when researching for your work experience section.Think about what you are good at and how it might apply to a customer service job.Here are a few ideas to get you started. You might not use the exact wording, but thinking about the customer service skills on this list will help you decide what to put on your resume.
GREAT LISTENERWhat your customers want isn’t just to speak with someone who can solve their problem; it’s to speak with someone who cares. This will lead to better customer satisfaction, fewer mistakes, and improved brand reputation.
GREAT COMMUNICATORCommunication is one of the most important customer service skills. Miscommunication can result in poor customer satisfaction or conflict.
CALMA customer service representative needs to stay calm when things get heated. Be patient and let the customer know you are working hard to solve the problem.
RELIABLEWhen you make a promise to a customer, you have to mean it. Do not make assumptions, and never over-promise. This customer service skill shows customers and employers they can rely on you.
ABLE TO “READ” CUSTOMERSA good customer service representative should be able to read the customer’s current emotional state. This is important in order to avoid misunderstanding and conflict.
WILLING TO LEARNYou should seek to become an expert at what you do. It will increase your confidence when dealing with customers, and make you more credible. Always work on developing your customer service skills.
MANAGE YOUR TIME WELLWhile research shows that you should spend time with customers, you should also be concerned with getting them what they want as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
GOAL ORIENTEDYour goals could be “reply to every customer within an hour” or “improve customer service satisfaction ratings by 15% by the end of the year.” Setting realistic goals and achieving them is a good way to grow your customer service skills.
GOES ABOVE AND BEYONDTry to consistently deliver beyond your customer’s expectations.
CLOSE THE DEALClosing the deal doesn’t only mean making a sale. It also means you should end every conversation with the customer feeling that everything has been taken care of.
HANDLE SURPRISESEven the most experienced customer care representative will sometimes face an unexpected situation. Knowing what to do and who to ask in those circumstances should be among your customer service skills.
USE POSITIVE LANGUAGESmall changes in the way you talk to your customers can make a big difference. For example, instead of telling a customer the product he is interested in is currently backordered and won’t be available for a month, tell him the product will be available next month and that you can place an order for him right now.
GREAT BODY LANGUAGEHaving good body language is often overlooked among customer service skills. Smiling frequently and expressing genuine happiness can help improve the customer’s experience. Even over the phone, using positive body language can affect the way your voice sounds to a customer.What are Intrusive Thoughts?
On a purely observational level intrusive thoughts are: ideas, urges, and images which are contrary to a person’s true character. Intrusive thoughts are a common attribute of OCD, but have been known to accompany other mental disorders. The three archetypes include: inappropriate aggressive thoughts, inappropriate sexual thoughts, and blasphemous religious thoughts.
More intraspectively: Intrusive thoughts are detrimental ideas and obsessions put forth by a chaotic agent within the mind, whose objective is to create mental anguish. This chaotic agent brings about psychological torment by forcing individuals to contemplate adverse ideas and obsessions which contradict their strongest convictions. By understanding that these thoughts come from a chaotic agent within the mind we are able to understand that they are purely: thought provoking, arbitrary, subjective and meaningless.
What are the typical types of Intrusive Thoughts?
Inappropriate aggressive thoughts are intrusive thoughts that may involve violent obsessions about hurting yourself or others. And may include, but not limited to the following examples:
Imagining or wishing harm upon the elderly;
Imagining or wishing harm upon loved ones or friends;
Impulses to violently attack or kill a human or animal;
Impulses to violently punish someone;
Impulses to jump off a bridge, mountain, or building;
Impulses to jump in front of a moving train or automobile; or
Impulses to push someone in front of a moving train or automobile.
Inappropriate sexual thoughts are intrusive thoughts that may involve sexual obsessions about partaking in improper sexual acts. And may include, but not limited to the following examples:
Thoughts and images involving violent and unconventional sexual acts;
Thoughts and images involving indecent sexual actions with: strangers, acquaintances, friends, family members, children or religious figures; or
Sexual thoughts and images that deviate from a person’s sexual identity.
Blasphemous religious thoughts are intrusive thoughts that may involve obscene obsessions relating to religion. And may include, but no limited to the following examples:
Thoughts and images involving sexual thoughts about God and religious figures;
Negative invasive thoughts accompanying prayer;
Thoughts and images of becoming possessed;
Fears of sinning and incorrectly performing religious rituals;
Constant reoccurring blasphemous thoughts; or
Urges to perform blasphemous actions.
What causes Intrusive Thoughts?
This is a topic of unfortunately very little debate and inquiry. Psychologists seem to know nothing about the origin of mental illnesses, but can ramble on for hours about their attributes. Luckily for us Sigmund Freud’s “death drive/instinct” theory seems to be the root cause for almost every psychiatric disorder.
Before we delve into Freud’s death instinct theory we must first develop a fundamental understanding of psychoanalysis, which I laid out for you in structural order below. To put it briefly our beliefs and actions are based upon two mental processes: the conscious and the unconscious. We are cognitively aware of our conscious, but completely unaware of the unconscious. The conscious represents the logical part of our mind, whereas the unconscious represents the irrational and instinctual side of our brain. The unconscious is made up of the: Id, Ego, and Super Ego.
At the very bottom of our minds lies the Id and it represents all our instinctual desires. Within the Id lies the death and life force. Above the Id lies the Super Ego which represents our conscience and filters out all negative impulses released by the Id. Overhead the Super Ego exists the Ego which is simply the morally filtered and modified impulses of the Id. On top of the Ego sits our consciousness. And our conscious includes all our current and potential thoughts.
Freud believed that mental life was regulated by two forces: the life force and the death force. The life force includes all positive human survival instincts. In opposition, the death force includes all negative human destructive instincts. During a child’s development the life force overpowers and suppresses the death force. Both forces give a human being libidinal satisfaction, however we are only consciously aware of the sexual pleasure radiated to us by the life force.
How does Freud’s death instinct theory play a role in psychiatric disorders, including intrusive thoughts? Simple, intrusive thoughts are a derivative of the dormant death force. Think about it like this: the death force is an agent for both mental and physical destruction. The goal of the death force as stated in Freud’s own words “is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state”. The death force does this by leading the body into both mental and physical anguish, with the end goal being internal and external death.
Below I laid out an image which explains my theory of an existent Chaotic Agent located within the death force of the Id. As I stated earlier the life force is supposed to suppress the death force and the Super Ego is supposed to blockade any harmful impulses coming from the Id. However, such processes and defenses are not always so robust and occasionally some negative impulses from the Id find their way into consciousness, even those originating from the death force.
One can think of the Chaotic Agent as a tunnel which stems from the bottom of the Id and continues forward all the way to consciousness. The width of the chaotic agent depends on one’s reaction to it. If a person pays absolutely no attention to the chaotic agent it will either shrink in width or completely disappear. However, if you react to the agent it will increase in width and proportionally so will the potency and supply of intrusive thoughts.
How do you end Intrusive Thoughts?
Now that we understand that intrusive thoughts are nothing more than spillage from the death instinct, what can one do to stop it? Firstly, we need to understand that these thoughts are coming from a chaotic agent within the brain. And this chaotic agent brings personal unwanted thoughts to the forefront of an individual’s mind. For example: let’s say you have the self-belief that bananas are immoral, the chaotic agent will then start presenting your mind with thoughts about bananas.
Understanding that intrusive thoughts only exist to induce distress is the first step in coping and resolving the problem. Secondly, we need to understand that these thoughts only exist if an individual allows them to exist. How exactly does one allow them to exist? A person allows them to exist by acknowledging their existence. Reacting to these thoughts only solidifies their existence and makes them become more powerful. Furthermore, responding to these ideas and obsessions only strengthens the chaotic agent. The best way to end intrusive thoughts is to be unresponsive towards them.
Another way to close the chaotic agent portal is to keep your mind preoccupied. If your brain is always busy then you are in essence evading the intrusive thoughts and your chaotic agent tunnel would surely lessen or dissipate. As the old adage goes, “An idle mind is the devils playground”.
Final Notes
The first time you behave nonreactive towards your intrusive thoughts they are going increase in frequency and severity. Luckily, this phase is very brief and helps you develop the automatic skill-set of fazing them out. The next time you react unresponsive towards your intrusive thoughts they will be decrease tremendously in occurrence and cogency. Continued use of this technique will close the chaotic agent tunnel.
It’s important to know that everyone experiences intrusive thoughts. And once your chaotic tunnel is closed new intrusive thoughts might surface to your consciousness. So it’s best you just not pay them any attention, otherwise your reaction towards them is going to open up another chaotic tunnel. Here’s one final tip. Don’t try blocking these thoughts out of your head, because you’ll be reacting to them, and that’s only going to strengthen the chaotic tunnel.
The techniques I presented in this article can be used to remedy almost any psychiatric disorder. I believe that most mental disorders manifest from a Chaotic Agent and more complex ones can spurt from trivial Chaotic Agents like the ones which cause intrusive thoughts. So, if this is an issue for you try to resolve it before it evolves into an even greater problem.
Good Luck! Feel free to e-mail me any questions or success stories. My e-mail is: dibster01@gmail.com.
AdvertisementsNo operating system can ever properly protect a computer from trojans as long as users continue to do silly things. Just because Linux is immune to your standard drive-by viruses it does not mean that it can escape trojan horses.
The latest reminder to be vigilant comes via the users unfortunate enough to download and install a malicious screensaver from gnome-look.org.
Although the malicious content is now removed, the code fragments left show what the trojan's potential may have been.
The program inserted a bash script into /usr/bin/ by using wget and then executing the script. Originally the script's contents were a ping command but this was later changed to:
rm -f /*.* echo "You see this? It's changed, before it was set to ping?"
Thankfully, the delete command above will be mostly ineffectual in Linux systems. But just as Windows users need to be wary of downloads from third-party sites, so too should Linux users not trust non-repository content.
The fix for this "infection" is rather simple, but despite the simplicity and ineffectiveness of this trojan, it should still serve as a Linux security wake-up call. Not for the operating system itself, but for the people using it.
If users continue to trust arbitrary code, then security risks will occur.SASKATOON – Michael Wileniec used to walk across the street from his Saskatoon high school several times a day and hang out with the rest of the smokers, although he was the only one puffing on prescribed medical marijuana.
His routine ended earlier this year when school officials told him he could not smoke prescribed weed on school grounds, nor could he attend classes while under its influence. Wileniec fought the ruling before the school board and lost.
“We got a reply |
, are typically modest in size, have many exceptions and are only tendencies, yet related together they constitute markedly distinctive and dimorphic sets of family resemblances for each sex.
Men are typically considerably more aggressive, competitive, and inclined to risk-taking or violent behaviours than women. Men, for instance, constitute the overwhelming majority of those within prisons in nations around the world and commit practically every crime at a higher rate than women. Across human societies, men are directly responsible for almost all serious violence and war. Men are consistently found to be much more promiscuous than women. Testosterone is correlated with higher levels of confidence, status assertion, and a higher sex drive. Men are also much more likely to take risks (both physical and intellectual), to be fearless, and to be treated as expendable by society.
Important differences in sociality exist too. Differences between the sexes emerge very early on, even before children have any conceptual appreciation of gender (e.g. 40 of 43 serious shootings by toddlers in 2015 were by boys!). Male groups are much more agonistic (not just physically, but also verbally and conversationally) and prone to direct violence; female groups can be much more prone to indirect and dissembled forms of social conflict. Women tend to prefer smaller groups; men tend to prefer larger ones. Male groups are more hierarchical in tendency; women’s are more likely to be egalitarian in their group norms. Women tend to be more people and social-emotional oriented than men; men tend to be more thing, task, and agency oriented than women. Women are more likely to have a verbal tilt in their ability; men are more likely to have a mathematical tilt. Worked out across societies and over time, these weighted tendencies have fairly consistently produced predictable patterns and far-reaching differences in male and female representation in various endeavours and roles. Indeed, these differences in gendered tendencies are often most pronounced in Western individualistic egalitarian societies, where people are freer to follow natural inclinations.
There is a wealth of research on these and related subjects, yet it is unfortunate that I should need to link to any of it. Much of it simply identifies facts that should be clearly apparent to anyone who pays attention to themselves, society, and the world around them, and hasn’t been forgetful of nature. Unfortunately, the facts in question are deeply politicized and contentious, as they radically undermine the possibility of culturally ascendant denaturing feminist projects in so many of their contemporary configurations.
Byrd’s case rests in part upon an interpretation of the Hebrew terms ezer kenegdo in Genesis 2:18. Unfortunately, rendering this as ‘necessary ally’ doesn’t tell us all that much about the way that men and women are actually to relate. Taken by itself such a term is quite vulnerable to the impressionistic importation of extra-scriptural ideology. It is far more illuminating to observe the manner in which Scripture describes the relation between men and women functioning and failing. As we study this, the manner in which the woman is the man’s ‘necessary ally’ will become more clearly apparent.
Perhaps the most striking thing to observe here is that, contrary to Byrd’s account, Scripture powerfully and repeatedly emphasizes the moral suasion exercised by women in relation to their husbands. On regular occasions, wives or women are presented as either leading their husbands or other men astray (Eve with Adam, Sarai’s gift of Hagar to Abram, Solomon and his foreign wives, Jezebel with Ahab, Herodias and Herod) or as the wise counsellors of men in their lives (Abigail and David, Bathsheba and David, Esther and Ahasuerus).
The book of Proverbs has this principle at its heart: the young man’s quest for the personified Wisdom over her counterpart Folly is paralleled and related with his quest for a wife. These two interwoven themes finally coincide in the acrostic presentation of the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31. The quest for wisdom is about the party to whom you will give your heart. As men give their hearts to women and Wisdom, women have a tremendous power to move and inspire them.
Once again, this is not a claim that women are more virtuous than men. It develops beyond the recognition that the presence of women tends to provoke in men and male society an appreciation of a specific moral telos that encourages the development of character. It relates women to the force of wisdom in men’s lives, expressing the truth that a good and wise woman elicits and encourages virtue in a man who is loving, faithful, and attentive to her. Men and women are akin to different musical instruments, each wonderfully displaying the same virtues, yet in quite contrasting ways.
I have identified three different areas where an unhelpful narrowing of focus can be seen in Byrd’s piece. First, she fails to attend to the pronounced empirical differences between men and women as groups that Stanton highlighted. Second, she handles historical understandings of gender roles as if unalloyed ideology, rather than as practical attempts to respond to and address prevailing social realities, realities that arose in part on account of natural differences between the sexes. Third, she restricts her biblical analysis to an unclear term in relative isolation, rather than seeking to ascertain the larger biblical picture. At each of these points, she limits the part that nature, empirical reality, and scriptural narrative are permitted to play in the conversation. As these dimensions are marginalized, unchecked gender ideologies are given ever freer rein. Christian teaching on the subject becomes ever more of an abstraction, slipping its moorings in concrete natural, historical, and biblical reality.
It is not my intention to pick upon Byrd here: she is merely illustrative of problems that are far more widely evident, problems of which others may be more fitting exemplars. However, these problems have unfortunate consequences. Where we cease to be attentive to nature, to the nitty-gritty of history, and to the breadth of biblical teaching, complementarian teaching may appear to be somewhat arbitrary, willfully selective, or to rest on peculiar contingencies of redemptive history. The fact that complementarian theology has become an -ism in our quarters is in part a result of this, I believe. The prescriptive and the ideological have eclipsed the descriptive.
Biblical Teleology and Sexual Realism
By contrast, the focus in the biblical teaching on sex is less upon gender roles and rules than it is upon the fact that men and women are created differently, for different purposes, with different strengths, and with different natural orientations. The teaching is principally descriptive, rather than prescriptive: men and women have different callings because they were created as different ‘genres’ of human being. For instance, the fact that, across ages and human cultures and down to the present day, men have dominated in the exercise of direct social power is not a result of ideology or even of sin, even though in our world it is invariably adumbrated and attended by both respectively. In speaking of man as the ‘head’, Scripture isn’t primarily saying that the man should be the head: it is saying that the man is the head. Although such statements are not merely descriptive, we should never miss the descriptive force that lies at their heart.
Attempts to avoid or dissemble this reality often proceed from a methodological atomization (a problem that many of the studies I linked above share). Groups are broken down to individuals and individuals are broken down to individual traits. This assumption often drives a quest for one universal set of characteristics that can or should be applicable to each and every man or woman. An inordinate amount of attention is given to the variation within men and women as groups and upon the overlaps between them, variation and overlap that supposedly scuppers any attempt to speak meaningfully of sex differences.
This methodological atomization blinds us to the differences that play out on the broader planes in which traits are integrated within persons, persons within larger groups, and larger groups within societies. Many of the most significant differences between men and women emerge on these levels. Men and women are not just defined by the differences between two classes of atomized individuals, each class considered in detachment from the other. The fuller meaning of maleness, for instance, tends to emerge as men relate to women. This is not difference ‘as such’ between two detached entities, but a more specific set of differences that emerges through our relations, like the beautiful differences-in-relation that constitute a piece of music. Differences between men and women are also differences between men and women as social groupings, social groupings in which differences come to fuller flowering. For particular men, for instance, this means that one becomes a man as one learns to be a man among men and as one learns to be a man to a particular woman and/or to women more generally.
Finally, as two distinct genders—genres—of human beings, men and women represent two distinct solidarities. It is in these larger solidarities that the greater differences can be seen, differences that are seldom so obvious in any single member of them. We are the ‘sons of Adam’ and the ‘daughters of Eve’, terms capture some of the underlying logic at play in Genesis and elsewhere in Scripture. When we think in terms of these solidarities, we will recognize that the more extreme or particular manifestations of manliness or womanliness, and not just the lowest common denominators and more universal features, are significant. For instance, although most men don’t work directly in construction and agriculture, it is still the sons of Adam who are peculiarly and overwhelmingly responsible for taming and exercising dominion over the wildness of the world. While many women may be single or childless, the daughters of Eve are still the ones through whom life and the wider communion of society come.
Conclusion
The distinguishing features of each sex are more akin to family resemblances than to absolute and universal differences. As individual members of a given sex, we show a remarkable and beautiful variation among ourselves, while still being recognizably members of our sex, a sex quite distinct and different from the other. Each of us can manifest different facets of what it means to be a man or woman, while being bound together by our participation in a broader subjective and intersubjective reality that we hold in common with other members of our sex.
Reacquainting ourselves with the ubiquitous natural reality of sexual difference is difficult in a gender neutralizing society in which we have been trained not to notice or to resist it. It is also difficult in churches where sexual difference has been so extensively ideologized and cut off from its roots in nature. However, within such a renewal of our communion with this natural reality, the possibility of a rediscovery of the rich poetry of sexuate sociality is opened up. The beauty of a delightful difference that is not merely difference as such, but, as it were, a musical polyphony of mutually eliciting glorious modes of personhood escapes a society that balks at the natural reality of the sexes. Yet ears once stubbornly covered in resistance or dulled by joyless prescriptions and abstract ideologies can be reopened to the music of nature, exciting us into the liberating flow of creation’s dance.Updated: As Russian Internet providers start blocking Wikipedia, the banned entry is taken off blacklist
Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin's media watchdog agency, has ordered Russian Internet providers to block a page on Wikipedia about charas (a hashish form of cannabis). Over the weekend, the website' users changed the name and the URL of the article, hoping to satisfy the technical requirements of a court order issued in Astrakhan in late June. Roskomnadzor officials said today that these steps are insufficient. The agency also says experts from the federal anti-drug police have confirmed that the content contained in the Wikipedia article is illegal.
Last week, Roskomnadzor threatened that banning one article on Wikipedia would result in the complete blocking of the website, insofar as it uses https protocol. “In the event that [Wikipedia] refuses to comply with the court’s ruling," the agency said in an announcement, "Roskomnadzor will block the webpage on Russian territory using the registry of illegal information. In this case, insofar as Wikipedia has decided to function on the basis of https, which doesn’t allow restricting access to individual pages on its site, the entire website would be blocked.”
Earlier in August, Roskomnadzor briefly banned the popular website Reddit. The offending content was a page titled, "Minimal and Reliable Methods for Growing Psilocybe [Mushrooms]." Because Reddit uses https protocol for secure communication, many Russian Internet providers (perhaps 30 percent, according to Roskomnadzor) would have blocked the website in its entirety. It is unclear why Roskomnadzor, in its threat against Wikipedia, implies that https would require the entire website to be blocked for more than 30 percent of Russian Internet users.Welcome to Ars Arcanum, the MTGO stats-based limited column. This installment is a draft overview of Khans of Tarkir (KTK). For this article, I’ve watched hundreds of matches of KTK draft on MTGO, gathered data points from the games, crunched the numbers, and analyzed the data. As always, I’ll take a look at the speed of the format, the popularity and win rates of the main color combinations, and the key principles of how to draft the format.
KTK has been an interesting nut to crack. It’s been getting a lot of positive press. People are comparing it to Innistrad as possibly the best draft format ever. Every time I draft KTK, I feel like I’m having more fun than the time before. It’s complex, and everyone seems to have a different opinion on what is good, and it feels like there is a diverse array of archetypes and strategies. For myself, I’ve had more fun so far in KTK than any other format, but I’m not certain that it will hold my long term attention quite in the same way as INN did. Either way, it’s still going to be either first or second on my list of favorite formats. But that doesn’t paint the entire picture of KTK; I’ve talked to a lot of people that aren’t quite so enthusiastic about the set, among different parts of the internet and among casual players. For the enfranchised player, this is the perfect set, because it is both complex and fun; but many casual and irregular players have said that while the format is enjoyable, they just can’t figure out how to draft it competitively. KTK is the most skill-intensive draft format in years, and it is hard for people to figure out. Not in the same way that Dragon’s Maze was, which was just hard because the mana was so bad, but hard because there doesn’t seem to be a consensus about the best decks, and because navigating the draft itself requires a very deft hand and a lot of nuance. Hopefully this article will help bridge the gap for a lot of those players, and give them a place to plant their flag and figure out how to enjoy KTK like the enfranchised players.
As a reminder, my philosophy for these articles is to provide data that people can use as a reference tool and discussion starter, but I’ve never intended to write blueprints for drafting a format. These articles cover a specific period of time, and while I dig deep into the data for that period, the data is already out of date by the time you read these articles. The principles hold strong, but the specifics are things that you are going to have to figure out for yourself. Hopefully these articles can point you in the right direction.
With that said, let’s look at the data.
Speed
Ending Turn of Games in KTK Draft
Ending Turn of Games in KTK Draft as Compared with Set Averages
Ending Turn of Games in KTK Draft as Compared with JBT Draft
I always like to start off by looking at the speed of the format. This informs every other part of the format. In my Khans of Tarkir Spoiler Analysis I predicted that this would be a slow format because of the large number of high toughness creatures, because of the low average power per converted mana cost, and because three color decks would require some mana to be eaten up by fixing. This was not a particularly bold prediction, though there were plenty of naysayers, but it turns out that this analysis was spot on. We see no games ending before turn five, and barely any games ending on turns five or six. At turn seven and eight, we start to see games ending, but still significantly fewer than in typical sets. We don’t see the speed peak until turns nine and ten, which are typically where the ending turn graph starts to drop off sharply. We then see the numbers showing higher in KTK for each category throughout the rest of the game.
This is a slow set. Typically, games are going to last about two turns longer than in the typical draft format. In Magic, that is a really long time. It’s the difference between getting to seven lands instead of six. It’s means drawing farther into your deck. But most important, it means you are able to use about 12 to 15 more mana over the course of a game, and it means more combat steps, especially with larger creatures. The biggest cause of these long games is board stalls; this is a format with a lot of high toughness creatures, and it usually isn’t too difficult to clog up the board so that no one is able to attack. This makes creatures like Mystic of the Hidden Way and Archers’ Parapet more valuable than they would normally be, since they can close out long board stalls. It also makes expensive cards more viable. Cards like Duneblast, Pearl Lake Ancient, and even things like Treasure Cruise and Shambling Attendants are significantly better in this set than they would be in other sets, because you know you are going to get enough mana to cast them.
With that said, my biggest worry when I say that a format is slow is that people will dramatically overreact and try to draft incredibly slow decks with nothing resembling a good curve, and that is definitely incorrect in KTK. This is a format about board control, and it is vitally important to establish board control as quickly as possible. Even though the format is slow, it is still important to get things down on the battlefield early and often. Two drops and morphs are key in this set, because they allow to take initiative and shape the battlefield around your plan, rather than just reacting to your opponent. Furthermore, even though the format is slow, ten turns is still faster than most people realize a Magic game lasts, and 53% of KTK games still end before turn 11. On top of that, there are still plenty of aggressive decks that are doing everything they can to prey on the slow decks, and you need to have a game plan against those decks.
In fact, if I were to choose a word to best describe KTK block, it wouldn’t be slow; it would be mana-intensive. I have won so many games of KTK simply because I played a land on each of the first five turns, put some stuff on the board, and unmorphed a big creature. My primary draft partner, Zach Orts, and I have even realized that five land hands with a morph are almost always keeps in this format, because even if you start to flood out, you’ll usually have something important to do with your mana. KTK gives you a lot of chances to use mana, but it also gives you a lot of ways to make use of that mana, and the person that uses the most mana over the course of a game is almost always going to win. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to overemphasize the importance of morphs in this format. Every morph is playable, but especially the morphs that can flip up for five or more mana, since they have such a dramatic impact on the board in the late game. Abzan Guide, Abomination of Gudul, and Woolly Loxodon are some of my favorite commons in the set because they allow you to play something to impact on the board, while also essentially letting you draw a high powered creature in the late game.
Popularity
Popularity of Archetypes in KTK Draft
Enemy Color Pair Popularity in KTK Draft
Color Popularity in KTK Draft
Before going into popularity, I do want to talk about one weakness in this particular study. This is a set focused around the clans, and it features multicolor to an extent. However, for a multicolor set, this is definitely the least “multicolorish” of the bunch. When we talk about Abzan as a clan, it’s important to remember that this is an umbrella that includes WBg decks, BGw decks, and WGb decks. This causes a particular problem with the data in this study. It’s difficult to distinguish between a deck that is WB splashing green, vs. a deck that is BG splashing W. This means that the data relating to the clans is not necessarily precise. I tried to build in some tools to differentiate between these decks, but unfortunately it was just not possible to create a method that accurately reflected the difference in those decks. Basically, keep this in the back of your mind as you read about the clans.
It’s not hard to look at these charts and figure out what people are drafting in KTK. Abzan is the deck. It’s drafted 1.25x as often as the next closest deck, and about 1.6x as often as the rest of the other three clans. Nearly a quarter of all decks in the format are Abzan decks, which means you will likely see two Abzan decks in a given draft. There were also many drafts that I watched in the data gathering where four of the decks were Abzan based. On top of that, the next most popular clan shares WB with Abzan. These colors are being drafted heavily.
This has an interesting impact on the format. The Abzan deck tends to be grindy (though it can be fast), and having such a large chunk of the format revolve around that deck has an overall slowing effect on the format. It is the epitome of midrange, and leads to a lot of board stalls, which is where outlast starts to shine.
The thing I find interesting is that the two next two most popular combinations are both in the aggressive slice of the format. Both Mardu and Jeskai decks are mostly focused around killing your opponent quickly. A lot of Mardu decks do this by going wide and overwhelming their opponent with sheer numbers. The Jeskai decks tend to use evasive creatures and tempo spells to land a powerful threat early, and then keep their opponent on the backfoot. It can generate large bursts of damage to win out of nowhere. Neither of these decks are particularly comfortable going into the late game, though there are certainly builds of these decks that can go pretty long.
With that said, the numbers between Jeskai, Temur, and Sultai are all so close that it is essentially a statistical tie. Each draft will usually feature one of those decks on average. They are certainly drafted, and they have people that like them a lot, but they aren’t drafted with quite the intensity of the other clans. Finally, I decided to show the popularity of the five color decks and the two color aggro decks. The five color deck has become more and more popular over the past few weeks, but it still doesn’t score very high on popularity on this study. Basically, there just aren’t enough lands in the draft to support a lot of five color drafters. A drafter can get forced off of this plan simply by virtue of being in a pod where the clan drafters value lands highly. Two color decks also show up infrequently, but often enough that they are a force in the format.
Historically, Abzan is one of the most heavily drafted decks that I have ever look at in this article series. Relative to the format, it is just crazy how often people want to be in that deck, and this warps the entire rest of the format around the deck. We would certainly expect to see Abzan’s win rate affected by this overdrafting, probably dropping it somewhere in the range of 5 to 15 percentage points, but it’s impossible to know what kind of win rate it would achieve if it were only drafted a little less frequently.
Now that we know what decks people are bringing to the table, let’s take a look at how those decks are performing.
Colors and Archetypes
Win Rate of Major Archetypes in KTK Draft
Win Rate by Enemy Color Guild Pairs in KTK Draft
Win Rate by Color in KTK Draft (does not include 5 color decks)
Draft Savage Punch.
These charts are full of juicy details, but one key factor should jump to the front immediately, and it is that green is the strongest color in the format. In fact, I think that Savage Punch is the best common the format. I had Debilitating Injury rated higher at the beginning of the format, but I’ve moved up Savage Punch for two reasons. First, it is in the best color, and second, it just kills a wider range of creatures. But let’s dig deeper into the data.
One thing you might notice on the chart for the colors is that all of them are above 50%. This is because I didn’t include the data from the 5 color decks in their categories. There wasn’t a practical way for me to divide the 5 color decks up by the density of each color in those decks, so I just cut it out of the color win rate calculation. Because the win rate of 5 color decks is so slow, that bumps up the rates of all the colors.
The Clan Win Rate chart basically sits in three tiers. We have the top tier, which is all at a statistical tie with Temur, Two Color, and Abzan all leading the way. Then we the second tier which includes Sultai and Jeskai in basically a tie hovering around 50%, with Mardu very close behind. Finally, we have 5 color that is just bring up the caboose.
The most important thing you should notice about this chart is that Abzan has a really high win rate considering that it is one of the most heavily overdrafted color combinations that I’ve ever studied. It clocks in at almost a 60% win rate, despite still making up a quarter of the metagame. In fact, about 12% of Abzan’s matches were against the mirror. This means that in around one out of eight of its matches, it is automatically getting a 50% win rate. Excluding those matches, Abzan comes in at 59%. However, being drafted so heavily certainly dilutes the quality of those Abzan decks a little bit, and we can only imagine that it would be performing at above 60% if it was drafted in the same range as the other decks in the field. I think that it is safe to call Abzan as the best deck in the format, and it is certainly the defining deck in the format.
With that said, people are only going to be drafting Abzan more and more heavily. If it keeps performing well even when drafted this heavily, people are just going to stick to it and keep forcing the deck over and over. Drafting Abzan is a great skill to have, but I think it’s important to understand how the other good decks are functioning in order to have a backup plan in case that deck doesn’t come together.
The other two decks that are performing very well are Temur and Two Color Aggro decks. I can say that it warms my heart to see Temur performing so well. Simic is my guild, and UG decks are where my heart lies, and I like to see a UG based deck performing so well. Of course, you have two main flavors of Temur; one is the RG Apline Grizzly + Savage Punch deck that just tries to play giant creatures and hit hard, and then burn your opponent out with Arrow Storms in the midgame, and the other version is the UG deck that’s a little slower, but tries to land big threats and then keep creatures off the board with bounce spells while you attack for huge swings of damage, and then finish off your opponent with an evasive creature like Jeskai Windscout and Mystic of the Hidden Way. Temur basically plays big creatures for cheap and smashes face with them, while backing it up with tempo spells. This deck is particularly well suited in the metagame. Aggro decks are being ground into chunks by the huge number of Abzan decks in the field, and Temur can definitely be fragile if your opponent just hits the board running faster than you do. However, Temur is particularly well positioned against Abzan. Abzan wants to clog up the ground, but Temur has efficient evasive creatures. Abzan also tries to control the mid game by flipping up large morphs or using outlast to make large creatures, and the blue tempo spells are good at making your opponent’s waste time and mana on those cards.
Another deck that would be easy to overlook is the Sultai deck. It’s coming in just a hair under 50%, but I think that number is deceptive regarding its true strength. Sultai shares enemy color pairs with two clans; Abzan and Temur. Those are the two best performing clans in the format, so it seems strange that Sultai would perform so much lower. My theory is that since Temur and Abzan are more popular than Sultai, they are leeching away a lot of Sultai’s powerful cards. I think that the best Sultai decks aren’t really built around the Delve mechanic, but instead take advantage of the best parts of both Abzan and Temur, and pair them up with a few really powerful card advantage spells in the late game. I also think that people are shying away from Sultai because they’ve seen Temur and Abzan be popular, so they are naturally drifting towards those color combinations when a Sultai deck would have been a better fit for their draft seat. I would not be surprised if Sultai ends up being one of the better decks down the stretch.
The last deck that I want to talk about is the 5 Color deck. This deck performed very badly in the games that I watched. Over and over again I would watch decks built around Trail of Mysteries or Secret Plans just lose because they either couldn’t put together their mana quickly enough to build up a board presence, or because they simply didn’t have enough depth to the cards in their deck. However, I think there is a tremendous disparity between the way this deck performed and the expectations that people have for the deck. Among enfranchised players, it is a pet deck, and a lot of pro players have been talking about how strong it is. I know that a lot of people have tried to go into the format forcing the deck. It’s been called the best deck in the format many times, and it seems strange for it to put up such poor results in this study, but I think there are two important reasons why.
First, the 5 Color deck is a very difficult one to draft, build, and play. I think one of the reasons why there is such a difference between pro players estimation of the deck and its actual performance is because when it is in the hands of a great player, it’s going to be a lot better than when it is in the hands of an average player. The 5 Color deck requires players to make a lot of subtly nuanced picks during the draft portion, but those picks can make a huge difference in the power of the deck. It is an exercise in balancing power level with consistency, and a lot of the skill in drafting the deck comes from intuitively knowing the line between when you should take a card for its power and when you should take a land to make it easier to cast your spells. Inexperienced players will tend to skew towards to different problems with the deck, they’ll either take lands too high and end up without enough powerful cards to win their matches, or they’ll take multicolor cards to highly and not end up with enough fixing to cast their spells reliably. It’s also difficult to put together the mana bases for this deck, and to figure out which cards exactly are the most important to include in the deck. Finally, the deck is also difficult to play, because it requires a player to sequence their spells very precisely, or face imminent disaster. All these factors add up to a deck that is just stronger in the hands of experience drafters, and it’s not hard to see why pro players would experience a lot of success with the deck, while the bulk of regular players would fail miserably with it.
The second problem with the 5 Color deck is one that I’ve harped on over and over in this series, and it’s the problem of effective strategies vs. powerful strategies. The 5 Color deck is an example of a powerful strategy. When it comes together, it is a work of art. You land an early Trail of Mystery, and then you drop 3 or 4 morphs, maybe you slam a Secret Plans and hold off your opponent while you start flipping up your morphs. If everything comes together, you are going to demolish your opponent in a deluge of card advantage. Those games make players feel powerful, it leaves you with this adrenaline rush because you just demolished your opponent, and there was nothing that they could do. However, other times the deck just won’t come together, probably because the mana didn’t quite work out. The problem is that this messes with our psychology as humans. It’s easy for us to remember the times when the deck performs beautifully, but we’ll be more likely to sweep the other times under the rug, and just pass it off as getting unlucky with our mana. One of the biggest problems I see with people’s Magic game is that they think that powerful decks are the best decks, and they overvalue power when they are talking about Magic, and when they are drafting the cards for their decks. On the other side of the coin, I love to draft effective decks. For example, one of my favorite cube decks consists of fair White and Green creatures with Ajani, Elspeth, or Parallax Wave. It’s not the kind of deck that wins on turn two, but it always puts up good game against any deck, and it is effective at barely betting opponent’s with regularity. It’s also a boring deck. It’s the kind of deck that people often avoid. However, I have found that success in limited is found on the back of effective decks, rather than just powerful ones. The showiness of the deck is not something that you record on the match slip; it doesn’t matter if you drew 15 more cards than your opponent, or if you attacked them down to negative 20 life. The only thing that matters if you get 2 in the win slot. The best performing decks in this study are the ones that can consistently and effectively do that.
With all of that said, I think it’s also important to notice how even the win rates are in this format. All of these decks are performing very closely to the 50% mark except for 5 Color. A few archetypes are standing out above the others, but not dramatically so. One of the important things I’ve noticed about this format is that it makes it possible for players to approach it from a lot of different angles and still be successful. I would be hesitant to say that any one particular strategy is the best way to draft the format, and I suspect that over the lifetime of the format, we’re going to see metagame shifts that make each strategy the best for a period of time. This is one of the most open formats I’ve ever seen, and perhaps that is why I’m enjoying it so much.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Thanks again for reading. Her are my conclusions and recommendations for the format.
1. KTK is a fairly slow format. Seven drops are playable, though you still want to focus on having a low curve.
2. KTK games often develop into stalled boards. Having cards that can punch through these board stalls for the win is especially useful. Outlast creatures, evasive creatures, and card advantage spells are all particularly strong because they are so good in these situations.
3. Play 18 lands and play first. This is a mana intensive format, and it is important to you hit three and five mana on time. More KTK games are decided on this than anything else. However, morph initiative is also important, and being the first person to get down a morph, and then the first to attack with five open mana gives you a tremendous advantage.
4. Abzan is the best deck in the format. It has plenty of ways to clog up the board, Outlast is particularly well-suited for board stalls, and it has removal to pick off evasive creatures. It also has plenty of card advantage spells to gain an advantage in the late game.
5. Temur is a strong foil to Abzan, because its commons are particularly well-suited to fight Abzan’s key strategies.
6. While 5 Color decks are very popular among pro players, they are probably too difficult for the average player to draft effectively.
As always, you can follow me on twitter @oraymw for updates about articles. I’ve also put up a Tumblr account at http://oraymw.tumblr.com/ where I post links to my articles. You can go there and subscribe to the RSS feed, and then you’ll be able to get updates whenever a new article goes live.By Brian Foster
Abstract
Reincarnation is an accepted process for Spiritists. The need to atone for your sins in the next life is well known. But there are other reasons for re-birth as well, the spirit Andre Luiz delves deeper into the need for varied experiences and sheds light on the complexities in our learning here on earth in two of his books, Missionaries of the Light and Workers of the Life Eternal, both psychographed by Francisco C. Xavier.
Introduction
To understand the need for multiple lives, even for those whose rays of goodness made an impact on earth in their previous existence, we need to understand why even the best of us must return to earth to complete our studies. The most common perception for the need for each successive life is the requirement to pay off our debts incurred in our previous life. The next thought that comes to us is the need to perform good deeds and be a positive influence for those around us. While all of this is true, there are more complex reasons at work.
The great Brazilian medium, Francisco C. Xavier, who publish more than 400 books in his life time, psychographed a series of books by a deceased Brazilian doctor named Andre Luiz. Using Francisco C. Xavier (known as Chico Xavier), Andre Luiz dictated these books so we here on earth could understand what goes on in the Spirit world.
Andre Luiz’s first book, Nossa Lar, is the story of his death and about his wandering in the place between heaven and hell, as an atonement for his past sins. Eventually he was rescued by good
Spirits who took him to a heavenly city named Nossa Lar. He was tasked by the Spirit world to assist various teams of Spirits, so he could relay to us the different types and methods of work that exist in the Spirit life after physical death. Many of his books have been translated |
it right-to-work, but I think it is a much better description to say that this is about fairness in the workplace and equality in the workplace,” Snyder said.
Snyder said he was asking for an act to be passed promptly and he would sign it when it arrived on his desk.
Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger and Republican Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville said they believe there are enough votes to pass the legislation and aimed to get it done by the end of 2012. It would not take effect until possibly three months into 2013, Richardville said.
“This debate has been ongoing in Michigan for decades and specifically in this legislature for two years now,” Bolger said.
There will be separate bills covering private unions and government unions.
Snyder’s decision to pursue the legislation marks a reversal for the governor, who had said that a right-to-work law would be too divisive. On Thursday, he said Indiana’s actions earlier this year helped influence his decision.
“I think this is what is best for Michigan,” Snyder said.
Snyder acknowledged Thursday the demonstrations at the Capitol and the strong feelings people had about the issue.
“We have come to the point over the last few weeks and the last month or two where that issue was on the table whether I wanted it to be there or not,” Snyder said.
Michigan voters in November rejected a measure that would have enshrined a right to collective bargaining in the state constitution, leading to renewed calls from state lawmakers to take up the right-to-work issue before the end of the year.
“Right-to-work” laws typically allow workers to opt out of paying union dues and bar requirements that an employee must join a union to work in a certain shop.
Supporters say the laws help attract or keep businesses, while opponents say they suppress workers’ wages and benefits and are aimed at undermining the financial stability of unions.
The Michigan Chamber of Commerce on Monday gave its support for a “right-to-work” law while the Metropolitan Affairs Coalition, which includes both business and labor interests, last week urged Michigan not to pursue such a law.
Michigan had the fifth highest percentage of workers in the country who are union members in 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.“The Lost Town” – Square Pegs in Round Holes (Flickr) – click any image for full size
Update, February 26th: I’ve received a note saying that Square Pegs in Round Holes and Purple Crayons, Rwah’s other region (see my post on it), will be closing on March 5th, 2015.
When I last visited Square Pegs in Round Holes, the region hadn’t long been opened. As I reported at that time – September 2014 – it was largely a water-based region, with a series of islands visitors could explore. Since then, much has changed.
Rwah, the region holder has decided to offer the homestead region to those builders with a serious desire to build a region-sized installation which can be enjoyed by the public at large. To start things off, Jordy B. Zipdash was invited to create something in the region, and he came up with a darkly atmospheric build in the form of The Lost Town.
A lonely wind moans its way down a long road from a distant tunnel, passing between the careworn buildings of a run-down town. Tumble-weeds roll their way across the asphalt at the wind’s behest, while tall hills, bare rock denuded of vegetation, hem the town in, their bulk adding a sinister edge to the fading light.
“The Lost Town” – Square Pegs in Round Holes (Flickr) – click any image for full size
At the far end of town, the road makes a hard right turn before running arrow-straight to the mouth of another tunnel, passing a deserted trailer park and other human detritus before finally leaving this shabby corner of the world behind.
This might once have been a thriving town; there’s the imposing form of a bank on one side of the street (long-since converted to a bar), and the place even boasted a casino – the Starlite, although this has also gone through something of a transformation, becoming some kind of church; and even this seems to be well beyond any regular use, the desert sands drifting in through a back doorway and taking up residence between the pews.
But this isn’t to say the town is deserted; across the road from the shell of the old casino sits a small store and three well-maintained houses, the gleaming form of a car sitting on the driveway to one of them. Fires glow in the hearths of both places, and all have a feeling of cosy warmth about them, and by day look as if they’ve been lifted from quiet suburbia. Even so, within them, things seem a little odd; where are the occupants, given all three houses appear to have been in recent use? And why are all three bedrooms devoid of any furnishings whatsoever…?
“The Lost Town” – Square Pegs in Round Holes (Flickr) – click any image for full size
“Have you ever heard of a little mining town called Centralia?” Jordy asks by way of citing the inspiration for this installation. “If not, fire up your search engine and read up on the place and how it came to be a little deserted town. Here in the Lost Town, the same abandonment happened. Not by fire or elemental damage but something far more sinister.”
Indeed, the air of mystery here, with its sinister undertones, is hard to avoid. It comes not only in the perpetual, wind-shrouded dusk that lies over the place, but also from the signs and portents hidden within some of the buildings. However, to find the whole truth, you may well have to venture out into the desert, beyond the little lake with its dilapidated barn. but be careful! “Don’t venture out too far in the desert,” Jordy warns, “Mighty strange goings-on out there, if you ask me.”
So don’t say he didn’t warn you…
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AdvertisementsArsene Wenger admits Arsenal have missed Aaron Ramsey’s box-to-box dynamism and confirmed that his medical team have finally found the cause of the muscular problems that have plagued him since August.
The Welsh midfielder has been sidelined four times this season, on three occasions with a dicky hamstring, but is fit to partake in Wednesday night’s game against QPR.
Speaking ahead of the trip to Loftus Road, the boss backed the Gunners’ 2014 Player of the Year to find his feet quickly.
“[We’ve missed] his energy level, his transitional play from offence to defence and from defence to attack and his box-to-box qualities.
“When you have a repetition of muscular injuries, in can put the handbrake on your body a little bit. To get rid of that is a psychological problem.
“I don’t think he suffers from that, looking at him in training. Certainly, you lose a bit of confidence in your body.”
Back in February Wenger admitted he and his medical team had been left stumped by Ramsey’s situation, stating: “There is an underlying reason that is medical or bio-mechanical, because he’s a guy who is serious and works hard. There is no obvious reason why he should have muscular injuries.”
Asked this morning if the club had made progress in the last month, Wenger noted (with a coy grin on his face) that the news is positive: “We think yes [we’ve found the cause of the problem].”
When asked whether he’d share the details, he made clear, “No.”
They didn’t ask us – we’re not doctors – but we reckon having your leg literally snapped in two by a massive c*nt didn’t help. Either way Arseblog News is off to the bookies to put a suitcase of cash on Ramsey doing his hamstring against tomorrow. We kid, we kid. Sort of.
Hopefully the lad will be walking on water again soon…A trial starts tomorrow in federal court about whether Michigan's ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional, and as the New York Times explained over the weekend, it will offer an interesting test of the best research conservatives could come up with to support their contention that gay parents are bad for children. When we take a close look at what they'll put on the stand, it shows something that I think applies to a lot of areas of the conservative movement these days: when they try to play seriously on the field of ideas, what they come up with is, frankly, pathetic.
After years of watching researchers fail to find any ill effects of children being brought up by gay people, conservatives felt like they had to do something, and here's what they did:
In meetings hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington in late 2010, opponents of same-sex marriage discussed the urgent need to generate new studies on family structures and children, according to recent pretrial depositions of two witnesses in the Michigan trial and other participants. One result was the marshaling of $785,000 for a large-scale study by Mark Regnerus, a meeting participant and a sociologist at the University of Texas who will testify in Michigan.
So, they throw a ridiculous amount of money at an academic who's friendly to their position but knows what he's doing, and they figure, now we'll have the support we need to bolster our case. And what is he able to come up with? The result, which has been heralded by conservatives and anti-gay organizations, is this study. I want to talk about it briefly, because if this is the best they can do, it shows what a poor position they're in.
The problem in studying the question of how having gay parents affects children is that gay people are a relatively small portion of the population, so getting a sample that includes enough of them to allow for comprehensive analysis is difficult. But Regnerus's sample, of young adults who had a parent who at one time or another had a gay relationship (keep that in mind) is just as problematic, and the way he analyzes the data makes it even more problematic. He asserts that having had such a parent is associated with a range of bad outcomes, like being depressed, being unemployed, or having a criminal record. He doesn't specify the mechanism by which these things are supposed to occur—are gay people naturally bad parents? Does exposure to gayness make you crazy? And that's where things start to break down.
The main problem with Regnerus's study is that he's dealing with such small numbers—163 respondents whose mother had a gay relationship, and 73 whose father had one—that he can identify only a tiny number whose parent had a stable relationship of the kind we're talking about when we talk about marriage equality. Only 23 percent of his children of lesbians (or 38 individuals) lived in a home where that relationship lasted over three years. And among children of men who had had a gay relationship, the figure was "less than 2 percent," which would mean either 14 individuals or less. But he doesn't ever look at these people separately, even though they're precisely the children we're supposedly concerned about when we're debating whether gay people should be allowed to get married.
So when Regnerus runs his regressions (which are only described in the text but aren't displayed in a table, which is odd), he doesn't include the length of their parents' gay relationship as a control. That means that, say, the young man who grew up in a happy home with two mothers is lumped together with the young woman whose father was living a miserable life on the down low, got caught by his wife, and then the family went through an ugly divorce. Most of the "children of gay people" in Regnerus's sample are actually children of unhappy marriages, infidelity, separation, divorce, single parenthood, or some combination thereof. So it isn't too surprising that in young adulthood, these people had more problems on average than people who came from intact heterosexual two-parent households, which is the group he's comparing them to. In fact, he doesn't say if any of the children of gay people in his sample had a similar upbringing to that comparison group—raised by an intact couple for their entire childhood—so his study tells us precisely nothing about how children like that are likely to turn out when they grow up.
Because he's an academic, Regnerus talks about his data like an academic does, with plenty of caveats about what can and can't be inferred from his results. But the point is that this study, with these glaring weaknesses that mean it doesn't at all support the argument conservatives want to make, is the best they can do.
And that's really the problem. Because there's a fundamental contradiction in the conservatives' argument. They're trying to argue that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry—in other words, that the status quo in most states is the preferred situation—by arguing that the status quo is bad for children of gay people. But if their policy argument had a shred of coherence, what it would actually demand is that they show that allowing kids to grow up in households with legally recognized, stable two-parent gay relationships would be worse than growing up with a single parent or in a household where one of your parents is closeted. That's the choice before us, and if conservatives are going to say they're motivated by the welfare of children, that's the position they'll have to take: that unstable relationships without legal protection provide a better environment for raising kids than legally recognized marriages. And I can't imagine even they believe that.A man and a child were found dead at the YWCA in Manchester, New Hampshire, police said according to local news outlet WMUR.com. It comes after fire officials responded to an alleged shooting on Concord Street.
Security and emergency services responded around 10:30am local time to a report of shots fired inside the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association), located at 72 Concord Street.
The victims were found dead on the second floor of the building, WCVB reported.
Police said they are searching the building for a suspect, according to FOX 25, adding that there is no threat to the surrounding community. Several downtown streets were blocked off and nearby Victory Park was evacuated.
Later police said the man killed the child before shooting himself.
It is unknown whether anyone was injured, fire officials said.
The scene is expected to return to normal sometime this afternoon, Police Chief David Mara told News 9. "I can tell you that there is no public safety threat at this time," said Mara.
The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office and the Manchester Police Department are investigating.
On Sundays, the YWCA is open for supervised child visitation and custody exchanges.
Swat has arrived pic.twitter.com/dCPEeugLQC — Jeffrey Hastings (@FOMPHOT) August 11, 2013
Manchester fire and paramedics staged at active shooting YWCA Manchester New Hampshire potential hostage situation pic.twitter.com/FuvSoVMMyz — Jeffrey Hastings (@FOMPHOT) August 11, 2013With Tesla's market capitalization now greater than those of Ford and General Motors, founder Elon Musk is also adding to his billions.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk has added $2.21 billion to his net worth this year. The CEO owns roughly 20 percent of Tesla's outstanding shares, which are up more than 40 percent this year. His total net worth is now $12.9 billion, according to Bloomberg's database.
Forbes, which assigns different values to Musk's other assets and holdings, pegs the CEO's fortunes at $15.1 billion. Along with his Tesla shares, Musk owns an undisclosed chunk of SpaceX, his aerospace venture.
In both cases, the Tesla chief is now among the 100 richest people on the planet. Forbes ranks him 70th while Bloomberg puts him at 86th. He is now richer than media magnate Rupert Murdoch and longtime billionaires like private equity chief Stephen Schwarzman.
Musk hasn't been shy about spending his newfound wealth — even as much of it remains tied up in the company's stock. Over the past few years, he's spent more than $70 million to buy five properties in L.A.'s posh Bel Air neighborhood, according to press reports. None of the properties are contiguous, and local realtors say that Musk plans to build a tunnel to connect two of them.
Or perhaps, it could be the world's first residential hyperloop.
Watch: Mossberg on TeslaYou may have come across a 2004 image of an American soldier in Iraq holding two huge “camel spiders,” one of which had clamped its jaws on the other. Huge. As in, they alone were reason enough to get out of Iraq. Now, they aren’t really spiders, and through a trick of perspective (they're just close to the camera) they look way bigger than they really are. Don’t get me wrong, the strange, hairy camel spiders do grow to six inches long—not too shabby. But size is far from the most fascinating thing about these beasts.
Camel spiders are arachnids like true spiders, but they belong to a different order, solifugae. (Depending on who you ask, camel spiders are so-called because some species have humps on their backs or because of the myth that they eat camel stomachs.) Also called wind scorpions for their incredible speed (and hey, why not confuse them for another kind of arachnid while we’re at it), these things have jaws like you wouldn’t believe—dextrous chompers that can be a third of their body length and that shred prey as big as rodents.
With these beasts comes lore. In addition to the camel stomach stuff, legend says that as camel spiders scream as they speed around the desert, that they can leap incredible distances, and that they'll even attack humans, injecting them with a sleepy-time venom and gnawing on the victims as they slumber.
None of these things are any truer-to-life than the behaviors of camel spiders depicted in the 2011 horror movie Camel Spiders, a lazily titled film if I've ever heard one. But it's true that science still knows little about the camel spider, for although they tally some 1,000 species the world over, they're rare and almost unstudied. “For 10, maybe 15 years almost now, I've been doing research in the Caribbean, and I've spent a combined maybe four years in the field,” says arachnologist Lauren Esposito of the California Academy of Sciences. “I've found two. Ever."
Why the camel spiders are so rare, Esposito can’t say. It could be that their populations are just low (they do tend to be more common in the Middle East, as opposed to the Caribbean). Being nocturnal doesn’t help humans find them either. And the fact that they burn rubber certainly doesn’t help. “If you sit under a light trap,” Esposito says, “a lot of times they're attracted to the movement of the moths that are attracted to the light. And they'll just come out of nowhere and grab something and run off again. They're super fast.”
If a creature is a reasonable size compared to the camel spider, chances are the predator can overwhelm it. Larger species of camel spider go after rodents and lizards. But interestingly for a speedy predator, camel spiders “probably have really poor eyesight,” says Esposito, considering how tiny their eyes are, “and mostly sense through vibrations that they pick up in the hairs all over their body.”
As for those mouthparts: In arachnids like this they’re known as chelicerae, like the formidable fangs you find on tarantulas. But tarantulas ain’t got nothing on the camel spider’s chompers. A camel spider has a pair of chelicerae like other arachnids, but each pair is itself a pair of scissor-like, serrated blades, powered by massive muscles. Think of the creature as wielding two toothy beaks.
Albert Lleal/Minden Pictures/Corbis
And the camel spider’s jaws aren’t just powerful—they’re highly maneuverable. “So they can really open them up and move them almost omnidirectionally,” says Esposito. “They obviously have a lot more musculature associated with those mouthparts. So it's almost like the mouth in Predator, where it opens up in four directions.”
While spiders and scorpions rely on venom to kill their prey, the camel spider doesn’t bother. They haven't a drop of venom (much less a venom that can knock a human out cold, though their bites can be painful from the sheer trauma). Nor does the camel spider produce silk to trap its food. This is a minimalist hunter: nothing fancy. Just speed and teeth.
They prowl ecosystems the world over. The large desert-adapted varieties tend to have comb-like hairs on their legs that may help them shovel sand to dig burrows. "Their legs and feet become elongated,” Esposito says, “because they need to be higher up off of the substrate and have more surface ratio to stay on top of the sand, instead of sinking when they're running.”
Regardless of geographical adaptations, what all camel spiders agree on is the freaky sex. In the sense that if you care to watch the video below, complete with inappropriate music, I’m going to explain what’s going on. That kind of freaky sex.
From the few complete courtships of camel spiders that scientists have observed, it seems that the males charge in and overpower the females. They hold on in part with sensory structures called pedipalps, which are tipped with suction cups, and “they basically bend the female in half and hold onto her and don't let go,” Esposito says. “So they use their speed to run up quick and grab on and hold on for dear life.”
The problem is, the female may have mated with other males, who left their sperm packets in her oviduct. By gnawing on this oviduct, the male may be trying to remove his rivals’ sperm. “The way sperm works in the oviduct system is the last in is the first out,” Esposito says. “The female's eggs are going to be fertilized by whoever the last one in was, so he's trying to get rid of that.” He then uses his chelicerae to insert his own sperm packet.
Science still has much to learn about the camel spiders, about their weird sex or otherwise. But rest easy knowing one will never bite you to sleep.
You're not resting easy, are you.
Browse the full Absurd Creature of the Week archive here. Know of an animal you want me to write about? Are you a scientist studying a bizarre creature? Email matthew_simon@wired.com or ping me on Twitter at @mrMattSimon.Create a Clean-Code App with Kotlin Coroutines and Android Architecture Components — Part 3
The View
Marek Langiewicz Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 23, 2017
This is the third blog post about using Kotlin Coroutines and Android Architecture Components in one simple weather app.
Please read the first and second part if you haven’t yet
We already have a working app implemented as the MainModel class. Now we need to create the UI for it. This part will be android specific.
Unfortunately, the MainModel is already a bit android specific because it uses LiveData (and ViewModel) from Android Architecture Components
06 View
The MainActivity class represents a View that observes our Model.
Thanks to Android Architecture Components, our activity is really small. We don’t need to override any lifecycle methods like onStart, onResume, onPause, onStop, etc… We only need onCreate to set things up.
In onCreate method we set up content view, action bar, optionally the drawer, and the recycler view’s adapter. Just usual android stuff. Beside that we do two more things:
We set up a click listener in navigation view with cities, so it invokes the SelectCity action on our model (line 25)
action on our (line 25) We initialize the model itself (line 28)
Let’s take a closer look at the model initialization:
First line (32) gets the MainModel instance from ViewModelProvider which in turn is provided by ViewModelProviders.of(Activity) factory method. Here the Android Architecture Components library works a bit like Dagger. It manages any ViewModel instances for us, and makes sure we get the same model instance after screen rotation (or any other device configuration change). This way, the new MainActivity instance can access the same model instance, “subscribe to” (or rather “observe”) the same app state LiveData objects, and display appropriate UI whenever the state changes.
There is a nice detailed description of this “dependency injection” mechanism at the beginning of ViewModel class doc.
Now, when we have our model instance, we can observe it. The LiveData.observe method takes the LifecycleOwner as a first parameter, so the LiveData knows when our activity is ready to receive state updates, and when it is destroyed. The LiveData class has a few guarantees that simplify the way we observe it:
All state changes are dispatched on the main thread. This means we can immediately access android views and update displayed data.
Changes are dispatched only when the observer is active : its Lifecycle is in a STARTED or RESUMED state. This means we won’t get any unnecessary updates when our activity is not visible.
: its is in a or state. This means we won’t get any unnecessary updates when our activity is not visible. New observer receives current value as soon as it becomes active. This means we will always have something to display as soon as our activity becomes visible.
. This means we will always have something to display as soon as our activity becomes visible. When the observer is DESTROYED the LiveData removes it from the observer list. This means we don’t have to remember to “unsubscribe” because it will be done automatically.
the LiveData removes it from the observer list. This means we don’t have to remember to “unsubscribe” because it will be done automatically. The order of all these life cycle related events is carefully designed so we never get infamous fragment transaction exceptions. Watch a few minutes of this youtube presentation (from 16:30) if you want more details.
Here, in the MainActivity, we just set up LiveData observers to call our display… functions:
displayLoading Shows/hides the progress bar.
Shows/hides the progress bar. displayCity Shows given city as selected in navigation view.
Shows given city as selected in navigation view. displayCharts Shows given list of charts in recycler view (with some animations) — we will analyze it later.
Shows given list of charts in recycler view (with some animations) — we will analyze it later. displayMessage Shows given (usually error) message (using a toast for simplicity).
Unfortunately, LiveData (as well as ViewModel) is android specific, so it complicates testing. However, we could achieve better separation of concerns by implementing this “lifecycle aware” feature of LiveData with RxJava. It would require: some special Observable<LifecycleEvent> to signal lifecycle changes; some BehaviorSubject (to hold data and to return last known value on subscribe); switchMap operator (to wait until observer is active); takeUntil operator (to automatically unsubscribe at appropriate LifecycleEvent); and maybe more. We could also use a library, like RxLifecycle. In El Passion we’ve already tried this solution with RxLifecycle in one hackathon project (Teamcity Android Client), and it worked great.
I guess, implementing all guarantees that LiveData gives us (like: no fragment transaction exceptions), could be tricky.
To display the chart list we use a regular recycler view with very basic adapter setup. The interesting part is how we present a single item (Chart). We implement custom view class: ChartView with base class: CrView. These two classes use suspendable functions and actors to implement chart animations. Let’s take a detailed look at it.
07 CrView
Redrawing UI in Android (as in other UI frameworks) is asynchronous. We call View.invalidate() to let the system know we want to redraw this view, then the system decides exactly when to call our View.onDraw(Canvas) function to actually redraw the view. But what if we could pretend it is synchronous? We could then use ordinary control flow constructs like loops and just redraw the view for each animation frame in a loop (with some delay in between which would also pretend to be synchronous). We already know how to implement such (pretending to be synchronous) functions: suspending functions.
The first thing we do here (line 8, 11, 28) is to allow user to set some code block to be executed on Canvas every time the system calls onDraw.
Next, we create the suspend fun redraw(). The implementation is actually pretty simple. All we want to do is to let the system know that we want to be redrawn (line 17), then suspend and save given continuation somewhere (line 18). Later, when the system calls onDraw, we check if we have some redraw call suspended and resume it if that is the case (line 29). We resume asynchronously so onDraw always ends fast.
That’s basically it. I’ve also added second suspendable function: draw, to show another possible way to use this class, but I don’t actually use it now.
Now let’s use CrView as a base class to implement a custom view that can display and animate weather charts.
08 ChartView
We want to have public mutable property var chart: Chart with a custom setter that will cause new chart to appear (but not immediately — it should smoothly morph from current chart to the new one). Computations needed for animation and the drawing itself is handled by an actor, so the chart setter only sends all new charts to the actor’s mailbox. We use the non-suspendable operation: offer (line 11) to send new charts to the actor. This will override any unprocessed chart in actor’s mailbox with the new one.
Now, let’s take a look at the actor implementation.
09 Second Actor
We’ve already seen one actor in my previous blog post:
This one is also implemented with the actor coroutine builder, it uses the same coroutine dispatcher: UI, and the same channel type: Channel.CONFLATED.
The idea is to keep the currentChart in a local variable (and the currentVelocities which represents speed and direction of every chart point animation); then to use an ordinary while loop in which we move the currentChart points just a little bit towards their final positions (destinationChart), redraw the view, then delay for a few millis, and repeat. This while loop takes care of animating the currentChart towards the destinationChart required by the user. This animation loop has to be placed inside another for loop which iterates through actor’s mailbox and retrieves next destinationCharts offered by the user.
We have three suspension points here:
Receiving the next chart from the mailbox (line 21).
Redrawing the view inside the inner while loop for every animation frame (line 30).
loop for every animation frame (line 30). Suspending for 16 millis after every animation frame (line 31).
I’ll skip the most boring implementation details (you can inspect it all on the GitHub/CrWeather), except a few:
At the beginning (line 19) we set up the CrView so that it draws currentChart every time the system wants to redraw the view.
so that it draws every time the system wants to redraw the view. The outer for loop iteration (line 21) almost never suspends because the inner while loop finishes only when there is already a new chart in the mailbox.
loop iteration (line 21) almost never because the inner loop finishes only when there is already a new chart in the mailbox. We use the same data class: Chart to remember velocities of currentChart points — every Point here represent a velocity vector. I’ve reused the Chart class just to keep the code short — it would be better to have a separate data structure for chart points velocities.
to remember velocities of points — every here represent a velocity vector. I’ve reused the class just to keep the code short — it would be better to have a separate data structure for chart points velocities. After getting a new destination chart, we copyAndReformat the currentChart (line 23) so it contains as many points as the new destinationChart.
the (line 23) so it contains as many points as the new. The same goes with currentVelocities (line 25)
(line 25) The moveABitTo extension function which actually moves the currentChart towards destinationChart, also changes velocities a bit, so the animation stabilizes after a while. Check the ChartsUtils.kt file for the implementation details.
But what happens if the system abandons the particular ChartView instance? Will the actor compute new animation frames indefinitely?
It won’t, and here is why:
The redraw function calls the View.invalidate() and suspends, but the system will not call onDraw on this View object anymore. This means our Continuation will not be resumed at all. So, if the system has no live reference to the ChartView, then the reference to our suspendable point (the Continuation) is also lost, so it all can be garbage collected together with the actor itself. In general, when a suspended coroutine is forgotten (so no one keeps a reference to the Continuation), it will be correctly garbage collected.
Thanks to Kotlin Coroutines we can express the logic of animations and the logic of receiving new “morphing goals” in very natural way. The code shows how we think of this problem — we think: “for every new chart… while(no new chart): morph the chart a bit, redraw current chart, wait for a little, repeat”, and this is exactly how the implementation looks like. It’s also great that we can keep more state as local variables (like: currentChart and currentVelocities) under full control of specific actor — which (as every coroutine) runs sequentially.
Notice that we mutate state from within the actor code that is accessed outside by CrView.onDraw. In general, the actor model of concurrent computation forbids any shared state in favour of implementing all communication via actor’s mailboxes.
It would also be very easy and natural to extend this actor logic, compose new animation phases, etc. We can easily implement small suspendable functions (with ordinary conditional statements, loops, etc) and just call those functions inside the actor‘s code.
I think this style is simpler and a lot more composable than traditional object-oriented design — compare it to all those classes in Android Property Animation system. Although all those ValueAnimators, ObjectAnimators, AnimatorSets, different Evaluators and Interpolators, allow to create very sophisticated animations; implementing a similar system with suspendable functions would be more natural and would not require nearly as much boilerplate code.
10 Conclusions
The Kotlin Coroutines can successfully compete with RxJava when it comes to fighting the Callback Hell, but on the other hand, it can cooperate with RxJava very well too.
In my opinion, we shouldn’t think of a suspendable function as just a function with some additional feature. This concept has a potential to greatly change the way we create our software in this more and more asynchronous world.
The second technology we’ve tested here — Android Architecture Components — is not such a big deal as the Kotlin Coroutines but it’s still quite useful. The LiveData class helps if you want some (easy to use) observable streams (and if you don’t want to include RxJava); and the ViewModel class helps if you want a simple “dependency injection” (and if you want to stop worrying about activity lifecycles and device configuration changes).
Software development on Android is becoming more and more exciting thanks to amazing libraries, tools, and (most importantly) Kotlin :-)
If you’re wondering about the future, I think Svetlana Isakova from JetBrains has the right answer for you (in two sentences): The Future of Kotlin :-)While the casting announcements for Warner Bros.’ Peter Pan remake “Pan” have been rolling in, one in particular caught the eye of activists.
The studio cast Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, and thousands have taken to a Care2 petition to protest the choice of a white actress for the Native American role. More than 4,200 signatures, out of their stated 5,000 goal, have been received.
“This casting choice is particularly shameful for a children’s movie,” the petition reads. “Telling children their role models must all be white is unacceptable.”
Plenty of criticisms of similar ilk have risen in the past. Jared Leto, who won an Oscar for his role in “Dallas Buyers Club,” was the subject of controversy as well, for being a man playing a trans woman. Before that, Disney was criticized for choosing Johnny Depp to play the Native American Tonto in “The Lone Ranger.”
“Pan” is set to release July 17, 2015, and also stars Hugh Jackman and Garrett Hedlund. Warner Bros. has not immediately responded to request for statement.The official test back in Le Castellet and a summer date for Silverstone
The 2018 European Le Mans Series calendar has been unveiled and, in a schedule that offers consistency and stability, features 4-hour races at the same six top class venues as this season, with two small revisions.
The official pre-season test will move back to Le Castellet in April, with the French venue also hosting the opening round of the series five days later. Silverstone, which has been the traditional season opener since 2013, will swap with Le Castellet and move to a summer date in August.
The British fans will have the opportunity to enjoy a summer race, with the UK round on Saturday 18 August, an event which will also feature Round 3 of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The other four-hour races will still be held in Italy (Monza) in May, Austria (Red Bull Ring) in July, Belgium (Spa-Francorchamps) in September and the season finale in Portugal (Portimão) in October.
After a highly successful 2017 season, the Michelin Le Mans Cup will continue to follow the European Le Mans Series all year long, with the exception of Silverstone as the series will have its flagship event, the Road to Le Mans, at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
The 2018 season will once again give the competitors the opportunity to race at the best European motor sport venues and the fans to enjoy great racing all around Europe.
Pierre Fillon, President of the Automobile Club de l’Ouest: “It’s important for the ACO, promoter of the ELMS, to guarantee the best calendar possible for this high-quality championship. We do not forget most of the teams participating in the 24 Hours of Le Mans come from the ELMS. We find in this championship values that the endurance community and the ACO consider as very important.”
Gérard Neveu, European Le Mans Series CEO: “The European Le Mans Series and the Michelin Le Mans Cup are two championships that give us complete satisfaction. We are making sure that the budgets are reasonable and are trying to keep our high-quality competitors that are running both championships satisfied. With this 2018 calendar we have chosen to emphasise cost efficiency, stability and quality.”I will admit, I was somewhat leery when I first decided to try this shave stick |
Cruz, for example, was simply trying to burnish his presidential-primary credentials by talking down Obamacare and being willing to tolerate a shutdown. But his intention was to address existential threats born out of fundamental, even anthropological, questions about who we are and where we are going. It’s hard for a minority in Washington to be heard raising such questions in a time when incomprehensible comprehensive legislation and judicial edicts are much more common than Lincoln-Douglas–style debates.
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Lee addressed this problem in his speech: “Too often in this town we stop thinking about the things that matter most. We get so caught up in the thick of things that we not only stop thinking big — we often stop thinking at all. Which leads to other things — like $17 trillion debt, widespread dysfunction, and much more.”
It’s not just a Washington problem, is it? We get set in our ways and stop realizing our lives can be different, better, about something more than the coming — or missed — deadline. Further, we can help others: out of poverty, out of depression, out of feeling alone in the world, as the world seems to pass them by. It could be a neighbor, a stranger, a member of our family. While we tend to be quite comfortable staying on our side of the aisle (or our side of the tracks, as the case may be) and spend time blaming, spinning, and arguing, there is progress that can be made if we consider together who we are and who we ought to be.
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In his speech, Lee talked about driving with his teenage sons, hearing the words of a song, and quickly realizing that they were hardly good for the soul. When he pointed this out, one of his sons said: “Dad, it’s not bad if you don’t think about it.”
And so it is. This is where we are: unthinkably not thinking.
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Seven months into the papacy of Pope Francis, the media seem much more interested in figuring out what political label he falls under, rather than actually listening to what he says. But what he says, whether it be in his many tweets, his morning homilies, or other encounters, is: Be who you say you are. And you can’t be who you say you are if you don’t know who you are. You can’t help your brother if you’re completely indifferent to him, if you don’t even notice him, never mind if you fail to weep for his pain. That’s not about “feel your pain” rhetoric, but about suffering with those who suffer, because we are members of the human family.
In remarks in an aptly named “Room of Renunciation” in Assisi earlier this month, Pope Francis advised: “For everyone, even for our society that is showing signs of fatigue, if we want to save ourselves from sinking, it is necessary to follow the path of poverty. That does not mean misery — this idea should be refuted — it means knowing how to share, how to be more in solidarity with those in need, to entrust oneself more to God and less to our human efforts.
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Francis addresses this same issue in 140 characters or less: “True charity requires courage: Let us overcome the fear of getting our hands dirty so as to help those in need.”
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You can express it in tweets, but getting it done requires a deeper engagement than our political and media attention spans often tolerate. Lee explained what it is we need to consider as we move forward in debates about the economy, health care, immigration, religious liberty, and the very future of America: “The alternative to big government is not small government. The alternative to big government is a thriving, flourishing nation of cooperative communities — where your success depends on your service. It’s a free-enterprise economy where everyone works for everyone else, competing to see who can figure out the best way to help the most people. And it’s a voluntary civil society, where free individuals come together to meet each other’s needs, fill in the gaps, and make sure no one gets left behind.”
Lee talked about helping every American family, in particular, by revolutionizing the tax code, but he further emphasized: “our ideals demand we identify even more with those Americans still on the bottom rungs, where the climbing is harder, dangerous, and lonely.” In freedom is duty, a duty that encourages and challenges and loves. Today’s challenges require human encounter that no government or politician can lead. It involves an integrity deeper than any ideology and a commitment well beyond any news or campaign cycle.
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— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a director of Catholic Voices USA. This column is based on one available exclusively through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association."There certainly have been instances throughout our lifetime and throughout history of voter fraud,” Mike Pence says. | Getty Pence says he doesn't anticipate widespread voter fraud
Despite what his running mate has said regularly on the campaign trail, Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence said Friday morning that he does not expect widespread voter fraud to steal the election out from under the Republican ticket.
“What I believe is, obviously, George, you've been at this a long time, there certainly have been instances throughout our lifetime and throughout history of voter fraud,” Pence told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview on “Good Morning America.”
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“But not that could change a national election,” Stephanopoulos interjected.
“Well, I don't anticipate that that's the case,” Pence replied. “But it's a good time for people whether you're Republican or Democrat or independent, to find a respectful way to participate in the election process, to vote and also to be a part of the polling.”
As his poll numbers have slipped in recent weeks, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has begun to regularly suggest, without evidence, that the election might be rigged against him. Part of that rigged system, Trump has said, is anchored by a biased media that favors Democrats, but he has also suggested that the election results themselves could be doctored.
As a remedy, he has urged his supporters to pour into cities like Philadelphia and St. Louis to watch polling places. His campaign has worked to recruit “election observers” with a page on its website, asking supporters to “"Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!”Mitt Romney‘s attack on the very fabric of public opinion polling yesterday was, apparently, not just a way to contemptuously dismiss a voter with whom he disagreed, but part of the launch of a new strategy. On Tuesday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, host Rachel Maddow detailed an emerging trend of Romney supporters and staffers trying to buck up their own spirits by simply reworking the rules of public opinion polling to make it so their guy comes out ahead. Romney adviser Ed Gillespie continued the rollout on Fox and Friends this morning, and managed only to get resident Mediaite conservative Noah Rothman to agree with Rachel Maddow.
At an Education Nation forum on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney responded to a New York City school board member and parent who cited a public opinion poll by telling the man “I don’t believe it for a second. I know something about polls, and I know you can ask questions to get any answer you want.”
It was a ridiculous assertion, calling into question not just the validity of that specific poll, but the very legitimacy of public opinion polling, in general. Now, polls aren’t perfect, and their value is often misunderstood, but there are established scientific methods to public opinion polling, ones which can be applied consistently. If you don’t like how they turn out, though, apparently you can just “unskew” them.
That’s right, as Maddow reports, there’s a website that takes recent polling data and “unskews” it by applying methodology that isn’t consistent with scientific polling practices. In much the same way, you can “unskew” carbon monoxide, and turn it into oxygen that won’t kill you, you just throw some new science at it, take out that anti-breathing bias. As Maddow explains, the creator of the site thinks that pollsters are oversampling Democrats.
“Sampling more Democrats than Republicans,” Rachel says. “Hmmm, that sounds like a reasonable argument. Everybody might have reason to be suspicious of the polls showing President Obama leading if, in fact, pollsters are systemically oversampling Democrats when doing their polling. That’s not what pollsters are doing. They are not going out and looking for too many Democrats for their polls in order to fill some quota to get the liberal result they want. Pollsters polling the swing states are finding more people calling themselves Democrats in those swing states because there are more people calling themselves Democrats in the swing states. It’s not a biassed look at the states. It’s a look at the states that show the states have a Democratic bias.”
I’ve got to give a big, sincere tip of the hat to my colleague, Noah Rothman, who not only patiently explained the same thing on our website this morning, but even compared Romney’s poll-deniers with the residents of Hitler’s bunker. When you’ve got Noah Rothman channeling Rachel Maddow and Dick Harpootlian, you’ve done messed something up pretty bad.
To continue the up-is-down theme on this issue, however, I am going to come to the mild defense of the Romney campaign’s political director, Rich Beeson. Beeson told reporters, yesterday, that the campaign is relying on more encouraging internal poll numbers, but declined to share those internals. Several commentators have pointed to Beeson’s refusal to share those internals as evidence that he’s full of crap.
Here’s the thing about internal polls: all campaigns use them (the Obama campaign is frighteningly adept at this), but they only ever bring them up when their guy is in trouble. In that way, Beeson probably is somewhat full of it. No campaign staffer ever says “I know my guy’s ahead in the Gallup daily, but our internals are for shit!”
However, there’s probably at least a grain of truth to it. Maybe the internals have a wider margin of error, or maybe they show Romney down, but making inroads with a key demographic (namely, all of them except white males). In any case, it’s not really fair to infer anything from the fact that Beeson’s not releasing the internal polls. Even if they’re better than the recent swing-state numbers, they still show Romney losing (Beeson says they’re “by any stretch inside the margin of error in Ohio”), so there’s very little political upside in releasing them. Even if the internals had Romney winning, releasing them would smack of desperation, like showing your friends the perfumed letter your girlfriend in Canada sent you.
There’s also the distinct possibility that releasing the internals might show that the Romney campaign using a polling firm in the Cayman Islands.
Here’s the clip, from The Rachel Maddow Show:
Follow Tommy Christopher (@TommyXtopher) on Twitter.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comThe Afghanistan national cricket team (Pashto: د افغانستان د کريکټ ملي لوبډله, Persian: تیم ملی کریکت افغانستان) is the 12th Test cricket playing Full Member nation. They hold the world record for the highest ever T20 score, international or domestic, with their 278-3 vs Ireland in Dehradun on 23rd February 2019. Cricket has been played in Afghanistan since the mid 19th century, but it is only in recent years that the national team has become successful. The Afghanistan Cricket Board was formed in 1995 and became an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2001[8] and a member of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) in 2003.[9]
They are ranked 8th in International Twenty20 cricket as of 7 June 2018 ahead of four other full members Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Ireland.[10] After nearly a decade of playing top class international cricket, on 22 June 2017, in an ICC meeting in London, full ICC membership (and therefore Test status) was granted to Afghanistan (concurrently with Ireland), taking the number of Test cricket playing nations to twelve.[11][12]
Some prominent players are Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Mohammad Nabi, Mohammad Shahzad, and Asghar Afghan.
Towards Test status [ edit ]
Afghanistan qualified for 2012 ICC World Twenty20 held in Sri Lanka as the runner up of the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier and joined India and England in the group stage. In the first match against India on 19 September, Afghanistan won the toss and elected to field. India posted 159/5 in 20 overs but Afghanistan fell short of that target by scoring 136 in 19.3 overs. In the second match against England on 21 September, Afghanistan won the toss and again elected to field. England set a target of 196/5 (20 overs) but Afghanistan were all out for 80 in 17.2 overs. England and India qualified for the Super Eights and Afghanistan were eliminated as a result of this match.
On 3 October 2013, Afghanistan beat Kenya to finish second in the WCL Championship and qualify for the 2015 Cricket World Cup, becoming the 20th team to gain entry into the tournament overall. Afghanistan secured their passage to Australia and New Zealand in 2015 by beating Kenya comprehensively for the second time in succession in Sharjah, sealing their maiden World Cup qualification. They finished second in the World Cricket League Championship — nine wins in 14 matches — and joined Ireland as the second Associate team in the 2015 World Cup, while the remaining two spots for Associates will be decided by a qualifying tournament in New Zealand in 2014. Afghanistan will join Pool A at the World Cup along with Australia, Bangladesh, England, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and another qualifier.[13] On November 24, 2013, Afghanistan beat Kenya to qualify for the 2014 T20 world cup.
In March 2014, Afghanistan beat Hong Kong in the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 but could not make it to the next stage of super 10 having lost the two matches to Bangladesh and Nepal.
On 25 February 2015, Afghanistan won their first Cricket World Cup match beating Scotland by one wicket. Afghanistan participated in the World Twenty20 2016 in India. They were unable to qualify for the Semi-Finals of the International Tournament. They defeated the eventual champions, West Indies, during their final group match of the tournament.
Their third match was against the full member test team Zimbabwe. They played exceptionally well beating Zimbabwe by 59 runs. Afghanistan qualified for the Super 10 stage of the tournament as a result of this match, while Zimbabwe were eliminated. Afghanistan progressed to the second phase of a World Twenty20 tournament for the first time. On 25 June 2016, Lalchand Rajput was named as head coach of Afghanistan Cricket Team replacing Pakistan's Inzamam ul Haq and his first tour with team will be tour of Scotland, Ireland and the Netherlands in July and August. He was chosen ahead of Mohammad Yousuf, Herschelle Gibbs and Corey Collymore[14] Rajput is in line for a two-year contract, but that decision would be finalised after the upcoming tour of Europe.
In July 2016, ACB unveiled a strategic plan and set targets for Afghanistan cricket team to be a top-six ODI team by 2019 and a top-three team in both T20Is and ODIs by 2025.[15] In order to achieve this, ACB created a proposal to be presented to BCCI, to secure annual bilateral matches against India and teams touring India beginning the following year.[16] Shafiq Stanikzai, Chief Executive of ACB, said the draft had been presented to BCCI president Anurag Thakur in May and further discussions occurred during the ICC Annual Conference in Edinburgh in June 2016.
On 25 July 2016, Afghanistan confirmed its first full series against West Indies a top-8 ranked Full member.[17] Its earlier full series came against a permanent member of ICC was against Zimbabwe. Afghanistan toured the Caribbean islands in mid-June 2017 and played 5 ODIs and 3 T20Is.
On the same day, it was announced that Afghanistan would host a full series against Ireland at Greater Noida.[18] Besides a 4-day intercontinental cup match, Ireland and Afghanistan would play five ODIs and three T20Is in March 2017. Afghanistan won the T20I series 3-0 and in the process set a new T20I record of 11 consecutive victories.
On 22 June 2017, the International Cricket Council (ICC) awarded Afghanistan full Test status, along with Ireland.[19] In December 2017, the ICC confirmed that Afghanistan were scheduled to play their first Test against India, in late 2018.[20] According to the ICC Future Tours Programme for 2019–23, Afghanistan are scheduled to play thirteen Tests.[21] In January 2018, both the ACB and the BCCI confirmed the Test would be played in June in Bengaluru.[22][23]
History [ edit ]
Pre-ODI history [ edit ]
The earliest record of cricket in Afghanistan is of British troops playing a match in Kabul in 1839, though it appears that no long lasting legacy of cricket was left by the British. In the 1990s, cricket became popular amongst the Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan, and the Afghanistan Cricket Board was formed there in 1995. They continued to play cricket on their return to their home country.[8] Like all sports, cricket was initially banned by the Taliban, but cricket became an exception in 2000 (being the only sport in Afghanistan to be approved by the Taliban) and the Afghanistan Cricket Federation was elected as an affiliate member of the ICC the following year.[24] The cricketing style, reflecting the background of development in refugee camps in Pakistan, is not unlike the style characteristic of Pakistani cricketing practice generally, the emphasis on fast bowling and wrist spin for example.
The national team was invited to play in the second tier of Pakistani domestic cricket the same year,[8] and the tour brought international media attention to Afghan cricket when the US-led invasion of the country began whilst the team was in Pakistan. The team lost three and drew two of the five matches on the tour.[24]
The Afghan cricket team is a national cricket team representing Afghanistan. They have been an Affiliate Member of the ICC since 2001, and an Associate Member of the Asian Cricket Council since 2003.
Originally the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had banned cricket as they had banned most other sports, but in early 2000 there was a change of heart and the government wrote to the Pakistan Cricket Board asking for the PCB's support for an Afghan application to the ICC. The conflict in Afghanistan shortly afterwards led to a large number of Afghan refugees fleeing to Pakistan, where some learned to play cricket, and the presence of Pakistani peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan later helped this process.
In 2001, the Afghan side took part in a four-match tour of Pakistan, visiting Peshawar and Rawalpindi, and the team also visited in 2003 and 2004. In 2004 Afghanistan played in the Asian Cricket Council Trophy in Kuala Lumpur - the regional qualifying competiton for the ICC Trophy - and performed respectably, with the highlight being a surprise win over hosts Malaysia.
They played in two Pakistani tournaments in 2003, winning their first match that year. They began playing in Asian regional tournaments in 2004, finishing sixth in their first ACC Trophy. More success began in 2006 when they were runners-up to Bahrain in the Middle East Cup and beat an MCC side featuring former England captain Mike Gatting by 171 runs in Mumbai. Gatting was dismissed for a duck.[24]
They toured England in the summer of 2006, winning six out of seven matches. Three of their wins came against the second XIs of Essex, Glamorgan and Leicestershire.[9] They finished third in the ACC Trophy that year, beating Nepal in a play-off match.[24]
They won their first tournament in 2007, sharing the ACC Twenty20 Cup with Oman after the two tied in the final.[24] They began their qualifying campaign for the 2011 World Cup in Jersey in 2008, winning Division Five of the World Cricket League.[25] They finished third in the ACC Trophy Elite tournament the same year,[9] and won a second consecutive WCL tournament, Division Four in Tanzania later in the year.[9]
In January 2009, Afghanistan progressed to the 2009 World Cup Qualifier by winning Division Three of the World Cricket League in Buenos Aires, topping the table on net run rate ahead of Uganda and Papua New Guinea.[26]
ODI status [ edit ]
In the 2011 Cricket World Cup qualifying tournament, Afghanistan failed to progress to the World Cup, but earned ODI status for four years.[9] Their first ODI was against Scotland in the 5th place playoff, having previously beaten the Scots earlier in the tournament; Afghanistan won by 89 runs.[27]
In the Intercontinental Cup Afghanistan played its first first-class match against a Zimbabwe XI in a four-day match in Mutare. During the match, which was drawn, Afghan batsman Noor Ali scored centuries in both his innings, making him only the fourth player to do so on their first-class debut. Later, in August 2009, they played the Netherlands in same competition at the VRA Cricket Ground, winning a low-scoring match by one wicket.[28]
Afghanistan then took part in the 2009 ACC Twenty20 Cup in the United Arab Emirates. Afghanistan were drawn in Group A, a group which Afghanistan topped at the end of the group stages by winning all five of their matches. In the semi-finals the Afghans defeated Kuwait by 8 wickets.[29] In the final they met the hosts, the United Arab Emirates, whom they defeated by 84 runs.[30]
On 1 February 2010, Afghanistan played their first Twenty20 International against Ireland,[31] which they lost by 5 wickets.[32] On 13 February 2010, Afghanistan first defeated the United Arab Emirates by 4 wickets to make their way to the 2010 ICC World Twenty20 to be in the West Indies in April 2010. Later the same day they defeated Ireland by 8 wickets in the Final of 2010 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier and won the qualifier.[33] Afghanistan were in Group C of the main tournament, with India and South Africa. During their first match against India, opening batsman Noor Ali hit 50 runs, helping Afghanistan to a score of 115 in their 20 overs. Despite this they lost the match by 8 wickets.[34] In their second match, the team were reduced to 14/6 at one stage, before a late rally from Mirwais Ashraf and Hamid Hassan helped Afghanistan post 88 all out, resulting in a loss by 59 runs.[35]
The teams Intercontinental Cup campaign continued in 2010, with wins over Ireland, Canada, Scotland and Kenya before they beat Scotland by 7 wickets in the final in Dubai.[36] Also in 2010, they won the ACC Trophy Elite tournament in Kuwait, beating Nepal in the final[37] and finished third in Division One of the World Cricket League in the Netherlands.[38] They took part in the cricket tournament at the 2010 Asian Games in China and won the silver medal, losing to Bangladesh in the final.[39]
In 2011, Afghanistan begun playing in the 2011-13 ICC Intercontinental Cup. They beat Canada and drew with the UAE.[40] In the parallel one-day league, they won two matches against Canada and lost twice to the UAE.[41] In March 2013, they played two T20 Internationals against Scotland in UAE and prevailed in both matches. They also won two ODIs in World Cricket League Championship against the same opponents. Afghanistan drew level with Scotland in second in the WCL Championship table after the two convincing wins that boosted their hopes of securing automatic qualification for the 2015 World Cup.
Ireland won the WCL Championship with 24 points, and Afghanistan came second with 19 points, was qualified for World Cup. Holland, in fourth, face Namibia next month, while fifth-placed UAE host Ireland later in March. There will be a further two rounds of games, with the top two teams guaranteed a spot at the next World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.[42]
Afghanistan also inflicted a crushing defeat on Scotland in their ICC Intercontinental Cup match in Abu Dhabi. Afghanistan (275: Shah 67*, Davey 4–53) beat Scotland (125: Taylor 48*, Dawlatzai 6–57 and 145: Coetzer 57, Dawlatzai 5–37) by an innings and 5 runs. Izatullah Dawlatzai took eleven wickets.[43]
In December 2011, Afghanistan took part in the ACC Twenty20 Cup in Nepal, where they were drawn in the same group as Hong Kong, Oman, Kuwait and the Maldives.
The event was a qualifier for the 2012 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, but Afghanistan have already qualified for the event in the United Arab Emirates.[44] Further matches in the 2011–13 Intercontinental Cup and the associated one-day league will be played in 2012 against the Netherlands and Ireland and in 2013 against Scotland, Namibia and Kenya.[45]
Afghanistan played its first One Day International against a Full Member of the International Cricket Council in February 2012 when they played a single match against Pakistan at Sharjah. Afghanistan also took on Australia Cricket Team for only ODI at Sharjah in August 2012.
In July 2014 Afghanistan toured Zimbabwe to play its 1st full series against a full member. The 4 match ODI series finished 2–2 and the 2 match first class series finished 1–1.
With their victory over Zimbabwe on 25 December 2015, Afghanistan entered the top 10 of the ICC's ODI rankings for the first time.[46]
Associate membership [ edit ]
Afghanistan received its associate membership of the ICC on 27 June 2013.[47] The decision was taken on the ICC’s annual meeting on 26 June 2013 in London, England, and was attended by ACB CEO Dr Noor Muhammad Murrad. The nomination request had been sent by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) last year based on the continuous progress made by former ACB CEO Dr Hamid Sheenwari, especially in its cricket development.
"Afghanistan is the only country that receives the Associate Membership in a short period of time in reward to the efforts Afghanistan made for the promotion of cricket," Dr Noor Muhammad, CEO of the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB), said on the ACC website.
Becoming an Associate would mean higher funding and, importantly, more exposure for the passionate and cricket-starved players from Afghanistan, a war-torn country. So far, the ICC was paying $700,000 in annual funding to Afghanistan, which is now likely to rise to $850,000 based on the Associate status.[48]
In March 2013, Afghanistan received a boost after a two-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) and Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for the development of Afghanistan cricket ahead of the 2015 World Cup.
The PCB will provide technical and professional support, including game-education programmes, coaching courses, skill and performance analysis, and basic umpiring and curator courses. High performance camps for emerging players will also be organised. The PCB-regulated National Cricket Academy (NCA) will help in improving technical, tactical, mental and physical skills, and will host lectures on doping, anti-corruption and various codes of conduct. The finance for the project will be decided later, with the NCA-related activities likely to be subsidised.[49]
In April 2013, the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) was allocated US$422,000 (22,400,000 AFN approx.) from the ICC's targeted assistance and performance programme. The world governing body of cricket approved the grant at its IDI (ICC Development International) board meeting, which concluded in Dubai.
ACB chief executive officer, Noor Mohammad Murad, said the board had requested a total of $1 million in assistance. "The ICC approved $422,000 for now. They will send a delegation to visit the ACB in two or three weeks, and will decide [from there] whether or not to approve the rest of the money," Murad told AFP.
The money, to be given over three years, is aimed at developing more competitive teams among ICC Full, Associate and Affiliate members. Previously, countries such as the Netherlands, Scotland, West Indies, Zimbabwe and Ireland have received assistance through a similar programme. According to an ICC statement, the funding for the ACB is for the development of the National Cricket Academy in Kabul.
Afghanistan became an Affiliate member of the ICC in 2001. In 2009 it attained one-day status till 2015. Over the last two years, the ACB has undergone organisational restructuring in a bid to provide better leadership and find qualified staff to run cricket administration in the war-torn country. They are currently developing their domestic cricket infrastructure, and have signed a two-year deal with the Pakistan board for the development of Afghanistan cricket ahead of the 2015 World Cup.
Last year, the Asian Cricket Council decided to nominate Afghanistan for Associate membership with the ICC, with the request being looked into at the ICC's annual conference in June. At present the ICC provides about $700,000 a year in funding. Based on current distributions, that will rise to $850,000 once Associate status is assured.[50]
2015 Cricket World Cup [ edit ]
Afghanistan made their World Cup debut in the 50 over format of the game against Bangladesh at the Manuka Oval in Canberra, Australia. The match resulted in a 105 run defeat.[51]
The competition saw the team compete against elite cricketing nations such as Australia, India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and England. Qualification for the tournament was a historic feat for cricket in Afghanistan, one exacerbated by the fact that the team included many players who picked up the game in refugee camps outside their long-suffering country.[52]
On 26 February 2015, Afghanistan won their first World Cup match against Scotland, winning by one wicket. The team however, lost all its remaining games and were knocked out of the tournament in the opening round.
Post-World Cup tours [ edit ]
The team visited Zimbabwe for the second time in October where Afghanistan clinched a historic one-day international series over Zimbabwe after a 73-run victory in Bulawayo saw them win 3–2.
They are the first non-Test-playing country to win a multi-game bilateral ODI series against a Test side.The Afghanistan cricket team toured the United Arab Emirates to play the United Arab Emirates cricket team in December 2016. The tour consisted of three Twenty20 International (T20I) matches. Afghanistan won the series 3–0.The Afghanistan cricket team toured Bangladesh in September and October 2016 to play three One Day Internationals (ODIs) matches. This was Afghanistan's first full series against a Test-playing side other than Zimbabwe and was the first bilateral series between the two sides.
Ahead of the ODI series there was a fifty-over warm-up game between the Bangladesh Cricket Board XI and Afghanistan in Fatullah. Afghanistan won the warm-up match by 66 runs and Bangladesh won the ODI series 2–1.
In February 2017 the International Cricket Council (ICC) awarded first-class status to Afghanistan's four-day domestic competition.[53]
The Afghan cricket team toured Zimbabwe between January and February 2017. The tour consisted of five One Day International(ODI) matches. Prior to the ODI series, the Afghanistan A cricket team played five "unofficial" ODI matches against the Zimbabwe A cricket team. All of those matches had been designated List A status. Afghanistan won the initial List A series 4–1 and the ODI series 3–2. 2017
The Ireland cricket team toured India during March 2017 to participate in a series of matches against Afghanistan, consisting of three T20 matches, five ODI contests and an ICC Intercontinental Cup match.[54] All the matches took place in Greater Noida. The Afghan team were highly successful, emerging victorious in both the T20I series 3–0 and the ODI series 3–2. Afghanistan also won the ICC Intercontinental Cup match, by the margin of an innings and 172 runs.
The Afghanistan cricket team completed another tour in June 2017, this time facing the West Indies.[55] The tour marked Afghanistan's first bilateral tour against a full member nation other than Zimbabwe. (Later that month, Afghanistan itself was awarded that status). The tour was less successful for the Afghans, who were convincingly defeated 3–0 in the T20 series.[56] They performed better in the ODI series, seizing a 1–1 draw after the final match was washed out with no result. Afghanistan registered their first win against Sri Lanka in Asia Cup.
Tournament history [ edit ]
Cricket World Cup [ edit ]
1979–2001: Not eligible, not an ICC member
2005: Did not qualify [61]
2009: 5th place [27]
2018:Champions
2009: Not eligible, not an ODI nation at time of tournament [9]
2010: Winners [33]
2012: Runners up
2013: Runners up
2015: 5th position
Asian Games record [39] Year Round Position GP W L T NR 2010 Silver Medal 2/9 3 2 1 0 0 2014 Silver Medal 3/10 3 2 1 0 0 Total 6 4 2 0 0
2014: Winners
1996–2002: Not eligible, not an ACC member. [9]
2004: 6th place [24]
2006: 3rd place [24]
2008: 3rd place (Elite) [9]
2010: Winners (Elite)[9]
Year Round Position GP W L T NR 2007 [24] Joint Champion with Oman 1/10 6 4 1 1 0 2009 Champion [29] 1/12 7 7 0 0 0 2011 Champion 1/10 6 6 0 0 0 2013 Champion 1/10 6 5 1 0 0 2015 Did not participate
2014: 4th Place
2017: Winners
Desert T20 Challenge [ edit ]
2017: Winners
Middle East Cup [ edit ]
Grounds [ edit ]
Afghanistan do not play their home matches in Afghanistan due to the ongoing security situation and the lack of international standard facilities. Afghanistan played their 'home' Intercontinental Cup fixture against Ireland at the Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium in Sri Lanka. Following Afghanistan's World Twenty20 qualifying campaign they played two One Day Internationals against Canada at the Sharjah Cricket Association Stadium in the UAE, after which the stadium was named the 'home' ground of Afghanistan.[62]
As plans to resurrect Afghan cricket and the country itself it was later announced that Kabul National Cricket Stadium would be built and completed by July 2011; it would employ many local Afghans in construction and later maintenance. It would also see new sprinklers, seats, training centre and a 6000-seat capacity built for people to watch and play cricket. The stadium is the hub of international and domestic cricket in Afghanistan.[63] In Jalalabad, the Ghazi Amanullah International Cricket Stadium has been constructed.[64]
In 2016, Shahid Vijay Singh Pathik Sports Complex in Greater Noida became the home ground for the Afghanistan national cricket team after they decided to shift their home ground from Sharjah.[65][66][67]
The following are the main cricket stadiums in Afghanistan:
Secondary Home Grounds in India
Current squad [ edit ]
The following players have played for Afghanistan in the last 12 months in at least one List A match (including ODIs), Twenty20 match (including T20Is) or first-class match.[68]
Coaching staff [ edit ]
Records [ edit ]
International Match Summary – Afghanistan[69][70][71]
Playing Record Format M W L T D/NR Inaugural Match Tests 1 0 1 0 0 14 June 2018 One Day Internationals 106 55 48 1 2 19 April 2009 Twenty20 Internationals 71 49 22 0 0 1 February 2010
Test matches [ edit ]
Afghanistan played their first ever test match against India on 14 June 2018 at Bengaluru, India.[72]
Highest team total: 109 v India, 14 June 2018 at Bangalore [73]
Lowest team total: 103 v India, 14 June 2018 at Bangalore[74]
Test record versus other nations[69]
Opponent M W L T NR First win vs Test nations v India 1 0 1 0 0 -
Highest Test score for Afghanistan[77]
Best Test bowling figures for Afghanistan[78]
Bowler Figures Opposition Venue Year Yamin Ahmadzai 3/51 India M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore 2018 Wafadar 2/100 India M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore 2018 Rashid Khan 2/154 India M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore 2018
One Day Internationals [ edit ]
Highest team total: 338 v Ireland, 17 March 2017 at Greater Noida [79]
Lowest team total: 58 v Zimbabwe, 2 January 2016 at Sharjah[80]
ODI record versus other nations[70]
Opponent M W L T NR First win vs Test nations v Australia 2 0 2 0 0 v Bangladesh 7 3 4 0 0 1 March 2014 v England 1 0 1 0 0 v India 2 0 1 1 0 v Ireland 20 10 10 0 0 17 January 2015 v New Zealand 1 0 1 0 0 v Pakistan 3 0 3 0 0 v Sri Lanka 3 1 2 0 0 17 September 2018 v West Indies 5 3 1 0 1 9 June 2017 v Zimbabwe 25 15 10 0 0 22 July 2014 vs Associate Members v Canada 5 4 1 0 0 16 February 2010 |
Argentina’s inflation continues to accelerate, Premise data shows
Premise Data Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 16, 2016
By Joe Reisinger, CTO and co-founder
Last month I blogged about the spike in Argentine food inflation we observed following the election of President Mauricio Macri in November, the devaluation of the Peso in December 2015, and the elimination of some price controls in January.
Over the past few weeks, inflation has accelerated further. Our data shows that Argentina year-over-year food inflation increased from 17% when President Macri was elected, to nearly 28% when I blogged on February 17, and now to 33% in our latest data as of March 12, 2016.
Based on our data, the recent food inflation has been driven by (all noted as year-over-year below):
Fruit: 56%
Fish and seafood: 50%
Meat: 47%
Food accounts for around one-fifth of consumption in Argentina, which means food inflation is important for understanding overall price trends.
President Macri has taken measures to contain inflation, including appointing a new head of the Argentine antitrust commission to help rein in prices.
As of today, official statistics from Argentina’s National Statistics and Censuses Institute (INDEC) are current only through October 2015. INDEC inflation statistics are not being reported as President Macri attempts to reform INDEC’s methods.Ships in the Black Sea Fleet Stringer. / Reuters Russia's seizure of Crimea ensured that Moscow could expand its naval capabilities throughout the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean, Matthew Bodner writes for Defense News.
The Kremlin's Black Sea Fleet was based and operated out of the Crimean city of Sevastopol. However, even under the leadership of pro-Russian former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, the Black Sea Fleet was constrained by Kiev.
"The Black Sea Fleet by 2010 had not been replenished with new warships for 25 years, and in fact [the fleet] had turned into a bunch of museum exhibits," Mikhail Barabanov, an expert with the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) in Moscow told Defense News.
"Ukraine persistently tried to squeeze out the Russian forces from Sevastopol, or minimize their [presence]."
By fully annexing Crimea in March 2014, Russia has now opened the floodgates to allow for a complete overhaul of the Black Sea Fleet by 2020 as part of the Kremlin's goal of overhauling and modernizing its armed forces.
The Black Sea Fleet will notably receive six Improved Kilo-class submarines, six Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates armed with anti-ship missiles and multi-purpose missiles, and four Ivan Gren amphibious ships.
Reuters
In total, Vice Admiral Alexander Vitko told Putin in September 2014 that the Black Sea Fleet will total an impressive 206 ships and vessels by 2020. This will include the addition of 80 new warships to the fleet and the expansion of a second naval base on the Black Sea at Novorossiysk.
The expansion of the Black Sea Fleet, combined with an overall militarization of Crimea, has turned the region into a power projection platform against NATO and other frontline states along the Black Sea.
"These weapon systems — from air defense systems that reach nearly half of the Black Sea to surface attack systems that reach almost all of the Black Sea area — have made the platform of Crimea a great platform for power projection into this area," NATO Gen. Philip Breedlove said in March.Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts ignore the cost of insuring many employees’ spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars during the first ten years of the new health care law’s implementation.
“The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage,” said Richard Burkhauser in a telephone interview Monday. Burkhauser is an economist who teaches in Cornell University’s department of policy analysis and management. On Monday the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper on the subject that Burkhauser co-authored with colleagues from Cornell and Indiana University.
Employees and employers can use the rules to their own advantage, he said. “A very large number of workers” will be able to apply for federal subsidies, “dramatically increasing the cost” of the law, he said.
In May a congressional committee set the accounting rules that determine who will qualify for federal health care subsidies under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. When the committee handed down the rules to the Congressional Budget Office, its formula excluded the health care costs of millions of workers’ spouses and children. The result was a final estimate for 2010 that hides those costs.
“This is a very important paper,” Heritage Foundation health care expert Paul Winfree told TheDC. These hidden costs, he said, “will almost certainly add to the deficit, contrary to what the Congressional Budget Office and others have estimated.”
Discussion about this is timely, Winfree added, because Congress’s 12-member “super committee” is about to draft another round of cuts to 10-year spending plans.
Burkhauser says his paper will be expanded later this year because “we have gotten so much heat for this work, that in our final version we are more clearly explaining how we came to find out about the change in the Committee’s [the Joint Committee on Taxation’s] interpretation of the law.”
The president’s health care law provides government subsidies for, among others, private-sector employees who earn between 1.33 times and 4 times the poverty level, and who also spend more than 9.5 percent of their family income on health care.
On May 4, 2010, the Joint Committee on Taxation directed the Congressional Budget Office to ignore family members when determining whether employees actually pay more than 9.5 percent of their household income on insurance.
The instruction was included in a correction of a complex, 150-page March 21 document. The correction read: “ERRATA FOR JCX-18-10 … On page 15, Minimum essential coverage and employer offer of health insurance coverage, in the second sentence of the second paragraph, ‘the type of coverage applicable (e.g., individual or family coverage)’ should be replaced with ‘self-only coverage.’”
Because of this rule change, Burkhauser said, employees who otherwise meet the eligibility requirements to receive the federal subsidy can be denied it, if their own share of the family’s insurance costs total less than 9.5 percent of their families’ incomes.
If theory, he added, “this will mean that millions of families that are not provided with affordable insurance [by companies] will be ineligible to go to the federal exchanges,” he said.
But companies and their employees share great incentives to rearrange workers’ compensation to win more of these federal subsidies, he said.
For example, he explained, an employee can ask his employer to raise the price of company-provided insurance in exchange for an equal increase in salary. In many cases, that would boost the share of his income spent on health insurance to a percentage above the 9.5 percent threshold.
Such an arrangement, Burkhauser added, would make the employee, his spouse, and his children all eligible for federal health care subsidies while enriching both employer and employee — even after the Treasury Department collects fines from U.S. workers.
Burkhauser’s research found that because of the law’s incentives, an extra one-sixth of workers who get their health insurance from employers — or roughly an additional 12.7 percent of all workers — would gain by transfering themselves and their families into the federal exchanges.
Current projections suggest 75 percent of all employees will avoid the federal subsidies and stay in employer-backed health insurance plans. Burkhauser’s estimate, however, suggests that only about 65 percent of employees would have an adequate incentive to remain in privately funded health plans.
The May 4 federal health care rule ignored these incentives, he said, causing the CBO to underestimate the cost of Obama’s program by as much as $50 billion per year. If subsidy costs were to remain consistent, the ten-year total would be $500 billion; the government would likely recoup some of that in noncompliance penalties.
“Every day seems to bring a new Obamacare eruption that demonstrates the law’s authors had no idea what they were doing,” said Michael Cannon. Cannon directs the Cato Institute’s health policy studies program.
“This study shows yet another way that ObamaCare’s cost will be much, much higher than supporters led the American people to believe,” Cannon warned.
“Anyone who’s serious about the federal debt should make Obamacare’s trillion-plus dollars of new entitlement spending the first item to put on the chopping block.”
The new NBER working paper supports conclusions reached by the newspaper The Hill in July. The paper reported then: “Some of the administration’s closest allies on healthcare reform warn this situation could dramatically undercut support for the law, which already is unpopular with many voters and contributed to Democrats losing the House in the 2010 midterm elections.”Saijo, Hiroshima, Japan - Biologists at Hiroshima University, located in the historic sake brewing town of Saijo, have identified the genetic mutation that could ruin the brew of one particular type of yeast responsible for high-quality sake. The research was part of an academic-government-industry collaboration involving the National Institute of Brewing (Japan), the Asahi Sake Brewing Company (Niigata), the Brewing Society of Japan, The University of Tokyo, The University of Pennsylvania, and Iwate University.
Two types of sake considered especially high-quality are called daiginjo-shu and junmai-daiginjo-shu and are often made using the yeast K1801. Different brewing yeasts, whether for beer, wine, or sake, create different tastes in the final product due to factors such as how they make the sugar-to-alcohol conversion and the by-products that they release as part of many biosynthesis pathways.
A previously identified mutation in K1801 is a desirable change that makes the yeast produce high amounts of ethyl caproate, the chemical that acts as the major flavor component of many varieties of high-quality sake and creates a fruity taste.
A different mutation, newly identified by this research team, is potentially devastating for brewers because it causes a defect in how the yeast grows and divides. The risk of a ruined brew from this potentially dysfunctional yeast is a liability for industrial-scale sake production, where consistent production with stable quality is essential for brewers.
The research team confirmed that K1801's two mutations are not functionally related by performing genetic experiments, chemical analysis, and computer-assisted microscopic visual inspection of the yeast cells using a software program called CalMorph.
A genetically engineered version of K1801 that had normal growth but maintained high production of ethyl caproate was also built and used to brew sake in the laboratory.
Dai Hirata, PhD, from Hiroshima University is last author of the research paper and has training and experience as a sake taster, serving as an official judge at sake evaluation events.
"Our small-scale brew indicated that this version of the yeast without the growth-related mutation should maintain the high quality expected of daiginjo-shu," said Hirata.
However, the Japanese market will not accept sake made from genetically modified yeast. The next step for the research team is to begin screening potentially thousands of K1801 yeast cells until they can find a natural mutant with only the desirable mutation.
The quality of sake comes in-part from the amount of the rice husk, the outer shell responsible for giving un-processed rice its brown color, that has been polished off before the rice is used for brewing. Daiginjo-shu is made from highly polished rice with over half of the husk removed and is usually brewed for a long fermentation period at a low temperature compared to standard sake brewing before it is filtered and bottled. K1801 does not produce a foamy layer while brewing, meaning it requires less physical labor for brewers during the cleaning process between batches. An additional valuable attribute of K1801 is the low amount of total acids it produces as it brews, which creates the smooth taste of its sake.
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Original research article citation: Tetsuya Goshima, Ryo Nakamura, Kazunori Kume, Hiroki Okada, Eri Ichikawa, Hiroyasu Tamura, Hirokazu Hasuda, Masaaki Inahashi, Naoto Okazaki, Takeshi Akao, Hitoshi Shimoi, Masaki Mizunuma, Yoshikazu Ohya, Dai Hirata. 18 May 2016. Identification of a mutation causing a defective spindle assembly checkpoint in high ethyl caproate-producing sake yeast strain K1801. Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry. DOI: 10.1080/09168451.2016.1184963
Additional information about the CalMorph software used in this research is available in the following publication: Ohtani M. et al. Development of image processing program for yeast cell morphology. J. Bioinform. Comput. Biol. 2004; 102: 19015-19021. http://dx. doi. org/ 10. 1142/ S0219720004000363
This work was supported by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan [grant number 15H04402].As Labor Market Advances, Millions Are Stuck In Part-Time Jobs
Enlarge this image toggle caption Alan Diaz/AP Alan Diaz/AP
Treading water in July is really fun — if you happen to be in a swimming pool.
But if you find yourself stuck in the part-time labor pool, drifting is disappointing.
On Friday, the Labor Department reported that while employers hired 209,000 workers in July, the growth rate was not strong enough to push part-timers forward.
The monthly jobs report showed payrolls grew by more than 200,000 for the sixth straight month, the longest stretch of such growth since 1997.
But the troubled part-time labor force remained roughly unchanged in July, with 7.5 million people still getting less than 40 hours of work per week, even though they are seeking full-time paychecks.
"Many Americans who would like full-time jobs are stuck in part-time positions, because businesses can hire desirable part-time workers to supplement a core of permanent, full-time employees, but at lower wages," Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, said in a written assessment.
With the pool of eager part-timers still so large, employers have been able to hold down wages. The Labor Department said that in July, average hourly earnings edged up by just one penny to $24.45. Over the past 12 months, hourly earnings have risen by 2 percent, just keeping pace with inflation.
The Labor Department characterized the unemployment rate in July as "little changed," with an uptick of one tenth of a point to 6.2 percent. The labor-force participation rate of 62.9 percent "has been essentially unchanged since April," the report said.
Businesses can hire desirable part-time workers to supplement a core of permanent, full-time employees, but at lower wages.
And the number of long-term unemployed, i.e., people who have been jobless for 27 weeks or more, was also "essentially unchanged at 3.2 million in July," it said.
In other words, the job market is moving along at a decent, steady pace. But the upswing is still not strong enough to change the prospects for the long-term unemployed or the involuntary part-timers, or to drive significant raises for workers.
"July's 209,000 jobs is solid, but is a decline from the strong second quarter, when 277,000 jobs were added each month on average," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. "At July's pace, it would take nearly four more years to get back to pre-recession labor market conditions."
The White House said the report confirms that the economic recovery has made huge progress, but has left behind millions of Americans.
"Short-term unemployment has fully recovered," Jason Furman, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in his assessment. However, "the long-term unemployment rate, which more than quadrupled as a result of the recession, still has the furthest to go to recover to its pre-recession average."
With so many long-term-unemployed workers in the hunt for jobs, part-time workers find themselves with little bargaining power in the workplace.
Their concerns about constantly changing shifts, on-call schedules and low wages have started getting more attention this summer, at least from Democratic lawmakers.
Last month, Rep. George Miller of California, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., introduced the Schedules That Work Act to reform rules for part-time workers.
For example, they want employers to guarantee workers four hours' pay any time they are called out to the job. Many workers, especially those at restaurants and retail shops, say their employers too often schedule them for only an hour or two during peak times, such as lunch hour.
Business groups generally are opposed, arguing that part-time workers will get better hours and conditions when the economy improves enough to boost all jobs and wages. They say that imposing new rules on businesses would only discourage hiring.President Donald Trump at the G-20 summit. Pool/Getty Images Whether Donald Trump's presidency collapses under its own weight or goes on to last two terms, his administration is doing such sustained damage to America's image and global leadership that it may be hard to repair any time soon.
The United States has descended from being the world's beacon of freedom and democracy, even a deeply flawed and often hypocritical one, to becoming a banana-republic laughing stock.
As Trump lands in Paris for a high-profile meeting with the new President Emanuel Macron, he has fresh memories of his last trip to Europe for the G20 meeting which, to put it mildly, didn't go swimmingly.
I talked to Thomas Bernes, a veteran of Canadian trade diplomacy and former International Monetary Fund senior official, who attended last week's closely-scrutinized meeting. His description of the events in Hamburg should serve as a cautionary tale of just how much Trump's rise to power has eroded global trust in the United States.
Asked to describe the general sentiment regarding the current US administration in Hamburg, Bernen, now a distinguished fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation said: "Bewilderment.
"There's a real sense that the US has stepped back," he said.
"There's a hope that this is a temporary withdrawal from the framework that has largely been built by US leadership," he told me. "But there's a sense there's no guarantee on that."
Now that the seal of global US leadership, which arguably dates back to Woodrow Wilson, has been broken once, there's a sense that it could easily happen again. It's as if the world had lost its faith in the US electorate to make the right call on a fundamental level, with global repercussions. This was reflected in a recent Pew Research survey that showed precipitous drop in overseas sentiment toward the US president.
Making matters worse, Bernes said Trump stunned his global peers further by having his daughter replace him at the table during head-of-state level G20 discussions.
Trump has taken to Twitter to defend this unprecedented move.
Bernes' response, after decades of attending such meetings? "No I have never seen it, I have never heard of it."
Lawrence Summers, who was Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and head of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, did not mince words either, responding harshly — and also via Twitter — to Trump's assertion that having his daughter replace him at the table with heads of states was somehow normal.
Bernes' chief concern is that as the United States withdraws from the world, it leaves a vacuum for repressive, expansionist regimes like China and Russia to thrive militarily.
"It's fine to say, countries will do what they can but there are real questions in terms of who can provide the global leadership that the US has provided," he said.
Going into the meetings, Bernes said, "there was a real sense of not knowing what was going to come out."
G20 gatherings are often fairly dull affairs, where countries negotiate the agenda ahead of time and hash out the details during the conference.
"Normally there may be one or two points or agenda items but by and large the outlines are known," Bernes recounted. "Here everything was up in the air. Was it going to end up with no joint communique, with people walking out on meetings?"
Things didn't get that far, but it was bad enough.
"It was very clear very quickly that it was 19-1," Bernes said. "The president just wasn't engaged in the debate, he cut a very lowly, solitary figure."
During the centerpiece climate change debate "he didn't even stay in the room for the discussion," which has clear and urgent global implications. Trump has already withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate agreement.
What did conflict did Trump have that was so pressing?
"He stepped out for his bilateral with Putin," Bernes said, a meeting that was scheduled for a half hour and ended up lasting over two, and looked chummy by all accounts, including Trump's own.
"The other factor was you don't have a team in place," he added. "The fact that so many positions have not been nominated let alone filled. Countries are very frustrated that there's no one with any authority to talk to."The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937, most often referred to as the Pittman–Robertson Act for its sponsors, Nevada Senator Key Pittman and Virginia Congressman Absalom Willis Robertson, was signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 2, 1937 and became effective on July 1 of the following year.[1][2][3][4] It has been amended many times with several of the major ones taking place during the 1970s[1][2][3][5] and the most recent taking place in 2000.[6]
Prior to the creation of the Pittman–Robertson Act, many species of wildlife were driven to or near extinction by commercial/market hunting pressure and/or habitat degradation from humans.[5] The Act created an excise tax that provides funds to each state to manage such animals and their habitats. Notable species that have come back from the brink since the implementation of this act include white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and wood ducks.[1][4][5]
Overview [ edit ]
The Pittman–Robertson Act took over a pre-existing 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition.[7][8] Instead of going into the U.S. Treasury as it had done in the past, the money is kept separate and is given to the Secretary of the Interior to distribute to the States.[4][8][9] The Secretary determines how much to give to each state based on a formula that takes into account both the area of the state and its number of licensed hunters.[2][3][6][9][10]
States must fulfill certain requirements to use the money apportioned to them. None of the money from their hunting license sales may be used by anyone other than the states' fish and game department.[3][6][8] Plans for what to do with the money must be submitted to and approved by the Secretary of the Interior.[6] Acceptable options include research, surveys, management of wildlife and/or habitat, and acquisition or lease of land.[1][6][10] Once a plan has been approved, the state must pay the full cost and is later reimbursed for up to 75% of that cost through P–R funds.[1][3][10] The 25% of the cost that the state must pay generally comes from its hunting license sales.[1] If, for whatever reason, any of the federal money does not get spent, after two years that money is then reallocated to the Migratory Bird Conservation Act.[6][9]
In the 1970s, amendments created a 10% tax on handguns and their ammunition and accessories as well as an 11% tax on archery equipment.[1][2][3][8][10] It was also mandated for half of the money from each of the new taxes to be used to educate and train hunters by the creation and maintenance of hunter safety classes and shooting/target ranges.[1][2][3][10]
Results [ edit ]
This piece of legislation has provided states with funding for research and projects that would have been unaffordable otherwise.[10] According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service webpage that was updated in January 2010, over two billion dollars of federal aid has been generated through this program, which in turn means that states have kept up their 25% contributions with over 500 million dollars.[1]
The habitat acquisition and improvement made possible by this money has allowed some species with large ranges such as American black bears, elk, and cougars, to expand their ranges beyond their normal boundaries prior to the implementation of the act.[1] Important game populations such as white-tailed deer and several Galliformes have also had a chance to recover and expand their populations.
Critics of the legislation claim that state Fish and Wildlife agencies allocate funds primarily towards the creation of new hunting opportunities. There is a feeling amongst hunters, in general, that their tax money collected from firearms purchases should benefit them, given that it is they who pay the tax and establish the funding. The result is that little money is spent directly on initiatives other than those increasing hunting opportunities.[1][8]
Economics [ edit ]
The idea behind this act is that by creating more and better hunting experiences for people through habitat management and hunter education, more taxable items will be purchased, which would then provide more funding for management and improvement.[11][8] The habitat improvement may also stimulate the eco-tourism sector of the economy by creating jobs in areas where people tend to visit for hunting or aesthetic reasons.[1][8]
One source shows hunters spending around ten billion dollars a year on everything they need for their hunting trips.[1] A different source found that hunters spend between 2.8 and 5.2 billion dollars a year on taxable merchandise.[8] This generates between 177 and 324 million dollars a year in P–R money.[8]
Another source estimated that hunters contribute about three and a half million dollars a day to conservation by purchasing taxable items and hunting licenses.[4]
One study showed an extremely high Return on Investment for firearm manufacturers; 823% to 1588% depending on the year.[8]
Related legislation [ edit ]
Similar legislation [ edit ]
The Pittman–Robertson Act was so successful that in the 1950s, a similar act was written for fish.[3][10] This Act was titled the Federal Aid in Sports Fish Restoration Act. As with its wildlife counterpart, the name of this act is generally shortened by reducing it to the names of those who sponsored it, and so it is generally referred to as the Dingell–Johnson Act, or DJ.[3][10]
Legislative oversight [ edit ]
In 2000, when evidence surfaced that the Pittman-Robertson Act sportsman`s conservation trust funds were being mismanaged, NRA board member and sportsman, U.S. Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) introduced the Wildlife and Sports Fish Restoration Programs Improvement Act. The act passed the House 423–2 and became law on Nov. 1, 2000, and defines in what manner the money can be spent.
Proposed amendments [ edit ]
On November 21, 2013, Rep. Robert E. Latta (R, OH-5) introduced an omnibus bill called the Sportsmen’s Heritage And Recreational Enhancement Act of 2013 (H.R. 3590; 113th Congress).[12][13] Title II of that bill, the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act, would amend the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act to: (1) authorize a state to pay up to 90% of the costs of acquiring land for, expanding, or constructing a public target range; (2) authorize a state to elect to allocate 10% of a specified amount apportioned to it from the federal aid to wildlife restoration fund for such costs; (3) limit the federal share of such costs under such Act to 90%; and (4) require amounts provided for such costs under such Act to remain available for expenditure and obligation for five fiscal years.[13] The bill passed the House of Representatives on February 5, 2014.[14]
For more information [ edit ]
For a comprehensive list of taxable items, see Appendix A (pages 73–74) of "Financial Returns to Industry from the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program."[8]
For more detailed information about the recovery of certain species since 1937, see Appendices E and F (pages 80–86) of "Financial Returns to Industry from the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program."[8]
For more details about the economics of the Pittman–Robertson Act, read "Financial Returns to Industry from the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program" in more depth.[8]
For a chart showing the amount of money apportioned to each state for the 2012 fiscal year, see the U.S. Department of the Interior's Preliminary Certificate of Apportionment.[15]
For more detailed information about how much P–R money your state receives and what it is used for, contact your state's fish and game department. Some departments post this information publicly on the internet. Those who don't will at least have contact information on their websites.It’s not clear how many places will be taking part in the day of action against blacklisting in the construction industry, but here’s the details I’ve managed to find:
London: 9am – Skanska offices, Goswell Road, Barbican, EC1A 4JY – direct action
12:15pm – Westminster Rally followed by lobby of parliament
Birmingham: Demo on 6th December at 12.00 at the McAlpine site Exchange Square, Urban Village Site, Gate 4, Dale End, opposite Scruffy Murphy’s Pub. B4 7LN
Leeds: Robert McAlpine Site, City Square, Leeds, 8.00-10.00
Nottingham: “The blacklisting of construction workers is a long running scandal that has blighted the industry for decades. Workers have been denied employment just for raising concerns about health and safety or simply being a member of a union. So how is it possible that the contract to renovate the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre has been awarded to McAlpine, one of the most notorious blacklisting companies in the UK? Join us at Broadmarsh at 10am and at City Hall, Market Square, at 12 noon to demand that McAlpines are stripped of this contract”
Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament, 12.00
Those are the only ones I’m aware of, but if you want to check if there’s anything going on in your area, here’s a list of regional contacts:
Scotland: steven.dillon@unitetheunion.org
NEYH: (north east) tom.usher@unitetheunion.org
NEYH (Yorkshire) mark.martin@unitetheunion.org
North West andrew.fisher@unitetheunion.org
East Midlands: shaun.lee@unitetheunion.org
West Midlands: martin.orpe@unitetheunion.org
London and Eastern: guy.langston@unitetheunion.org
South East: malcolm.bonnett@unitetheunion.org
AdvertisementsThe test involves a simple endurance exercise, consisting of 15-metre shuttle runs tested against the clock. But since the assessments were started in September, more than one in 50 candidates have failed to make the grade.
Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from 27 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales show that of 13,024 officers who completed the tests, 353 had failed.
Almost 70 per cent of those who failed the tests were female officers, which is likely to prompt criticism that the exercises are unfairly biased against women.
At the moment officers who fail the tests do not suffer any punitive measures, but from this September those who do not make the grade persistently could face disciplinary action, including having their pay reduced.
Of the forces that responded to the FOI request, those with the highest proportion of officers failing to make the grade were Suffolk (7 per cent), Gwent (6 per cent) and Wiltshire (4.7 per cent). The three forces with the best results were Devon & Cornwall, Dorset and North Wales, where all those involved passed.
Compulsory fitness testing was introduced as part of the implementation of aspects of the Winsor review into the future of policing. Tom Winsor, a lawyer commissioned to undertake the review, suggested that all officers should be made to take an annual “bleep” test — in which participants complete a 15-metre shuttle run in shorter time periods. The tests mirror those undertaken by new recruits applying to join the police force. The Winsor review highlighted concerns that some officers were failing to keep up fitness levels and were no longer able to undertake some of the most basic physical requirements in the line of duty.
A survey published in 2012 suggested that among the Metropolitan Police’s 31,000 officers as many as 52 per cent were overweight, with almost a quarter classified as obese.
Mr Winsor recommended that from 2018 the tests should be made harder, using challenges based on the type of situations that an officer might face on duty. This might include strength tests and even obstacle courses. The newly founded College of Policing is considering these recommendations, but critics have warned that such tests could be discriminatory against female candidates.
Some forces, such as Avon & Somerset, Cambridgeshire, Dyfed-Powys, Essex, Northumbria, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, have not yet started testing, while some other forces failed to respond to the FOI request.
A College of Policing spokesman said: “Fitness testing is in an interim phase to allow data to be examined so that longer-term recommendations can be made to ensure there is no unlawful discrimination against officers because of their age, disability or gender.”Newt Gingrich has an interesting post about polls and today's world leaders. It looks as though most of them are underwater, as they like to say in news analysis.
How would you like to be President Macron of France? Not long ago, Mr. Macron was the darling of the anti-Trumps. Today, he is down under like Mr. Trump.
Let's take a look at the post:
Macron was at 64 percent approval in June. Now, less than two months later, he has fallen to 36 percent....BELOW TRUMP. How can the elite media explain this collapse? How can the elite media rationalize that their young, moderate, sophisticated technocrat is now below President Trump? They can't. So, they don't. However, Macron is not alone. The elite media has also failed to inform viewers that the approval ratings of other world leaders have been recorded at similarly low levels in recent months. For example, British Prime Minister Theresa May earned a 34 percent satisfaction rate, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had a July approval rating of 34.2 percent, and the Democratic Party in the United States received 38 percent approval in June. All of these approval ratings are lower than President Trump’s - but you don’t see the elite media fighting to break that news story.
Mr. Gingrich is right. Mr. Trump is down under like a lot of others.
At the same time, what does this mean for President Trump? Not much, as far as I can see.
President Trump has one thing going for him that makes today's polls somewhat irrelevant.
First, he's always beaten the polls. I was one of those who kept writing here about his negative polls, and look who is sitting in the White House. So polls and President Trump make great talking points but may not really mean much when people actually cast a ballot. It raises the question: are the pollsters even reaching Trump voters? My gut feeling is no. I can't prove it, but my senses tell me that Trump voters don't get calls or talk to pollsters. It's the hidden vote that showed up in 2016 to all the experts' surprise.
Second, President Trump's greatest ally is a Democratic Party stuck in and consumed by identity politics, from being the party of "transgenders" to sanctuary cities. According to a recent report by Guy Benson, the Democrats are disconnected from the white working class over culture and the economy.
The problem is more acute when you travel between the coasts. Call it growing cultural disconnect!
And that's where their problem is. They can't connect with people who like the U.S. and feel that the Democrats don't. Or people who believe in traditional values and don't think the Democrats do. Or people who are not racists but keep hearing that they are because they disagreed with President Obama's executive orders, the health care law, or using the EPA to push an anti-manufacturing agenda.
So let me say it again. The Democrats will need more than Trump-bashing, Civil War monument replacement, and support for sanctuary cities to win back enough seats to change the U.S. House in 2018. It may all change, but this is how I see it a year before the campaigning starts.
PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.The best climate and clean energy news to come out of yesterday's election is that California voters roundly rejected Proposition 23, a ballot initiative sponsored by out-of-state oil companies that would have overturned the state's 2006 climate law. It serves as a resounding referendum on California's trailblazing commitment to clean energy and climate action -- and is a major victory for clean energy supporters in the face of a well-funded campaign by fossil fuel interests. With 93% of precincts reporting, Prop 23 has been rejected by a pretty wide margin: 61% voted against it, and 39% in favor. Here's the LA Times:
In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill aimed at rolling back the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020... This year, a coalition of business groups funded largely by money from out-of-state oil companies, spent millions trying to roll back the law. But the efforts were opposed by Schwarzenegger, environmental groups and California voters, who overwhelmingly rejected the ballot measure Tuesday.
Despite the 'Yes on Prop 23' campaign having over $8 million in funding from the Texas oil companies Valero and Tesoro, and millions more from the Kansas-based fossil fuel company Koch industries, supporters of California's nascent clean energy sector joined forces to defeat it.
Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, leaders in Silicon Valley |
Winfield on the Kanawha River. The Putnam County region was among the first to be settled in West Virginia and is among its most productive agricultural markets. Its economy is strongly tied to that of the Charleston and Huntington, metropolitan areas, located to the east and west, respectively. Interstate 64 (I-64) follows the suburban Teays Valley through the southern neck of Putnam County. A part of the southern county is also drained by the Pocatalico River. Much of the northern county is wooded or in farmland. As of the 2010 census, the population of Putnam County was 55,486.
Cities & Towns in Putnam County
Bancroft, West Virginia
Buffalo, West Virginia
Eleanor, West Virginia
Extra, West Virginia
Fraziers Bottom, West Virginia
Hurricane, West Virginia
Liberty, West Virginia
Nitro, West Virginia
Nye, West Virginia
Paradise, West Virginia
Pliny, West Virginia
Poca, West Virginia
Red House, West Virginia
Robertsburg, West Virginia
Scott Depot, West Virginia
Teays Valley, West Virginia
Winfield, West Virginia
Winter, West Virgnia
Parks & Public Recreation Facilities
Amherst-Plymouth Wildlife Management Area
Hurricane City Park (Hurricane, WV)
Nitro City Park (Nitro, WV)
Putnam County Fairground (Eleanor, WV)
Putnam County Historic Landmarks
Putnam County Courthouse (Winfield, WV)
Photos of Putnam County
Barn on Manilla Ridge Scary Creek Presbyterian church at Buffalo Marker at Nitro City Hall Shawnee village at Buffalo Vineyard on Fisher Ridge Historic Red House at Eleanor Storms approach Putnam County pasture
Photos of Putnam County II
Cattle farm near Robertsburg, WV Eighteenmile Creek at Extra, WV Farm pond near Robertsburg, WV Locusts bloom on Manilla Ridge Oma Church near Grimms Landing, WV Buffalo, West Virginia (WV) in spring Schoolhouse at Putnam County Fairground
Regional information for Putnam County, West Virginia
Further information on lodging, dining, and recreation in Putnam County may be found in our guide to travel in the Metro Valley Region in western West Virginia, in which Putnam County is located.Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Sunday that he has received another endorsement from a union that believes he is the most pro-worker candidate.
The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America represents 35,000 workers in manufacturing and the public sector. The union prides itself on being independent and not affiliate with union conglomerates like the AFL-CIO. Union President Peter Knowlton said a Sanders presidency would be a unique opportunity that workers and unions should not pass up.
“[He’s] the most pro-worker pro-union presidential candidate I have seen in my lifetime,” Knowlton said in a statement released by the Sanders campaign. “We are proud to endorse Bernie Sanders and support his campaign.”
Sanders has struggled to win over the labor movement despite being very aligned with it politically. He is currently campaigning in Rhode Island ahead of a primary vote Tuesday. Nevertheless he proudly accepted the endorsement while recalling working with the union to advance progressive policies.
“During my 25 years in Congress, I have been proud to stand side by side with the UE fighting to increase the minimum wage to a living wage; to guarantee health care,” Sanders said in a statement. “And against disastrous trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and normalized trade with China which have destroyed millions of decent-paying jobs in America.”
Sanders has done a lot of advance union causes. He introduced a bill in July designed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and has advocated for mandatory union dues. Sanders was also adamantly opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which union leaders have denounced as a harmful giveaway to corporations.
Nevertheless Sanders has had fought for union support against his primary rival former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He won support early on among local unions but Clinton has dominated the labor movement with national support. Some union leaders have expressed doubt on whether he is electable.
Clinton in contrasts was hesitant to oppose TPP and has been unclear about her stance on the minimum wage. She originally said the federal minimum wage should not exceed $12 an hour but supported states which choose to go higher. Clinton then said during the Democratic debate Apr. 14 that she meant the $12 mark was meant to as a step towards eventually reaching $15 an hour.
Sanders won his biggest union endorsement Dec. 17 from the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The United Electrical Workers, the Amalgamated Transit Union and the National Nurses United have also decided to support him. Former CWA President Larry Cohen is now leading the coalition Labor for Bernie which consists mostly of local unions that support Sanders.
Nevertheless Clinton has been a favorite among national union leaders. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) announced its endorsement for Clinton within days of Vice President Joe Biden declaring he would not run. Clinton won her biggest union endorsement Nov. 17 from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
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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.The Houston Dynamo announced today the appointment of Owen Coyle as the club’s head coach. Per club and league policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Coyle has extensive experience as a player and manager in the upper levels of English and Scottish soccer. The 48-year-old guided Burnley Football Club to promotion to the Barclays Premier League in 2009, the first time the club reached England’s top flight in 33 years. Under Coyle, the Clarets also reached the League Cup semifinals in 2008.
Coyle follows Dominic Kinnear as the second head coach in Dynamo history.
“First and foremost I’m thankful for the opportunity to come to the Houston Dynamo,” Coyle said. “It is nice to be wanted by a fantastic club and I feel we have a great opportunity to put a team on the pitch that is pleasing on the eye and can win games. I’ve been watching Houston Dynamo for many years and I know the atmosphere of the supporters. The league is thriving and the opportunity to join a big club like the Dynamo is very exciting for me.”
Coyle became manager of the Premier League’s Bolton Wanderers in 2010 and signed Dynamo midfielder Stuart Holden and American defender Tim Ream during his tenure. Coyle also managed England national team regulars Jack Wilshire and Daniel Sturridge, who joined Bolton on loan in his tenure. Coyle’s Wanderers reached the 2010-11 FA Cup semifinals and he was twice named Premier League Manager of the Month (November 2010, March 2012).
“I am extremely excited to bring Owen Coyle to the Houston Dynamo and am confident that he is the right fit for our club,” Dynamo president Chris Canetti said. “He brings a wealth of experience at the highest level and possesses the personal qualities we are looking for in our manager. Most importantly, I can feel his will to win and know that he is motivated to successfully lead us into the next phase of our club’s future.”
Born in Paisley, Scotland, Coyle scored over 200 goals in more than 600 professional appearances as a player. His lengthy playing career included stops with several clubs in Scotland and England, including Bolton and Scottish clubs Dumbarton F.C., Motherwell F.C. and Airdrieonians F.C. The forward with Irish ancestry made one appearance for the Republic of Ireland national team.
“We are very pleased to announce Owen Coyle as the new head coach of the Houston Dynamo,” Dynamo VP/GM Matt Jordan said. “His top level experience, character, passion and ability to lead a group will be key factors as the team and club continues to evolve. He has a true respect and appreciation for the game in this country and of Major League Soccer, which was extremely important for us as a club moving forward.”
Coyle effectively completed his playing career at age 38 as a player-manager with Airdrie in 2005 after previously serving in a player-manager role with Falkirk in 2003 and co-leading the Bairns to the Scottish First Division title. He gained his first full time managerial role in 2005 with St. Johnstone in the Scottish First Division and led the Saints to a second-place finish in his first two seasons as well as to the semifinals of the Scottish Cup and Scottish League Cup in 2007. Coyle also made sporadic playing appearances with St. Johnsone, and later, with Bolton.
Coyle took the helm at Burnley in November 2007 and earned success in his first full season in the English Championship, leading the Clarets to a fifth place finish in the 2008-09 campaign and a place in the Championship playoffs. Burnley defeated Reading, 3-0, in the semifinal before beating Sheffield United, 1-0, in the final for promotion to the Premier League.
Coyle has thrived in Cup competitions, repeatedly bouncing clubs from higher divisions. With St. Johnstone, he beat Scottish giants Rangers in the 2006-07 Scottish League Cup quarterfinals and Scottish Premier League clubs Falkirk and Motherwell to reach the Scottish Cup the same year. He then guided Burnley to three upsets of Premiership clubs in the 2008-09 League Cup – defeating Fulham, Chelsea and Arsenal in succession to reach the semifinals.
Coyle’s most recent managerial role was with Wigan Athletic in the English Championship. He joined the Latics in June 2013 but left the club in December of the same year.Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, who’s honed being provocative – even outrageous at times – to a fine and lucrative art, is the focus of criticism for inciting violence.
Specifically, his dozens of comments attacking the Tides Foundation are being linked to the attempt by a heavily-armed man to assassinate employees at the San Francisco-based foundation, which funds environmental, human rights, and other progressive projects. The attack in July was thwarted in a shoot-out with police in which two officers were wounded.
Since then, alleged attacker Byron Williams has said in jailhouse interviews that he wanted to “start a revolution.” He says Beck was not the direct cause of his turning violent. But he does say: “I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind.”
At various times, Beck has referred to Tides as “bullies” and “thugs” whose mission is to “warp your children's brains and make sure they know how evil capitalism is.” More recently, Beck (who describes himself as a “progressive hunter”) has warned the foundation “I’m coming for you.”
This has drawn criticism from various quarters.
'People are turning to guns'
Referring directly to Beck, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence issued a statement this week: “Too many people are turning to guns to remedy their grievances. And they are being fueled by rhetoric from leaders of the extreme gun rights movement.”
Some law enforcement officials agree.
"The Becks of the world are people who are venting their opinions and it is inflammatory, it generates a lot of emotion and generates in some people overreaction that apparently happened in the California case," Rich Roberts of the International Union of Police Associations, which represents some 500 local police unions, told the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America. "Inflammatory speech has a tendency to trigger those kinds of emotions."
Speaking of the alleged attack on the Tides Foundation by Byron Williams, Rep. Peter King (R) of New York, senior Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said in an e-mail to Media Matters: “It is important that everyone in public life, whether on the right or on the left, realize that words have consequences.”
Fox News advertisers pressured
Tides itself is calling on advertisers to drop their business with Fox News because of what it charges has been “hate speech leading to violence.”
“While we may agree to disagree about the role our citizens and our government should play in promoting social justice and the common good, there should be no disagreement about what constitutes integrity and professionalism and responsibility in discourse – even when allowing for and encouraging contending diverse opinions intelligently argued,” Tides founder and CEO Drummond Pike wrote. “This is not a partisan issue. It's an American issue. No one, left, right or center, wants to see another Oklahoma City.”
To some observers, the episode involving Glenn Beck and alleged attacker Byron Wilson is reminiscent of the 1991 film “The Fisher King.”
“What was prescient about the film is that the main character, Jack Lucas, played by Jeff Bridges, is an arrogant, self-serving, egocentric shock jock talk radio host who enjoys baiting his callers and indulging in personal ideological comments that often have no basis in fact,” writes Mark Axelrod, professor of comparative literature at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., on Huffington Post. “The upshot of all of that ‘free speech’ is that an off-handed, on air comment prompts one of his regular callers to commit multiple murders at a popular Manhattan bar.”
None of this seems to have turned Beck away from rhetoric that implies violence.
Railing about a hypothetical situation in which children would have to take flu vaccine or be removed from their families, Beck said this week that his response would be “meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson,” a reference to the gun manufacturer.
History of violent political speech
The implication of violence in political speech is as old as when lawmakers beat each other with canes on the floor of the House of Representatives. And it’s bipartisan.
GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada has suggested that there might have to be armed “Second Amendment remedies” for a Congress controlled by Democrats.
On a radio show the other day, President Obama warned that a Republican takeover of Congress would mean “hand-to-hand combat” for the next two years.
At a Democratic fundraiser in Minnesota, Vice President Joe Biden said, “If I hear one more Republican tell me about balancing the budget, I am going to strangle them.”
But he quickly added, “To the press, that's a figure of speech.”Here are some useful tips that will help you prepare for the launch of World of Warcraft: Legion. For even more resources you may not have encountered, check out the class guides or general raiding guides (both are also linked in the navigation bar).
It has always been a dream of mine to write a useful List of N Things blog post with a catchy title. Enjoy!
Swag Your Spellbook
When Blizzard reworked the Glyph system with the 7.0 Legion prepatch, several classes lost cosmetic effects. Some will be available again from Inscription Glyphs when Legion launches. Others are available for you now!
Are you a Druid missing your stag appearance? A Shaman that misses making it rain (of frogs)? Check out this Reddit post with a list of vendors that sell cosmetic enhancements.
Some like Quartermaster Miranda Breechlock in Eastern Plaguelands sell only a few items (she sells a Contemplation Tome for Paladins and a nifty toy for Priests). Others like Lorelae Wintersong in Moonglade sell many Tomes – any Druids looking for Flap or cosmetic effects should check her out.
Speaking of Flap, if you are a Balance Druid, check out the FlappyBirb weakaura which creates some mini-games based on Flapping!
Enhance Your Exploring
Preach made a great video guide with some Legion leveling tips. Some folks on Reddit summarized and discussed his recommendations – definitely worth a read-through.
A few other tips and tricks threads have popped up on Reddit: here’s another one I found useful. Make sure to plan your attack so you hit the ground running once the expansion drops.
Analyze Your Artifact Weapons
Poneria wrote a lengthy article on the math behind leveling up multiple artifact weapons. Check it out to get a better understanding of where you should be spending your artifact power.
My executive summary? Two fully-filled artifact weapons (a main spec and one offspec) is doable. But once you get to the hidden “percentage improvement” traits, you want to focus on one main spec early on in Legion. The artifact power costs of each additional percentage will get prohibitively high for multiple specs.
If you are interested in looking at more artifact weapon numbers, check out this spreadsheet by Kibo.
Automate Backing Up Your Addons
This guide on the official Blizzard Battle.net forums explains how you can automate backing up your addons (and their settings) to your favorite cloud storage provider – at no additional cost! Once everything is set up, you can also sync addons between different computers. The process is a bit involved and requires some tech savvy, so proceed with caution.
For a paid alternative, consider Curse Premium, which includes an addons backup and sync feature.
Calculate Your Cooldowns
As I noted in my recent post on User Interface, Weakauras can be a great way to manage your cooldowns. I also noted that it can often be a good start – and sometimes finish – to borrow Weakauras from someone else.
Several Weakauras repository websites are popping up for Legion. They include weakauras.online and wago.io. As someone who is very likely going to main Balance Druid, I love Cyrous’s Weakauras on wago.io. Restoration is my favorite offspec, and Ablution’s Weakauras on weakauras.online are a great resource for Restoration Druids as well as Holy and Discipline Priests.
Optimize Your Offspec
Are you still considering what class to pick or what offspec you should prioritize? Are you wondering what specs have secondary stat priorities that mesh well, so you don’t have to maintain two separate sets of gear?
If so, look no further! This spreadsheet, linked on Reddit, lays out which specs have synergistic stat priorities. For me, Balance Druid with Restoration Druid offspec has never looked better, with both specs prioritizing Haste then Critical Strike.
Perfect Your Performance
I may have saved the best for last. This spreadsheet, with discussion on Reddit, is a comprehensive guide to the start of Legion. It covers, leveling, professions, gearing, your artifact, and more. It is focused on players who want to immediately gear up a main and an alt for heroic split runs.
A word of caution: the original spreadsheet was written in Russian, and is being constantly updated by the creator. The translated English version may become outdated.Ohio Postpones 8 Executions Amidst Legal Challenge To Lethal Injection Procedure
Enlarge this image toggle caption Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP
Gov. John Kasich has put Ohio executions on hold until May, citing a legal challenge to the state's three-drug lethal injection protocol.
The governor's office released a statement saying it had postponed the execution dates for the next eight prisoners on death row, including the next prisoner to die, Ronald Phillips, who had his date moved from next Wednesday to May 10.
Executions have been on hold in Ohio since Jan. 16, 2014, when the state used a sedative called midazolam during the execution of Dennis McGuire.
It took 24 minutes for McGuire to die and he "started struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds which lasted for at least 10 minutes," according to a witness.
The state had planned to resume using midazolam in a new lethal injection protocol this year, but in January a federal judge rejected the state's three-drug procedure, on the grounds that midazolam is not sufficiently humane in its effects, as we have reported.
The drug has also been used during botched executions in Arizona, Oklahoma and Alabama.
After five days of hearings, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Michael Merz blocked three upcoming executions in a decision issued Thursday morning, writing that the "use of midazolam as the first drug in Ohio's present three-drug protocol will create a'substantial risk of serious harm' or an 'objectively intolerable risk of harm.' "
Merz also wrote that barbiturates offer a potentially preferable alternative to midazolam. Barbiturates such as pentobarbital were the lethal injection drugs of choice until pharmaceutical companies began blocking their sale for executions, as The Two-Way has reported.
Ohio says it has made numerous unsuccessful efforts to find pentobarbital, according to The Associated Press:
"In a court filing last week, state attorneys said they asked seven other states for the drug. The prisons agency also tried in vain to obtain the active ingredient in pentobarbital in hopes of having a compounded version made, the filing said. "The filing says Ohio asked Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Texas and Virginia for the drug."
There are currently 140 people on death row in Ohio.
The state of Ohio has appealed Merz's decision, arguing that the three-drug combination does not violate the Constitution and that the state should be allowed to go ahead with executions. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has scheduled its next hearing on the case for later this month.On Tuesday, an MLB Network graphics designer made one of those simple, schadenfreude-inducing production mistakes that disturbs the smooth façade of the studio show, pairing the full-season stats of the starters in that night’s Tigers-Mariners game, Kyle Ryan and Taijuan Walker, with the headshots of the starters from an earlier Astros-Indians game, Vincent Velasquez and Corey Kluber.
Walker isn’t a bearded, Wahoo-wearing white guy, but from a performance perspective, the confusion is almost understandable. For the last several weeks, Walker, like Kluber, has been one of the best pitchers in baseball. In 2013, sabermetrician and Chicago Cubs consultant Tom Tango updated Bill James’s “Cy Young Predictor” with his own simple formula that more accurately reflects current BBWAA voting patterns (if not necessarily actual value to one’s team, although the two are closely correlated). Here are the leaders in Tango’s Cy Young Points since May 29 — a not-entirely-arbitrary endpoint, as will soon become clear.
Name GS IP Cy Points Carlos Martinez 8 54.0 29.7 David Price 8 58.1 29.0 Clayton Kershaw 8 57.2 28.5 Zack Greinke 8 56.1 28.0 Chris Sale 7 53.1 26.8 Jacob deGrom 7 50.2 26.2 Yovani Gallardo 8 51.0 26.1 Mark Buehrle 8 60.0 25.2 Dallas Keuchel 8 57.2 24.9 Taijuan Walker 8 54.1 24.6
Like most pitcher leaderboards worth paying attention to, this list includes Clayton Kershaw, as well as two other Cy Young winners, Chris Sale, and a number of starters who’ve had previous seasons that would have landed them on similar lists. But it also includes two pitchers in their first full seasons as major league starters: Seattle’s Walker and St. Louis’s Carlos Martinez, who vaulted to the top with 7.1 scoreless innings against Pittsburgh on Thursday.
Martinez, 23, and Walker, who turns 23 next month, don’t play in the same league, come from the same country, or speak the same first language, but their careers have moved almost in lockstep. Both pitchers began their pro careers in 2010 and debuted on Baseball America’s preseason top prospect list before the 2012 season — Walker at no. 20, Martinez at no. 27. Both made the majors in 2013. And both had to clear some early hurdles before blossoming this summer.
Walker, the larger of the two right-handers, had a trying season in 2014, suffering shoulder inflammation that kept him out of action from mid-February through mid-June, and then playing catch-up across four levels. He pitched only 38 innings in the majors, getting outs despite shaky control.
This spring, Walker was healthy and dominant, allowing only two runs in 27 exhibition innings, with 26 strikeouts and five walks. Then the real season started, and so did the mistakes.
“I think the expectations coming out of spring training were really high, because he was doing everything right,” says Seattle pitching coach Rick Waits. “And then all of a sudden his first couple starts he really struggled. And he really struggled with just location. That was the main thing, just too many balls over the middle of the plate, and some walks, and he got hit a little bit. It took him a while to react to that. I think it was a shock to him — probably a shock to all of us. It was, ‘Wow, how is this happening?’”
Walker entered his May 29 start against Cleveland with a 7.33 ERA in nine starts, including 23 walks in 43 innings. He’d had a pair of strong outings in late April, but he’d also failed four times to go further than four innings. With the team as a whole off to a slow start in a high-pressure season, Walker was likely one blowup away from a return trip to Tacoma.
“The first month and a half of the season, I didn’t have conviction behind anything,” Walker says. “And then I knew I had to turn it around, or I wouldn’t be pitching again.”
Instead of losing his grasp on the rotation, though, he had his best big league start: eight innings, two hits, no walks, and eight strikeouts.
“Something just clicked,” Walker says. “It just felt like everything was falling in place, and it’s really been working. And whatever happened, I was being more aggressive with the fastball, getting ahead, not walking people.”
Players’ explanations for their own success aren’t always backed up by the stats. In this case, though, the numbers completely corroborate what Walker is saying. Like many players who’ve moved from one performance extreme to another, Walker has benefited from better luck on balls in play. But the improvements in the outcomes that are largely under his control are even more striking.
Period IP ERA FIP- BB% K% Strike% F-Strike% SwStr% O-Swing% Pre-5/29 43.0 7.33 142 11.1 18.8 62% 57.5 8.7 27.1 Post-5/29 54.1 2.32 89 2.0 26.3 69% 68.3 11.3 35.5
From April 1 through May 28, Walker threw 23.9 percent of his pitches while ahead in the count, the seventh-lowest rate of 138 pitchers who threw at least 500 pitches over that span. From May 29 on, Walker has thrown 34.9 percent of his pitches while ahead in the count, the seventh-highest rate of 131 pitchers who’ve thrown at least 500 pitches over that span — and just ahead of eighth-place non-look-alike Kluber.
A performance change this stark seems to demand dramatic mechanical changes, but Walker hasn’t suddenly started mimicking another player’s delivery or leaping toward home plate. “I think he needed to lift his leg a little bit higher than he was,” Waits says. “It was a little stiff, I think you could say. I think he’s loosened up his delivery a little bit, and I think that’s really helped.” That difference is subtle, too small to stand out immediately on video when I compared his early and most recent starts. Waits emphasizes that Walker’s evolution isn’t solely physical: He’s also started to master “mental visualization — visualizing what that pitch is going to do and how you want it to go before you throw it.”
Walker, whose heater has averaged 95 mph this season and who feels “like [he] definitely has to take advantage of that,” confirms that his sudden strike-throwing is “more of a mind-set. Just being aggressive, just going right after them, not trying to nibble on the corners too much.” The location plots for his four-seam fastballs in each period tell the same story, with the second cloud sinking and contracting at the corners.
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Walker needs his four-seam fastball to succeed, because he’s still heavily reliant on his primary pitch: Since that magic May 29, no pitcher has thrown more four-seamers than Walker’s 514. But Walker has also refined his feel for the changeup (which is sometimes classified as a splitter) and tried to incorporate a third pitch, even though four-seamers and changeups still make up about 90 percent of his offerings. Most notably, Waits says, Walker has “changed his [curveball] grip, and tried to throw his curveball harder. It was a little too slow.” Specifically, Walker has started using the spike curve, a two-finger variant that Waits threw during his own big league career, and which a 2014 Baseball Prospectus study showed tends to be thrown harder than the traditional curve, with better outcomes and no cost in movement. Sure enough, Walker’s curve has added about 2 mph, on average, since April.
Those improvements to his secondary stuff have paid off in climbing curve and changeup/splitter whiff rates. “Eventually I’m going to have to start mixing more breaking balls in there … just to keep them off the fastball and changeup,” Walker says. Hitters haven’t forced him to yet, although more variety might help him reduce his home run rate, which remains higher than he’d like.
Walker has worked hardest on his command, taking a little off his fastball and changeup in order to come closer to his targets.
Command is difficult to measure, because we can’t say exactly where each pitch is supposed to end up. The best available approximation is COMMANDf/x, a Sportvision and MLB Advanced Media system that measures the distance between the catcher’s glove at the moment the pitch is released and the pitch’s final location. It’s not a perfect measure, since the catcher’s glove location doesn’t always correspond to the target, but large changes should show up over time. In fact, we do see some evidence of improvement when we split up Walker’s season. The differences are fractions of an inch, but as the cliché about baseball and small units of measurement reminds us, that’s enough to make the difference between a ball meeting or missing the barrel. In his first nine starts, Walker’s command was worse than the MLB average, in terms of the ball’s average distance from the glove in the horizontal (X) and vertical (Z) directions, and the combined magnitude of both; in his next seven, it was above average.
Sample CMD X STDDEV X CMD Z STDDEV Z CMD Magnitude STDDEV Magnitude Walker (First 9 GS) 7.8 6.1 10.1 7.7 13.9 8.1 Walker, (Next 7 GS) 7.3 5.8 9.8 7.1 13.3 7.3 2015 MLB AVG 7.6 9.4 10.0 10.5 13.8 7.6
Walker’s emergence, only a little later than anticipated, gave Seattle the strong second starter it otherwise wouldn’t have had in the absence of Hisashi Iwakuma, who missed more than a month after straining a lat in late April. That’s especially rewarding for Waits, who’s been watching and working with Walker since the spring of 2011, when Waits was Seattle’s minor league pitching coordinator and Walker was about to enter the Midwest League. “I try not to visualize too much, when a guy’s in A-ball or Double-A, exactly what type of pitcher he’s going to be, especially when he’s young. But I will say I visualized him as a power pitcher who was going to come in and pitch off his fastball and throw in the middle-high 90s and challenge hitters. And that has been him. … He’s going to attack with what’s made him good right now. But I think also he’ll be quicker to adjust if he needs to.”
Neither Martinez — who’s pitched with a heavy heart following the death of close friend and teammate Oscar Taveras in October — nor Cardinals pitching coach Derek Lilliquist was available for comment about what Martinez has done differently this season, but his success seems to have a more obvious origin. Despite his big ERA drop, from 4.03 last season to 2.52 in 2015, Martinez’s peripherals haven’t markedly improved. But they haven’t markedly declined, either, which is unusual for a pitcher who’s transitioned from a relief role to the rotation. As expected, Martinez’s fastball velocity has dropped considerably since last season, as he’s paced himself in response to working exclusively as a starter since his second outing of the year.
For Martinez, the key to slightly raising his strikeout rate despite pitching at slower speeds — bucking the typical trend — has been a better changeup, a pitch he only occasionally broke out in the bullpen in its previous form. This year, Martinez’s use of the pitch has doubled, coming close to 20 percent.
Against left-handed hitters, Martinez’s changeup usage is approaching 30 percent — spiking to 41 percent with two strikes — which has helped him narrow his strikeout-rate split:
Sample 2013 K% 2014 K% 2015 K% vs. RHB 24.7 30.2 27.3 vs. LHB 11.8 11.1 23.8
Fifty-four pitchers have thrown at least 200 changeups this season. Among that group, Martinez’s whiff/swing rate ranks third, behind Cole Hamels’s and Erasmo Ramirez’s. His ground ball rate ranks ninth, and his fouls/swing rate also places toward the top. Hitters who’ve swung at Martinez’s changeup have fouled it off or missed it completely roughly three-quarters of the time. And in that remaining quarter of swings — when Martinez’s opponents have actually managed to put the pitch in play — they’ve hit the ball on the ground two-thirds of the time.
In a post about the pitch last month, Jeff Sullivan included images of Martinez throwing the changeup in 2014 and 2015. Cropped and zoomed in, those pictures get a little Sasquatchy, but we can just make out the difference: Martinez’s middle finger runs across the seam in the 2014 image, and on the seam in 2015.
John Ronzani
Just as a different grip produced different results with Walker’s curve, Martinez’s new changeup grip has altered that pitch’s shape. As Sullivan observed, the changeup’s new movement is closer to that of Martinez’s sinker, whereas the old change moved more like his four-seamer. It seems pretty clear that this way works.
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Martinez’s ERA has outpaced his peripherals because he’s had better success with men on base and in scoring position, a quality he has in common with many of his teammates this season. Cardinals pitchers have a significantly higher strand rate than any other club: In other words, they’ve excelled at wriggling out of jams. That’s probably no more sustainable than their batters’ exploits at the plate in clutch situations in 2013, which they couldn’t replicate last season. Sustainable or not, though, it might help decide the NL Central race. According to Grantland contributor Ed Feng’s calculation of Cluster Luck — the degree to which a team has been helped or hurt by spacing out hits or stringing them together — Cardinals pitchers’ good timing has saved them more than 60 runs, almost double of second place Minnesota’s.
On the whole, the Cardinals haven’t been much better than average at limiting opponents on the basepaths, removing one potential explanation for their success at stranding runners. But this is an area where Martinez excels, placing fourth among pitchers in Baseball Prospectus’s Swipe Rate, a stat that assigns responsibility for base stealers’ results to the runner, the pitcher, and the catcher. (No one will be surprised to learn that Jon Lester ranks last.) Martinez holds runners by being unpredictable: He varies his time between pitches more than anyone else.
With the bases empty, Martinez takes 16.7 seconds, on average, to deliver the ball; with men on, he averages 24.5. Every pitcher delays longer when he has runners to worry about. But Martinez delays differently between each pitch. The standard deviation of his time between pitches — essentially, how closely his individual times are clustered around his personal average — is 7.99 seconds, higher than the other 96 arms who’ve thrown at least 500 pitches with men on base this season. Runners don’t know when to go because they don’t know when he’ll throw.
Martinez’s time trickery between pitches gives him, at most, a small edge. But he’s good enough now that we should care about his calling cards beyond the big fastball. At the start of this season, Martinez and Walker were still, for all intents and purposes, prospects: They’d lost their rookie eligibility, but we weren’t sure how good they could become. These days, they don’t deserve the label: For them, the present is exciting enough.GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Christopher Shaw, 34, has been arrested on sexual battery charges after police say he raped a 19-year-old woman behind a popular Gainesville bar early Thursday morning.
Following an investigation, detectives believe Shaw may have raped other women.
Former UF teammate Jake McGee said he is a great guy who holds himself and those around him to the highest standard. https://t.co/e2M5uRkoGu — Mike Kaye (@mike_e_kaye) July 22, 2016
Police report Gators linebacker Christian Garcia helped stop the assault. The Miami-native played in one game last year, according to FloridaGators.com. Garcia told WBIR's sister station First Coast News that he works security behind 101 Cantina and witnessed the assault take place.
According to the linebacker, he was taking out the trash when he spotted the two by the dumpsters. Initially, he thought they were |
just clicked. I loved it for the game and the strategy. From that point on, I was obsessed. I was 12 years old and started hanging around my local club. My friends thought I was nuts.
I went to an all-girls school and I asked the PE teacher if we could play football. He said no. There wasn't a reason; it just wasn't done. So I taught myself to do keepie-uppies in the garden. My brother wasn't into football, so I played by myself. But I've been back to my school since and now they teach football from an early age.
Things are changing. Women's football is the third biggest participation sport in the country, behind men's football and men's cricket. Since the Olympics, there's been a realisation that sports coverage has been male-dominated for years, and we have to do something about it.
My little girl, Phoebe, is 17 months. If she wants to play football when she's older, then that's great. She can kick the ball around with me in the garden, and then join a club when she's older. We have those opportunities now and that makes me hopeful.Many people think they know LA, but there is one extraordinary district that seems forgotten to all but a few: West Adams.
Home to the greatest architectural treasure West of the Mississippi of Victorian, Queen Anne, Beaux Arts, Egyptian Revival, Mission and Craftsman homes, the stories of West Adams are just as wild as the houses.
Which is why I need to do Untold LA.
Untold LA: A lavish, beautiful interactive photo book for the iPad and Web which will document the amazing homes of West Adams and tell the stories, past and present of the people who live here.
Think of it as an interactive Life or National Geographic photo essay including in-depth video interviews with the residents and historians of the area.
[To see some of my photography go to On Set Image]
West Adams, where deed covenants dictated you HAD to spend a fortune if you wanted to build here. The result? You can see for yourself in some of the quick snaps taken as I wandered the neighborhood.
The amount you had to spend to build here wasn't the only covenant though. Another one? You couldn't sell or rent to black folk. That covenant was challenged, the case went to court and the good guys won. One of the good guys - local resident, and Gone With the Wind star, Hattie McDaniel.
(There were many more stars and notables who have lived in West Adams over the years, watch the video at top to find out more!)
The book will be available on the iBooks store for between $1.99 to $4.99. But the iPad itself is still a luxury item, so all of the material for Untold LA, all the photos and video, will be available for free to everyone on the web. Think of what a resource this could be, not only to residents in the area but to artists, architects and designers the world over who will get access to the amazing craftsmanship we have here.
Project Timeline
The project will take two months, this June and July:
June: One month for to photograph homes, both exterior and interior, and interview the residents on video, gathering stories of this extraordinary place.
July: Another month to work with the iBook and web designer to marshal the material and make it available to the public.
Budget
$3300 - Medium Format camera rental or Nikon D800 body purchase
$750 - Lens rental
$500 - Web and iBook Designer
$750 - iPad for iBook development
$700 - Stipend for Jett so he can eat during the two months of the project
$700 - Kickstarter/Amazon fees
$300 - Rewards fulfillment
If we can raise more we can do more. If we raise more I can shoot more. There is such an embarrassment of riches here, in my month of shooting I'll barely be able to scratch the surface of what we have in West Adams. And if we raise a bit more than I think we can even put out a print book!
If you haven't watched the video at top yet, please do, it'll give you a flavor of the architectural beauty in West Adams, and if you live in LA or nearby I suggest you come down here and see the area for yourself. I'm convinced you'll fall in love with it as I have and understand why we've got to do this project.If I ever became vegan for whatever reason, I know that the thing I’d miss most would be dairy. Eggs, I could quite happily live without. Meat, I already do live without. But I don’t often find vegan ways of creating creaminess all that inspiring. Blended tofu, processed nuts, soy-based dairy alternatives… none of these really light my fire. Avocado, on the other hand, totally does it for me. It’s a great vegan way of adding creaminess to a dish. I’m sure you’ve all seen avocado pasta before, but avocado and rocket pasta is far more flavourful – much better than pure creaminess without any real taste.
As you can see from the haphazard way that the spaghetti is dolloped into the bowl, I’m not always the tidiest of people – but somehow I’m a perfectionist simultaneously. Growing up, my bedroom was always an absolute tip – it’s a bit embarrassing really. Just piles of stuff everywhere. Yet at the same time, my CDs and books were all alphabetised, and the clothes in my wardrobe were hung up in categories (actually these last few things are still true…). So although I wiped the edge of the bowl carefully for this picture to ensure there weren’t any stray flecks of green, the pasta itself is just a big mess. I never quite understand what goes on in my brain.
Anyway, get on this one quickly while it’s still summer. I feel like such a British cliché because I seem to always be talking about the weather, but it’s chucking it down with rain today. Despite summer only having officially started a few days ago, it feels like autumn is just around the corner, so these fresh, summery recipes need to be made soon!
(PS. be aware that all of my posts for the next million years are going to include roasted garlic, ever since I wrote that post about how to make roasted garlic. I usually only roast a small amount at a time, but since I wanted a few bulbs roasted for the photo, I now have loads to use up. Sorry! If you don’t have any and don’t want to make any, just use raw garlic, but only use one small clove!)
Creamy avocado and rocket pasta Print Prep time 15 mins Total time 15 mins Author: Becca @ Amuse Your Bouche Recipe type: Main meal Yield: 2 Ingredients 150g pasta
1 clove garlic (or 2-3 cloves roasted garlic - see below)
50g fresh rocket (arugula)
1 avocado
2tbsp fresh lemon juice
1tbsp olive oil (optional)
Salt
Black pepper Instructions Boil the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Meanwhile, blitz the garlic and rocket in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the avocado and lemon juice, and blitz again. If the mixture looks too dry, you might like to add a small amount of olive oil to moisten it. Season to taste. When the pasta is ready, drain it and add the sauce. Cook, stirring constantly, over a low heat for 5 minutes, until the sauce is heated through. 3.2.1251
Click to find out how to make roasted garlicDonald Trump’s rambling, incoherent remarks on federal infrastructure spending during a wide-ranging interview with Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times have set headline writers abuzz with the desire to extract some kind of meaning and news value from his comments. “Trump says infrastructure plan could top $1 trillion,” wrote Marketwatch, while Reuters reports that “Trump says he may use his $1 trillion infrastructure plan as a political incentive.” The Times reporters who conducted the interview — both New Yorkers like Trump, and veterans of the city hall beat — wrote it up as a local story: “Trump Weighs Infrastructure Bill but Keeps New York Up in the Air.”
The truest line in any of this comes from Haberman and Thrush themselves, who observe that Trump’s “knowledge of complex policy issues can sometimes be lacking.”
And to the extent that that’s news, it’s the only actual news Trump made on infrastructure. His remarks make it clear that he doesn’t know anything about the substance of the issue or about the relevant congressional procedures. He doesn’t appear to be familiar with the related provisions of his own administration’s budget, and he isn’t putting in the time to lay the political groundwork for any legislation. The trillion-dollar infrastructure plan doesn’t exist except as a line of rhetoric.
It’s pure vaporware, and unless something dramatic changes to the overall structure of the administration, it always will be.
Trump is not working on an infrastructure bill
If a conventional administration repeatedly claimed to be working on an infrastructure bill, one could assume it was, in fact, working on an infrastructure bill. With the Trump administration, that assumption seems entirely unwarranted, due to the fact that Trump lies all the time, is extremely lazy, and has staffed his administration largely with ideologically orthodox Republicans who don’t even favor a large infrastructure spending plan. If you assume there is work being done on a plan, then parsing Trump’s ambiguous remarks for evidence of what it looks like makes sense.
But drop that assumption and the truth becomes clear. His remarks are ambiguous because nothing is happening. Consider:
Trump says he’s had no need to meet with congressional Democrats on his infrastructure plan, “because they are desperate for infrastructure.”
He explains that the reason his budget proposal cuts infrastructure spending rather than increasing it is “we don’t want money being thrown out the window, as it has been for many years.”
At one point, Reed Cordish, a Trump adviser who’s been involved in staffing various agencies and doing actual governing work, cuts in to remark that a plan to reduce regulatory burdens on builders is “going to create benefit far beyond the federal dollars that we’re talking about.”
Trump himself says that infrastructure is not taking up very much of his time because “right now I’m focused on China. Focused on the Middle East. We’re doing very, very well against ISIS, as you know.”
Last but by no means least, gaze in amazement at Trump’s full answer when Thrush tries to press him on the key question:
Nothing is accurate now because we haven’t made a final determination. We haven’t made a determination as to public/private. There are some things that work very nicely public/private. There are some things that don’t. The federal government, we’re doing very well you saw, a lot of good numbers coming out. You saw our imports. You saw what happened with China. And various other people that this country has been dealing with over the years. You saw the numbers come out today, they’re very promising. Lot of good numbers are coming out. We are borrowing very inexpensively. When you can borrow so inexpensively, you don’t have to do the public/private thing. Because public/private can be very expensive. When you go equity, when you give equity to people who own your highways essentially for a 30-year period, who own your tollbooths for a period of time — come on in, Mike! You know Mike and Reince? Uh, we’re working on health care. Can I just say, so when you called the health care bill, you know, that was just a negotiation. You didn’t hear me say it’s over. That was a negotiation. You understand? A continuing negotiation. It may go on for a long time or it may go on until this afternoon. I don’t know. It’s a continuing negotiation.
At this point, Haberman points out that Trump is not, in fact, negotiating with Democrats on this subject.
Trump doesn’t know anything about infrastructure
In addition to Trump not doing any work on the legislative process around an infrastructure bill, the interview also makes it clear that he has no knowledge of the underlying subject matter. Consider his remarks on the Second Avenue Subway in New York, a transportation project that, unlike most transportation projects in the United States, directly impacts the neighborhood in which Trump has lived for decades:
On roads, on bridges, on many different things. And it’s also going to be — we have to refurbish to a large extent. You know, we can build new highways, which are much more expensive. And sometimes they’re the highways to hell. You know they’re called, like the Second Avenue subway, the tunnel to nowhere. Which, after spending 12 trillion, 12 billion dollars, they realize it now. But you know when they built the Second Avenue subway, you know they never knew where it was going. Did you know this? This was one of the great of all time. And then they ended up finishing it.
The project really has been remarkably (and excessively) expensive, but not nearly this expensive. It also hasn’t been finished. And the route is not the issue — the Second Avenue Subway runs underneath Second Avenue, hence the name.
Any number of actual or possible infrastructure projects in the United States involve more complexity than this, but Trump can’t even get the most bare-bones basics correct. Still, he insists on being arrogant about it. He insists that “I understand the subway very well,” even while conceding that he hasn’t actually ridden on the subway since he was a school kid living in Queens many decades ago.
Trump’s explanation for how he will overcome his lack of knowledge is that he will establish a commission, led by two other real estate developers who also lack relevant knowledge:
And I’m setting up a commission of very smart people that know how to spend money properly. That know how to build on time, on budget. And ideally, under time and under budget. I’m setting up a commission. It’s going to be headed by [the developer] Richard LeFrak and it’s going to be headed — they’re going to be co- — Steve Roth. R-O-T-H of Vornado. Two very talented, smart, tough people. And they are going to, along with me, put on a group of 20 people, 20 to 25 people on a commission. We’re going to run projects through them. And they will have great expertise in that room. We’ll have it from both coasts, and right down the middle. We’re going to have representatives from various parts of the country that are all are very, very successful in terms of infrastructure. From different fields, but always infrastructure. But everything is going to be run by them.
As a coda to this, there is no evidence that any such commission is actually being set up.
There’s not going to be a $1 trillion infrastructure plan
All of which is to say that Trump isn’t going to attach a $1 trillion infrastructure plan as a sweetener to his health care bill or his tax bill for the simple reason that there is no $1 trillion infrastructure plan and never will be. Trump has no plan, and no understanding of the issue, and to the extent that his aides are involved in infrastructure, it’s to try to convince him to talk up deregulation as more important than spending money.
His budget proposal calls for spending less on infrastructure, not more; congressional Republicans don’t favor a big infrastructure boost; and even though Chuck Schumer has put a $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on the table, Trump hasn’t bothered to meet with him.
Meanwhile, the budget instructions the GOP is trying to use to pass health care in a filibuster-proof way don’t make any provision for an infrastructure plan. To incorporate infrastructure into a tax reform package, Trump would need to get those instructions into a Republican-written fiscal year 2018 budget, but there is no indication that anyone on Capitol Hill is doing this.
It’s of course conceivable that Democrats will have a majority in the House after the 2018 midterms, dramatically shifting the political context and forcing some infrastructure idea onto the table. By the same token, maybe someday in the future Trump will completely revise his approach and come around to single-payer health care.
Politics is a strange and wonderful thing. But for the moment, all we really know is that Trump is an unreliable narrator of his own intentions and his own administration’s policies, and nothing is actually being done to bring any of these infrastructure schemes to fruition.Warning: To fully understand and appreciate the following post, reader is expected to have basic computer literacy.
For the people who are not that computer literate, here is a list of conversion.
1 Bit can be either 0 or 1
1 Byte = 8 bits
1KiloByte(KB) = 1024 Bytes
1 MegaByte (MB) = 1024 KB
1 GigaByte (GB) = 1024 MB
1 TeraByte (TB) = 1024 GB
Therefore 1 TB ~= 10244 Bytes
!! A single sperm has 37.5 MB of DNA information in it. That means that a normal ejaculation represents a data transfer of 1587.5 TB!!
I recently came across this piece of information and tried to validate it. To my amazement, I discovered that this is absolutely true.
This left me wondering and as if that was not enough, I was dumbstruck when I saw through the statement and inferred following facts:
1.) The Compression Algorithm
Now it is difficult to analyze, but consider this. The best available algorithm designed by man has a compression ratio of around 85% for pure text. So going by that standard, 1587.5TB can be compressed to 238 TB.
Now our normal desktop computers have around 500 GB of hard disk on which you can roughly store 75,000 mp3 songs. So going by that standard 1587.6 TB can store around 23,78,02,058 (23.78 crore) mp3 songs.
Now compare this with the compression mechanism of god which can store around 1587.5TB of data i.e. around 23.78 crore mp3 songs, in just 1 tea spoon (that is the volume of ‘one act’). That’s what I call a brilliant ‘squeeze’ 😉
2.) The Data Transmission Speed
The current laboratory fiber optic data rate record, held by Bell Labs in Villarceaux, France, is multiplexing 155 channels, each carrying 12.5 GB per sec. Meaning, they were successfully able to transfer 155 X 12.5 = 1937.5 GB per sec that is equal to around 1.89 TB per sec. This is approximately equal to be able to download/upload 2.83 lakh mp3 songs in 1 second.
Now compare this speed with that of God’s ‘data pipe’. A normal man can ‘transfer’ 1587.5 TB of data in approximately 3 seconds (the final moments of ejaculation). This boils down to the speed of 530 TB per sec. This corresponds to downloading/uploading 794 lakh mp3 songs per second.
So your ‘tool’ has a higher bandwidth than any internet connection that ever existed, and is ever likely to exist anytime soon. Now, imagine a machine that used your saltshaker to surf the internet.
And to top that, this much data is really generated from a man’s ‘I-pee’ address.
And all this has been true since the birth of first male on the earth. Long long before computers came into being. Now this speaks volumes about God’s Technological Skills.
What do you say? 🙂
AdvertisementsCBS Evening News aired complaints about a “revolving door” of government employees going to industry roles under the Obama administration on Oct. 20. But CBS quickly seized the opportunity to attack the Trump administration.
“Special interests are part of the fabric of Washington, and despite Donald Trump’s campaign promise, the revolving door between government and industry keeps on spinning,” correspondent Julianna Goldman said before naming several of Trump’s nominees and criticizing his environmental policy.
The left, which loved President Barack Obama’s climate change and fossil-fuel destroying regulations, continues to attack Trump over the environment. As recently as Oct. 11, Frontline aired a program called “War on the EPA” bashing the Trump administration
Goldman turned to the anti-Trump “watchdog” Public Citizen to bash the Trump administration. By referring to the organization simply as a “watchdog,” Goldman censored the pro-regulation and liberal views of the litigation and activist group.
“We’re seeing a total corporate takeover of the U.S. government on a scale that we have never seen in American history,” Public Citizen president Robert Weissman told CBS.
Public Citizen is not some neutral watchdog as CBS made it sound. The left-wing, anti-corporate, litigation group was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971. Public Citizen also has a foundation, which received at least $1,918,894 between 2001 and 2014 from left-wing billionaire George Soros. They operate a shared website. The website lists many accomplishments including the creation of entire government agencies, passage of many regulations and the mobilization of “opposition to nuclear power.”
The current action items on Public Citizen’s website are thoroughly anti-Trump. The website’s “get involved” section urges people to help the group to stop the “malicious, immoral repeal” of Obamacare, call for the removal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, oppose Trump’s “rigged tax plan,” demand Congress to “pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United,” and promote the left’s favorite government-run health care (“single-payer, Medicare-for-all”) as well as many other liberal agenda items.As eight Democrats seek a chance to oust six-term Republican U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam of Wheaton, he maintains a commanding edge in the race to amass campaign cash, new reports show.
Kelly Mazeski of Barrington Hills is leading the crowded field of Democrats in fundraising, new Federal Election Commission reports show. She reported nearly $343,000 in the bank as of Sept. 30, reports show, compared with Roskam’s $1.35 million.
Roskam, who entered Congress in 2007, represents Illinois’ 6th Congressional District in the west and northwest suburbs. Typically, incumbents have a big advantage over challengers when it comes to chasing campaign dollars. Roskam had more than $221,000 left over in his treasury after the 2016 election, giving him an early edge.
In the third quarter of the year, he raised nearly $494,000 to Mazeski’s more than $211,000. All figures are rounded to the nearest thousand dollars.
Mazeski has lent $195,000 of her own money to her bid. She sits on the Barrington Hills Plan Commission and on the board of the Illinois Environmental Council, which promotes environmental laws and policies. She lost an Illinois Senate race in 2016 to Republican Dan McConchie of Hawthorn Woods. Her campaign is emphasizing that she is a breast cancer survivor who would be a “strong, fearless advocate” on the issue of health care, her webpage says. Roskam consistently has voted to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
“We are excited our campaign has been propelled by over 1,100 grassroots donations (and) Kelly Mazeski has more than twice the cash on hand of our closest primary opponent,” Mazeski campaign manager Whitney Larsen said in an emailed statement. “Our resources will give us the opportunity to contrast Kelly's record as a breast cancer survivor and community advocate with Peter Roskam's vote to make Americans pay more and get less for their healthcare.”
Roskam sits on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, a position that makes him attractive to some donors as an overhaul of the tax system is on President Donald Trump’s agenda. Still, Democrats have been gunning for him for months since he is the only House Republican in Illinois whose district was carried by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Roskam spokeswoman Veronica Vera said his totals reflect strong support in the district. “Residents … have strongly supported Congressman Roskam because he's continued to get results that work for middle-class families and small businesses,” she said.
All House members are up for re-election next year. The primary election, from which Roskam’s ultimate Democratic challenger will emerge, is March 20.
Roskam’s advantage in campaign funds is not only in dollars. Contenders in a primary will have to spend to emerge the victor, then quickly regroup before the general election. Here’s how much Democrats who have entered the race had in their campaign funds at the end of September.
Sean Casten of Downers Grove was second to Mazeski with $169,000 on hand. Carole Cheney of Aurora had $91,000. Becky Anderson Wilkins of Naperville reported $64,000. Amanda Howland of Lake Zurich, who ran against Roskam in 2016, had $49,000. Three other candidates had less, and Suzyn Price of Naperville withdrew from the race last month, citing a fundraising disadvantage. She raised and spent more than $40,000 in her short-lived bid.
In another potentially competitive district, Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren of Plano also has a strong cash lead compared with Democrats trying for his 14th Congressional District seat. In his fourth term, he reported $420,000 cash on hand after the last quarter.
Among his Democratic rivals, Lauren Underwood of Naperville had $63,000 in the bank; Victor Swanson of Batavia, $28,000; George Weber of Lakewood, $2,000; and Jim Walz of Gurnee, $1,000. In 2016, Walz ran against Hultgren and lost.
And Rep. Brad Schneider, a Deerfield Democrat who returned to Congress this year in the 10th Congressional District after serving from 2013 to 2015, also has a sizable lead. Republican Dr. Sapan Shah of Libertyville had $306,000 on hand; Jeremy Wynes of Highland Park had $221,000; and Douglas Bennett of Deerfield had $115,000 following a loan to his campaign.
First-term lawmaker Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Schaumburg Democrat, had $2.86 million on hand after taking in $704,000 in the last quarter. He represents the 8th Congressional District. No rival to Krishnamoorthi has to date filed a campaign-finance report with the FEC, which is required after a candidate raises or spends $5,000 or more.
kskiba@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @Katherine Skiba
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As Roskam's wife gives painting to congressional shooting victim, Roskam mum on gun control »It is always with the greatest caution that revolutionaries have raised the question of the period of transition. The number, the complexity, and above all, the newness of the problems the proletariat must solve prevent any elaboration of detailed plans of the future society; any attempt to do so risks being turned into a strait-jacket which will stifle the revolutionary activity of the class. Marx, for example, always refused to give "recipes for the dishes of the future". Rosa Luxemburg insisted on the fact that with respect to the transitional society we only have "sign posts and those of an essentially negative character".
If the different revolutionary experiences of the class (the Paris Commune, 1905, 1917-20), and also the experience of the counter-revolution clarify a certain number of problems that the period of transition will pose, it is essentially regarding the general framework of these problems and not the detailed manner of solving them. It is this framework that we will attempt to bring out in this text.
THE NATURE OF PERIODS OF TRANSITION
Human history is made up of different stable societies linked to a given mode of production and therefore to stable social relations. These societies are based on the dominant economic laws inherent in them. They are made up of fixed social classes and are based on appropriate superstructures. The basic stable societies in written history have been: slave society, Asiatic history, feudal society and capitalist society.
What distinguishes periods of transition from periods when society is stable is the decomposition of the old social structures and the formation of new structures. Both are linked to a development of the productive forces and are accompanied by the appearance and development of new classes as well as the development of ideas and institutions corresponding to these classes.
The period of transition is not a distinct mode of production, but a link between two modes of production--the old and the new. It is the period during which the germs of the new mode of production slowly develop to the detriment of the old, until they supplant the old mode of production and constitute a new, dominant mode of production.
Between two stable societies (and this will be true for the period between capitalism and communism as it has been in the past), the period of transition is an absolute necessity. This is due to the fact that the sapping of the basis of the existence of the old society does not automatically imply the maturation and ripening of the conditions of the new. In other words, the decline of the old society does not automatically mean the maturation of the new, but is only the condition for it to take place.
Decadence and the period of transition are two very distinct phenomena. Every period of transition presupposes the decomposition of the old society whose mode and relations of production have attained the extreme limit of their possible development. However, every period of decadence does not necessarily signify a period of transition, in as much as the period of transition represents a step towards a new mode of production. Similarly ancient Greece did not enjoy the historical conditions necessary for a transcendence of slavery; neither did ancient Egypt.
Decadence means the exhaustion of the old social mode of production; transition means the surging up of the new forces and conditions which will permit a resolution and transcendence of the old contradictions.
THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN COMMUNIST SOCIETY AND OTHER SOCIETIES
To delineate the nature of the period of transition linking capitalism and communism and to point out what distinguishes this period from all preceding periods, one fundamental idea must be kept in mind. Every period of transition stems from the nature of the new society which is arising. Therefore, the fundamental differences which distinguish communist society from all other societies must be made clear:
a) All earlier societies (with the exception of primitive communism which belongs to prehistory) have been societies divided into classes.
Communism is a classless society.
b) All other societies have been based on property and the exploitation of man by man.
Communism knows no type of individual or collective property; it is the unified and harmonious human community.
c) The other societies in history have had as their basis an insufficiency in the development of the productive forces with respect to man's needs. They are societies of scarcity. It is for that reason that they have been dominated by blind economic, social and natural forces. Humanity has been alienated from nature and as a result from the social forces it has itself engendered.
Communism is the full development of the productive forces, an abundance of production capable of satisfying human needs. It is the liberation of humanity from the domination of nature and of the economy. It is the conscious mastery by humanity of its conditions of life. It is the world of freedom and no longer the world of necessity which has characterised man's past history.
d) All past societies brought with them anarchronistic vestiges of past economic systems, social relations, ideas and prejudices. This is due to the fact that all these societies were based on private property and the exploitation of the labour of others. It is for this reason that a new class society can and must necessarily be born and develop within the old. It is for the same reason that the new class society, once it is triumphant, can continue with, and accommodate, vestiges of the old defeated society, of the old dominant classes. The new class society can even associate elements of the old dominant class in power. Thus slave or feudal relations could still exist within capitalism and for a long time the bourgeoisie could share power with the nobility.
The situation in a communist society is completely different. Communism retains no economic or social remnants of old society. While such remnants still exist one cannot speak of communist society: what place could there be in such a society for small producers or slave relations, for example? This is what makes the period of transition between capitalism and communism so long. Just as the Hebrew people had to wait forty years in the desert in order to free themselves from the mentality forged by slavery, so humanity will need several generations to free itself from the vestiges of the old world.
e) All previous societies, just as they have been based on a division into classes, have also necessarily been based on regional, geographic, or national-political divisions. This is due primarily to the laws of unequal development which dictate that the evolution of society--while everywhere following a similar orientation--occurs in a relatively independent and separated fashion in different sectors with gaps of time which can last several centuries. Thus, unequal development is itself due to the feeble development of the productive forces: there exists a direct relation between the degree of development and the scale on which this development occurs. Only the productive forces developed by capitalism at its zenith, for the first time in history, permit a real interdependence between the different parts of the world.
The establishment of communist society immediately has the entire world as its arena. Communism in order to be established requires the same evolution at the same time in all countries. It is completely universal or it is nothing.
f) Based on private property, exploitation, the division into classes and into different geographical zones, production in previous societies necessarily tended towards the production of commodities with all that followed in the way of competition and anarchy in distribution and consumption solely regulated by the law of value, through the market and money.
Communism knows neither exchange nor the law of value. Its production is socialised in the fullest-sense of the term. It is universally planned according to the needs of the members of society and for their satisfaction. Such production knows only use values whose direct and socialised distribution excludes exchange, the market and money.
g) Divided into antagonistic classes, all previous societies could only exist and survive through the constitution of a special organ--appearing as if above society--in order to maintain the class struggle within a framework beneficial to the conservation and the interests of the dominant class: the state.
Communism knows none of these divisions and has no need of the state. Moreover, it could not tolerate within it an organism for the government of man. In communism there is only room for the administration of things.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PERIODS OF TRANSITION
The period of transition towards communism is constantly tainted by the society from which it emerges (the pre-history of humanity) yet also affected by the society towards which it tends (the completely new history of human society). This is what will distinguish it from all earlier periods of transition.
a. Previous Periods of Transition
Periods of transition until now have in common the fact that they unfolded within the old society. The definitive proclamation of the new society--which is sanctioned by the leap that a revolution constitutes--comes at the end of the transitional process itself. This situation is the result of two essential causes:
1. Past societies all have the same social, economic basis--the division into classes and exploitation, which reduces the period of transition to a simple change or transfer of privileges but not to the suppression of privileges.
2. All these societies, and this forms the basis of the preceding characteristic, blindly submit to the imperatives of laws based on the low development of the productive forces (the reign of necessity). The period of transition between two such societies is thus characterised by a blind economic development.
b. The Period of Transition towards Communism
It is because communism constitutes a total break with all exploitation and all division into classes that the transition towards this society requires a radical break with the old society and can only unfold outside of the old society.
Communism is not a mode of production subject to the blind economic laws opposed to mankind, but is based on a conscious organisation of production which permits an abundance of the productive forces which the old capitalist society cannot attain by itself.
c. What Distinguishes the Period of Transition towards Communism?
1. The period of transition can only begin outside of capitalism. The maturation of the conditions of socialism requires as a prerequisite the destruction of the political, economic and social domination of capitalism in society.
2. The period of transition to communism can only be begun on a world scale.
3. Unlike other periods of transition, in the period of transition to communism the essential institutions of capitalism-state police, army, diplomatic corps--cannot be utilised by the proletariat. They must be completely destroyed.
4. As a result, the opening of the period of transition is essentially characterised by the political defeat of capitalism and by the triumph of the political domination of the proletariat.
"In order to convert social production into a large and harmonious system of co-operative work there must be general social change, changes in the general conditions of society which can only be realised by means of the organised power of society--the state power--taken from the hands of the capitalists and the landowners and transferred to the hands of the producers themselves" (Marx, Instructions on Co-operatives to the Delegates of the General Council at the First Congress of the First International at Geneva).
"The conquest of political power has become the first task of the working class" (Marx, Inaugural Address to the First International).
d. The Problems of the Period of Transition
The world generalisation of the revolution is the first condition for the opening of the period of transition. The question of economic and social measures necessary to particularly protect isolated socialisations in one country, one region, one factory or among one group of people is subordinated to the world generalisation of the revolution. Even after a first triumph of the proletariat, capitalism continues its resistance in the form of a civil war. In this period everything must be subordinated to the destruction of the power of capitalism. This is the first objective which conditions any later evolution.
One class and one class alone is interested in communism: the proletariat. Other productive and exploited classes can be drawn into the struggle that the proletariat wages against capitalism, but they can never as classes become the protagonists and bearers of communism. Because of this, it is necessary to emphasise one essential task: the necessity for the proletariat not to confuse itself with, or in dissolve itself into, other classes. In the period of transition the proletariat, as the only revolutionary class invested with the task of creating the new classless society, can only assure the completion of this task by affirming itself |
be working at Playboy, that a woman's desire to read about tech stuff was comparable to looking at male-targeted pornography. I tried to explain that roughly half the staff at Popular Mechanics were women. My friend chimed in that she used to work on cars when she was a teenager (actual mechanics). It was dinner, so I was trapped actually defending the notion that women are human beings with varied interests. Maybe this guy had just never met a woman before. —Joanna Borns
I was a 22-year-old editorial assistant working at a men's magazine (with, unsurprisingly, mostly male editors) when this happened. They assigned a sex advice story to me, and I approached it very professionally, treating it as I would have any other service-oriented story — looking for surprising information, speaking to solid sources, etc. And I guess the end result was pretty good, which I was proud of. Until I found out that some of the guys on staff had been talking about it behind my back, presumably as an indication of my secret kinkiness or something (even though I at no point during the writing or editing process alluded to my own sex life). The way I found out was that an editor (let's call him John) told me he'd been talking to the guy who had assigned me the story (let's call him Bob) — John said, "Bob told me about your nickname." I had no idea what he was talking about, and he initially refused to tell me more, acting very cagey and silly about it. Finally he broke down and told me (and let's say my last name is Smith) — the nickname was "Dirty, Dirty Smith." I was pretty horrified, but was a little too naive and scared at the time to do anything about it (report it to HR, etc.). Not a very good ending to that story, but I'm guessing that's unfortunately how a lot of this stuff goes — it happens, it's ridiculous and gross, and then you just move on. —Anonymous
Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Christina Lu / BuzzFeed
I once wrote a post about wardrobe essentials for female gamers. Searching through sites like Etsy that are creative marketplaces, I was able to find really cool, even custom, game-related clothing and accessories that were specifically for girls. That being said, the amount of stuff geared toward women pales in comparison to what men are offered. When I published the piece, I received a lot of really positive comments. Women were talking about how much they liked the pieces, and salespeople that designed some of the items even reached out to me, to thank me for new business from female customers. Needless to say, I was pretty stoked. Sadly, this really positive feeling took a U-turn about two days after publishing. Men were starting to comment on the post. Some were saying my opinion didn't matter as an author, that women shouldn't be buying game-related items, and that women shouldn't participate and certainly couldn't win games, simply because we're women. It's disappointing that men would feel the need to share such things publicly, and even more so to think them. It made me realize that people really aren't as progressive as I had thought, or maybe had wished, they would be. The bottom line, though, is not that realization. It is not that men have a sexist views toward female gamers or that they feel that they need to voice those views, but that there is a wonderful community of women who enjoy games and don't care what men think. There is an active market of female game players who won't back down from this kind of bullying. And that, to me, is the bottom line. —Hannah Gregg
I lived in Paris between 2009 and 2011. When I told people I was a freelance writer, it raised eyebrows. Many assumed I was a rich girl living off a trust fund, when in fact, I was supporting myself. To further explain that I spent most of my time as a blogger for a women-focused website was even more confusing. Not just the part about blogging for a living, but about the topic. When opening my French bank account, I had far too many dealings with a pompous banker, but on our first meeting I told him my profession: that I was a writer, writing for women's publications. His response, word for word, was, "For women? For girls? That's horrible." When I asked him why he'd say such a thing, he tried to laugh it off and his excuse was: "In France, the men are misogynists... I kid, a bit, but what does it matter? Women can do as much as men can now, feminism in France doesn't have to be like that. You see, even when I put your profession in our system, I put écrivain not écrivaine. It's built on the patriarchy." It wasn't the first time I experienced disdain toward ladymag/blog writing. As a student studying in Paris a few years earlier, my host sister asked what I wanted to do after graduation, and I said I would probably try to get an assistant job at a women's or fashion magazine and maybe I could work up to become an editor. Her response was, "Why would you want to do a thing like that?" She said it was superficial and meaningless. I've never experienced this lack of respect in the States, but I have mixed feelings about my interactions in France. As a guest in a foreign country, I was always conscious of being respectful of customs even when there were social or emotional consequences, so I regarded these situations with curiosity and never felt anger or rage about them. —Leonora Epstein
Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Christina Lu / BuzzFeed
I used to be a music journalist. On my first ever album review (of a U2 record), the first comment was "Jessica, Bono sings that the 'boys play rock and roll.' Only boys should be writing about it, too." I can remember it verbatim because it stayed seared on my brain for years. That one snarky comment only motivated me to keep writing about music, if just to piss off that one loser. Ambushing people at parties for interviews was tough too, because if you go up to a man at a party and start chatting, he often assumes you're hitting on him, and then looks visibly deflated when you drop the "I'm a writer for X" bomb. I've definitely showed up for more than one interview with a male artist who would look me up and down and offer some form of, "YOU'RE the interviewer? Well, damn, it's my lucky day." Proceeding with doing your job after that is decidedly uncomfortable. But the most blatant ad hominem attack I got was when I published an article on Jack White's view of women on The Atlantic. I got a few informed critiques of my argument, which I welcomed and appreciated. But most of the comments section quickly devolved into a scathing bashing of the headshot of me that ran with my byline: "By the looks of you, you should be writing about Maroon 5 instead," and predictable comments about how I was both a "feminazi" and a "cold bitch who just needs to get laid." Of course, everyone knows not to take the internet peanut gallery too seriously. But still, even for a bit more seasoned writer like me, those anti-women remarks were hard to stomach. I'd imagine they'd be staggeringly discouraging for a female writer who's just getting started in the business. —Jessica Misener
I've worked at two newspapers in my career. At one of them, there had been a big scandal that reverberated throughout the organization, and so they tried to make some changes to boost morale and create more openness. So they — I can't remember specifically who "they" are — appointed a well-respected, popular editor to a masthead position in which his entire job was to talk with employees about their goals and how to achieve them. Sounds great, right? I had been a "guest editor" at the paper for six months, having transferred from the website. People wanted to keep me around, but I was deemed too junior to hire for a full-time, permanent staff position. And so I was sent to see this man. He asked me if I wanted to keep working there, and I said, yes, very much. He asked whether I wanted to try to be a copy editor, and I said I didn't really think that was where my skills lay and I had no copyediting experience. He then brought up Lindsay Lohan out of the blue. What did I think of her? Didn't she seem troubled? (This was when she was just starting to be quite troubled.) I said yes, I was worried about her. He asked me whether I thought that her boobs had gotten a lot bigger, seemingly overnight. I said I hadn't really noticed that. (I had noticed! She was going from being a child to being a young woman. And I didn't want to talk with him about that.) He then switched topics abruptly, and talked about a recent long magazine story about teen hookup culture. He said he feared for his kids, and that he didn't think teenagers valued sex anymore. Can you imagine how insane this conversation seemed? He then talked about Lindsay some more, and her boobs, and then I was dismissed, after he said that yes, I needed to take the copyediting test. My allies who wanted to help me asked me how the meeting went, and I described this disaster. They looked incredulous, so I dropped it. I failed the copyediting test — of course — became a freelance writer (almost exclusively for that newspaper), and then got hired by another paper that didn't think I was too junior to work there. I never saw that editor again, but can only assume he helped no one ever. —Kate Aurthur
Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Christina Lu / BuzzFeed
A few years ago, a friend and I began writing a weekly advice column for CNN.com's Tech page. Like every column on the site, ours included a photo of the two of us, a smiling shot a friend had snapped in our neighborhood one afternoon. Like all good journalists, I scrolled to the comments section shortly after our first piece went live, ready to respond to factual questions and content-based feedback. Instead, we'd elicited such insightful comments as "I'd stick my dick in that," "I'd do the short one but not the tall one," "Can you imagine waking up next to that freak?" and "She'd look better with longer hair." The comments on our appearances and fuckability literally outnumbered remarks on the piece itself. I clicked over to columns in the section penned by men and found that their commenters (while no less vicious) kept looks out of their invective. Our editor was aghast. I was sick to my stomach. Similar comments poured in on the next column and the one after that. Finally, our editor stopped running our headshots. Sexism still roiled on the comments section, where we were deemed "two angry former cheerleaders" and "lesbians" and "Future Spinsters of America" (OK, some of it's pretty funny now) and accused of sleeping our way into the job and/or getting it from Daddy. (We are not siblings. Logic was not these commenters' forte.) But an interesting thing happened: Readers came to our defense. They decried the personal attacks, complimented the writing, explained in slow, simple sentences what sarcasm is. Ultimately, the column had a solid two-year run; we got some great reader questions and feedback, wrote some very fun stories, and learned to let the vitriol fade into a burbling din. —Andrea BartzSmartphone users love their apps. According to Nielsen, U.S. consumers access 26.7 apps and spend an average of 37.5 hours in them each month.
But a recent report from research company Gartner predicts that by 2020, nearly half of our mobile interactions will be done through virtual personal assistants, like Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) Siri, Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Cortana, and Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Now.
Here's what Gartner had to say:
By 2020, smart agents will facilitate 40 percent of mobile interactions, and the postapp era will begin to dominate. Smart agent technologies, in the form of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and other agents, will monitor user content and behavior in conjunction with cloud-hosted neural networks to build and maintain data models from which the technology will draw inferences about people, content and contexts. Based on these information-gathering and model-building efforts, VPAs can predict users' needs, build trust and ultimately act autonomously on the user's behalf.
Having our phones predict the exact information that we need, when we need it, is already a theme major tech companies have implemented into smartphones to a small degree. But each is making big moves to expand their VPAs, too.
What Apple's doing
Last year, Apple made headlines when it was discovered that the company was diving further into neural networks (a type of machine learning where computers use algorithms to process information in similar ways that our brains do) to make Siri's voice recognition much smarter.
More recently, though, Apple's made a handful of acquisitions that could beef up Siri once again -- and lead to Gartner's prediction of smarter VPAs. In October, Apple purchased natural-language speech recognition company VocalIQ, which made a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that actively learns from conversations, as opposed to just listening. The technology could help boost Siri's ability to understand the meaning behind what someone is saying, instead of simply what a person is saying.
Apple also recently picked up the deep-learning company Perceptio, which built a system that allows AI to run in apps without having to collect massive amounts of user data. Perceptio was working on technology that helped AI classify photos without being told what they are. But the technology could be applied to other areas where a phone needs to learn something new without specifically being told.
Aside from its acquisitions, Apple has also made several recent hires in artificial intelligence as well, including a deep-learning expert from NVIDIA. Of course, not all of Apple's AI moves are geared toward Siri, but considering the iPhone accounts for 63% of Apple's revenue, you can bet the company is working toward ensuring its phones outsmart other VPAs.
What Alphabet's doing
Alphabet's Google already implements neural net processing in some of its apps, like Google Translate. This allows the app to translate images of a language instantaneously into another language, all without having to access the Internet for information.
Similarly, the Alphabet's Google Photos app uses a deep-learning system called TensorFlow to categorize images in the app (like pictures of beaches), so users can find images they're looking for much faster.
But Google isn't just interested in deep learning and neural networks to power Photos and Translate: The company also uses its AI systems to become the best predictor of what users want as well. Google relies heavily on all of the information from its other apps, Gmail, and online searches, and then offers up predictive information through Google Now.
As an article in SearchEngineLand recently mentioned, "Google Now is fully cloud-based. Whatever it learns on any device or in any way you interact with Google all goes into a common profile in the cloud."
So, Alphabet's Google is already using cloud-based information to power Google Now, and as the company dives into more cloud-based neural networking, you can be sure Google Now's predictions will get even better.
What Microsoft's doing
Microsoft has already tapped into neural networking with its Skype app, which can help translate different languages in real-time conversations. And Microsoft's virtual assistant, Cortana, uses natural networks for speech recognition as well.
But the company continues to expand its AI focus, and earlier this year, Microsoft Research revealed that its deep-learning system was able to identify a set of images, within 1,000 possible categories, better than humans. Microsoft's deep learning system had an error rate of 4.94%, while humans had an error rate of 5.1%.
As with Apple and Alphabet, Microsoft isn't expanding its use of neural networks and deep learning just so users can have better photo classification. Eventually, the company wants to use these systems to infer what information users want from their mobile devices.
Microsoft's Cortana uses cloud-based information to help it understand what users are asking, and pulls information from Bing searches, emails, and Web-browsing history to help it understand what users want. As more of Microsoft Research's findings are put to use with Cortana, the company will be able to expand its VPA's ability to better predict what users want.
No clear winner yet
It's hard to say which platform is expanding its neural-networking expertise better at this point. Right now, virtual personal assistants still feel a bit like a nice-to-have feature, but they aren't critical in helping users get things accomplished throughout the day. Still, if these tech companies continue to pursue neural processing, deep learning, and other AI systems, then they'll likely be one of the most important aspects of our future devices.Congress party supporters shelter from a dust storm kicked up by Rahul Gandhi’s helicopter before an election rally in Purulia, 2009 Just over a year ago, Barack Obama described Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, as one of the “most extraordinary leaders,” he had met. Praising Singh for his “wisdom and decency,” the American president said that from their first meeting, he found they “share many of the same values, the same goals and the same vision for the well-being of our people.” Praise as extravagant as this invited retribution, and 2011 was a disastrous year for Singh, with the Indian media exposing corruption scandals involving members of his cabinet. In one, the exchequer lost a staggering $40bn through the sale of radio frequencies to favoured private companies at well below market prices. A conscientious official had warned the prime minister’s office in advance and yet Singh did nothing to stop it. The rapid depreciation of the rupee and a slowdown in industrial production also undermined the prime minister’s reputation for economic management. In December, a proposal to allow foreign direct investment into supermarkets—which Singh had championed—collapsed owing to his failure to convince his party and coalition partners of its merits. That record raises questions not just about Singh’s leadership (and Obama’s judgement) but about the health of Indian democracy. The Republic of India is home to the most uplifting as well as the most depressing aspects of the democratic experience. On the one hand, elections are fair and regular; there is a vigorous press and an independent judiciary; and Indians are freer to speak, learn and administer themselves in their own languages than in supposedly older nations and allegedly more advanced democracies. The sustenance of linguistic pluralism is a particular achievement; the 17 different scripts on the rupee note representing an ideal, of democracy with diversity, that shames many nations riven by discord over language. On the other hand, politicians in India are corrupt and the police often brutal, the bureaucracy is incompetent, and the divisions of caste, class and religion produce much social discontent. The two sides to Indian democracy were starkly revealed at the time of the most recent general elections, in 2009. More than 400m voters participated in the largest exercise of the franchise in history. I spent 16th May in a TV studio in New Delhi, discussing the unexpectedly strong showing of the ruling Congress party. That the polls were peaceful led to a certain degree of self-congratulation. As one of my colleagues commented, while our neighbouring countries witnessed the election of generals, we put our trust instead in general elections. I came back to my hotel after midnight, exhausted but modestly content. After gaining 61 seats more, Singh and his centre-left Congress party were less beholden to their major coalition partners, the regional parties All India Trinamool Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. They might now begin the long overdue reform of public institutions. But while I slept, the other, darker side of Indian democracy was at work. That night, a large contingent of around 500 national and state police destroyed a Gandhian ashram, or community centre, in the district of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh. They woke up the social workers and gave them an hour to pack, then escorted them outside the ashram, making way for the bulldozers which demolished it. The office, the training hall, the staff quarters, even the wells—nothing was spared. I had visited that ashram in 2006. Its founder, Himanshu Kumar, is a sharp-eyed and forever smiling man in his late forties. He had been inspired by Gandhi’s disciple Vinoba Bhave to devote his life to the tribals—impoverished indigenous groups—of central India. In 1992, he moved to Dantewada and recruited a group of local helpers. Ringed by mango trees, the ashram lay in a village about ten miles from Dantewada town. From this home the social workers ventured into the surrounding countryside, taking educational materials and medicines to the tribes. These activities would usually be thought uncontroversial. But these were dangerous times in the area, with a civil war raging between Maoist revolutionaries and a vigilante group promoted by the state administration. The tribals were caught in between, as were the social workers. No one was permitted to be neutral, to condemn even-handedly the violence on both sides. The war has driven more than 50,000 tribals from their homes. The refugees lived in camps along the main road, in leaking tents, and without proper access to food and water.After months of living like this, some asked to return to their villages. While the state wanted them to stay in the camps, the villagers were encouraged to go home by the social workers. Provoked by this, and the social workers’ refusal to support the vigilantes, the state government came up with the pretext that the ashram had encroached on its land. The social workers insisted the land was acquired with permission from the village council and the case was being heard in the local courts. But rather than await the verdict, the district authorities demolished the ashram. It was no accident that this was done on the weekend the election results were declared. Who would care about a violation of democracy in some remote place while the victory of democracy in India was being celebrated as a whole? *** The Republic of India is the world’s most unnatural nation and its least likely democracy. Never before had a single political unit been created out of so many diverse parts. Never before had the franchise been granted to a desperately poor and largely illiterate population. Even before India became independent, the ambitions of its nationalists invited scorn and derision. In the 1930s, after Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress party organised a popular movement against British rule, Winston Churchill insisted the idea of political independence for India was “not only fantastic in itself but criminally mischievous in its effects.” For the British “to abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins [who he thought dominated the Congress party] would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence.” If the British left, Churchill predicted, then “India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages.” After independence the scepticism if anything intensified. The first general elections, held in 1951-52, and in which all adults regardless of caste, class, gender and literacy were encouraged to vote, were termed the “biggest gamble in history.” Though it and the next general election were a success, the writer Aldous Huxley visited in 1961 and went away profoundly depressed. Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister, was gravely ill, and apparently overwhelmed by “the prospect of overpopulation, underemployment, growing unrest.” Huxley was certain that “when Nehru goes, the government will become a military dictatorship.” The fears of Churchill and Huxley were widely shared. The Delhi correspondent of The Times wrote in 1967 that “the great experiment of developing India within a democratic experiment has failed.” The elections then underway were, he insisted, “surely [the] last,” for “within the ever-closing vice of food and population, maintenance of an ordered structure of society is going to slip out of the civil government and the army will be the only alternative source of authority and order.” These remarks make for curious reading now, when India has survived 65 years of freedom, when it has successfully conducted 15 national elections, as well as countless elections in states, some of which are more populous than Russia and Germany; when the army, so visible and dominant in Pakistan and China (among other nations), stays scrupulously out of politics. However, Churchill and Huxley and the Times man spoke for many others who thought that India was surely too diverse, in religion, language, ethnicity and ecology, to be a unified nation. And its citizens were surely too poor and unknowing to be trusted to elect their own representatives. Balkanisation, mass scarcity, military rule—these were the futures most widely predicted for the Republic of India in the first decades of its existence. Abul Kalam Azad, the great scholar and nationalist, liked to say that “secularism is India’s destiny.” Though a Muslim, he resisted the campaign of Mohammed Ali Jinnah to carve out the separate homeland of Pakistan. Muslims and Hindus had lived together under the Vijayanagara and Mughal empires, and Azad believed they could do so again after the British left, as citizens of a new, democratic, and religiously inclusive political order. Despite the partition of 1947, there are now almost as many Muslims in India as in Pakistan. As a citizen of India, I endorse and echo Azad’s enthusiasm for secularism. But as a historian, I would add one rider—instability is India’s destiny too. Let me explain. Because of its size and diversity, because of the continuing poverty of many of its citizens, because it is (in historical terms) still a relatively young nation state, and because it remains the most recklessly ambitious experiment in history, the Republic of India was never going to have anything but a rocky ride. National unity and democratic consolidation were always going to be more difficult to achieve than in smaller, richer, more homogeneous, and older countries. The distinctiveness of the Indian experiment is imperfectly appreciated by those accustomed to judging by economic indicators. Impressed by annual growth rates from 7 to 9.5 per cent, by the strides made by the software sector, by the steel and automobile companies in Europe bought by Indian entrepreneurs, some western commentators have begun speaking of India with admiration. A country once written off as a basketcase is now said to be on the verge of becoming a superpower. The headlines of the Indian press tell a different story. These are largely about conflict and contention. The disputes are sometimes local, such as a fight over a water tap in an urban slum; at other times they are reflective of wider trends, as in violent attacks on civilians by religious, ethnic and political fanatics. The disputes played out in the streets and in the countryside carry over into government. The Indian parliament, and state legislatures, are regularly disrupted by members shouting and screaming, and sometimes raining blows on one another. The headlines reflect some pervasive faultlines. Democracy and nationhood in India now face six complex challenges.The first is that in three states of the Union, large sections of the population want independence. In Nagaland, an uneasy ceasefire prevails between secessionists and the government; in the valley of Kashmir, peace is erratically secured by a massive army presence; and in Manipur, rival groups of insurgents fight with each other and with the government. Second, the territorial unity of India is further challenged by a Maoist insurgency in the centre and east. Maoists have dug deep roots among the tribal communities of the heartland. The opening of the Indian economy has had benign outcomes in cities such as Bangalore and Hyderabad, where the presence of an educated workforce allows for the export of high-end products such as software. In other places, globalisation has meant the increasing exploitation of unprocessed raw materials. In states such as Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, mining companies have dispossessed tribals of the land they owned and cultivated, leading sometimes to their recruitment by the Maoists. Third, the challenge from religious fundamentalism is receding but by no means vanquished. In 1984, several thousand Sikhs were slaughtered in northern India after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards; in 2002, a comparable number of Muslims were killed by Hindus in Gujarat. Those pogroms bookended two decades of almost continuous religious conflict, fuelled principally by right-wing Hindus and by Islamic fundamentalists based in Pakistan. But since 2002, there has been no serious Hindu-Muslim riot. (The jihadis who attacked Mumbai in 2008 failed to spark retributive violence against Muslims.) The middle class is no longer so enamoured of a Hindu theocratic state, and Indian Muslims are mostly focused on education and job security. What prevails, however, is a sullen peace rather than an even-tempered tranquillity, in which the secular ideals of the constitution are not always reflected in practice. The corrosion of public institutions is the fourth problem. This has several dimensions, including the conversion of political parties into family firms; the politicisation of the police and bureaucracy, with appointments dependent on patronage rather than competence; billion-dollar corruption scandals at high levels of government, with the state handing over natural resources and other assets to particular capitalists; and everyday corruption faced by ordinary citizens, such as bribes paid to set up electricity connections or admit children to school. Fifth, massive environmental degradation promotes discord and inequality in the present, while jeopardising economic growth in the future. The depletion of groundwater aquifers, chemical contamination of soil, and the decimation of forests and biodiversity leads to resource scarcity and conflict between different users. The environmental costs of economic growth fall disproportionately on the rural poor, who suffer the most from land grabs, deforestation, and soil and water pollution. Finally, there are pervasive and growing economic inequalities. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is worth over $20bn. His new home in Mumbai is 27 storeys high and measures 400,000 square feet. At the same time, 60 per cent of the city’s population live in crowded slums, five or six to a room, with no running water or sanitation. These disparities extend beyond the city to the whole of India. The super-rich exercise massive influence over politicians of all parties, with policies and laws framed or distorted to suit their interests. The rise of left-wing extremism, and the growth in corruption and environmental degradation are in good part a consequence of this ever-closer nexus between politicians and businessmen. These cleavages reflect the revolutions underway: the national, democratic, urban, industrial, and social. In older democracies these revolutions were staggered over time. The United States became a nation in the 18th century, urbanised and industrialised in the 19th century, and granted equal rights to blacks and women late in the 20th century. Each revolution produces intense and at times violent conflict, which their simultaneity makes more difficult to resolve. Instability is India’s destiny in part because of its size and complexity and in part because it seeks at once to assert national autonomy, provide the rights of democratic citizenship, pursue development, and promote caste and gender equality. To flag these faultlines is not to disparage the impressive strides made by the economy. If present growth rates are sustained for the next 20 or 30 years, and fertility rates continue to decline, then far fewer Indians will be poor. But the political system of modern India is, as yet, evolving. National unity was hard won, and democratic institutions remain fragile. Economic growth and social peace depend on a deepening of the original, plural idea of India, and a diminution of corruption and nepotism in government. Europeans can better appreciate the Indian experiment when reflecting on their own difficulties. The combined population of the European Union’s 27 members is less than half that of India’s 28 states. Europe is a union of convenience, whereas the Indian Union was the product of a long struggle for independence. Yet there are striking parallels. The European Union sought to leave behind centuries of internal strife; the Indian Republic to overcome centuries of religious conflict and scripturally sanctioned social inequalities. In their own ways, both seek to promote political unity with cultural diversity, economic federalism, constitutional law, and democracy. *** One can think of a democracy as a stool with three legs: the state, the private sector, and civil society. The state is required to frame suitable laws and policies, maintain order, prevent discrimination against individuals or communities, hold regular elections to allow changes of parties and leaders, and be ready to repel attacks from other nations or home-grown insurgents. The private sector’s task is, by one definition, merely to generate goods and services by the most efficient means possible; in a more capacious understanding, to make and sell products and promote philanthropic activity. The role of civil society is to keep both state and private sector on their toes, by highlighting perversions of the law and on the other hand, to foster community organisations that work towards equal access to, among other things, education, health and a clean environment. The stability of any democracy is dependent on the proper functioning of these three sectors. If one or other sector is negligent or malevolent, the stool of democracy will wobble. If all perform adequately, it will be stable. In the first, testing years of Indian independence, there was no real civil society. The private sector was timid and risk-averse, asking the state to keep out foreign capital, provide soft loans and other subsidies, and assume responsibility for producing everything but consumer goods. With the two other legs of democracy weak and insecure, the state rose to the challenge. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, helped nurture a multi-party democracy, religious and linguistic pluralism, and a scientific and industrial base for further economic development. Vallabhbhai Patel, his home minister, brought some 500 recalcitrant princes into the Union, and modernised the civil service. BR Ambedkar, the first law minister, oversaw the passing of a complex yet visionary constitution that endorsed gender and caste equality, and balanced relations between the centre and the provinces. These three titans had a supporting cast of skilled judges, administrators, election commissioners and economic planners, who assisted them in laying the foundations of a democratic India. It was this silent and still imperfectly acknowledged work that defeated the sceptics who thought the country too diverse to be united and too poor to be democratic. Now, in 2012, of the three sectors of democracy, the most active is civil society. Between April and December 2011, a coalition of activists organised a countrywide campaign against corruption. Large rallies were held in dozens of cities and towns. Anna Hazare, the veteran social worker, went on several fasts to pressure the government to create an ombudsman with the powers to punish and imprison corrupt officials. A second and arguably even more important aspect of civil activism is the patient work of grassroots organisations in promoting dignity and self-respect among the poor. In almost every Indian state there are citizens’ groups running producer co-operatives, and the community management of water and forest resources, rural health clinics and the like. *** The private sector is also more vigorous than ever. First generation entrepreneurs have challenged the domination of family firms. Individuals such as NR Narayana Murthy of Infosys have achieved wide acclaim for building professionally managed organisations in an atmosphere suffused by kinship and nepotism. A new wave of Indian philanthropy is helping fulfil the educational ambitions of the underprivileged. To be sure, where some entrepreneurs focus on innovation and institution-building, others pay closer attention to cultivating ties with politicians. The infrastructure, mining and telecom sectors in particular have witnessed the most egregious forms of crony capitalism, causing great losses to the public exchequer and even greater damage to natural ecosystems. In 1952—the year of the first general elections—the state was the most secure of the three legs of democracy; now it is the most corrupt and corroded. If the state had not performed as it did in the first decades of independence, India would not have been united nor a democracy. Now, unless the state is more capable and focused, India’s future is in peril. Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar—and Mahatma Gandhi—were leaders of exceptional calibre, the equal of the American Founding Fathers. It may be that large, multicultural democracies need visionaries to found them. Indians today cannot expect leaders like Nehru. But they surely deserve leaders of some competence and courage. Alas, the political leaders of contemporary India are distinguished by weakness, sectarianism, dogmatism, authoritarianism, and lack of proper credentials. In the first class falls Manmohan Singh who, after nearly eight years as prime minister, is too weak to seek direct election to the lower House of Parliament; too weak to dismiss cabinet ministers whose own corruption or incompetence are acknowledged; and too nervous to travel across the country to address (as his predecessors did) meetings of ordinary citizens. In the second class fall the leaders of the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata party, who have in the past promoted pogroms against Muslims and in the present condone rampant corruption by state governments they control. In the third class we find the leaders of the parliamentary Communists, whose party conferences still meet under portraits of Lenin and Stalin. In the fourth class are some egregiously overbearing chief ministers—such as Narendra Modi of Gujarat, Mayawati of Uttar Pradesh, and Jayalalitha of Tamil Nadu—who act as if their party and government were merely extensions of themselves, who extol their own virtues through state media while savagely persecuting critics and opponents. The last class numbers those who owe their position to dynastic succession, pre-eminently, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, but also many other politicians whose bloodline gives them an advantage over more competent colleagues. I have distinguished between five classes of politicians, but there is actually a sixth class, which some cynics claim is the most numerous of all—of Indians who enter politics merely to enrich themselves, who become legislators and ministers in order to cream commissions off licences and allotments. The lack of credible leadership in politics is a worldwide phenomenon. The French complain that Sarkozy is no De Gaulle. British Tories measure the distance between Cameron and Thatcher. Yet it may not be only the disenchanted patriot who insists that India is, in this respect, worse off than most other democracies. Compared to France or Britain, the country is younger, larger, more diverse and much poorer. The institutions of democracy are less deep rooted; their perversion is therefore easier. Religious rivalries are more intense—an ill-considered statement may cause riots between Hindus and Muslims in India, whereas a similar remark may only provoke a sulk among Protestants or Catholics in England. Above all—and this may be both the patriot and historian in me |
on the floor of the stage. As Lee moves around the stage the kitten follows responding to the tables, the different textures on the floor (carpet vs wood), the edge of the stage, and the user him or herself. Then Lee switches over to a different app, designed by Schell Games, and invites an assistant on stage. They start playing Jenga with the Project Tango App. Not only is the accuracy of the user’s ability to remove blocks from the tower incredible, but the fact that the tablet is aware of real world physics was impressive. The ability to create games that utilize these things can create a whole new genre of games. AR has never looked so good. Is anyone else thinking about how cool it would be to have a Pokemon game on Project Tango? I know I am.
Arguably the best part of Project Tango is its focus on making the device aware of the information around us.
“[Project Tango] turns a phone or a tablet into a magical window,” Lee said.
But the software alone can’t make anything into a magical window … enter Jeff Meredith, VP at Lenovo.
For those unaware, Lenovo has been pushing the bounds of innovation for the past several years. Recently they launched the Droid Turbo2 phone, the first phone with a shatter proof screen. Several years ago they launched the Yoga Notebook, the world’s first 360 flipping laptop. And now they’ve partnered with Google’s Project Tango to announce the world’s first smartphone that utilizes Project Tango’s technology, RGB camera, depth sensor, and fish-eye lens.
Unlike the developer version of the tablet, the new smartphone is built to be something that can fit in your pocket. They revamped the layout and reoriented the camera stack to be in the top third of the back of the phone in vertical order. It’s a phone that was created with the sole purpose of being something that can be used everyday while building meaningful experiences in the 3D space.
Currently, the phone is still in consumer testing. It uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon processing chip (chip will be announced in the next few weeks) and will have a screen size less that 6.5 inches. Lenovo will be launching this phone in the summer of 2016 with a price point under $500 with the intention of changing the smartphone game and going mainstream. This is a fundamental shift because it can change how we interact with each other.
“We are 3D creatures, and devices need to share the same 3D perception that we have,” said Lee.
After some hands on with some of Google’s Project Tango apps it is clear that it is pushing AR. However, the ability to have depth sensing and tracking is huge for VR developers. For example, take Project Tango’s construction ability. VR app developers can use this and start creating experiences that have a guide like HTC Vive’s Chaperone system. Mobile VR experiences can start having positional tracking without having to create an accessory for it. If Lenovo’s device delivers on everything it says it can, this means people can start having truly immersive VR experiences regardless if they have a $1500 PC capable of running VR or not.
At the moment, the device is something that fits into your pocket and can do AR in your hands, but it’s not quite ready for VR wearable devices, such as headsets according to Anjana Srinivasan, Lenovo’s chief of staff for mobile business. But, both Project Tango and Lenovo understand the importance of their device and how it relates to VR industry, which currently relies on wearable devices. That’s why they’ve launched an incubator program called APP. This program is targeting developers in AR/VR and will be accepting proposals/applications until Feb. 15. If the AR/VR community can make a push for applications that will utilize this technology, we may just see a shift in Lenovo’s device just being used for “AR in your hands.” As technology continues to advance, we can see Google’s Project Tango and Lenovo’s smartphone changing the VR game as we know it.
Apply for the APP Incubator Program here: g.co/projecttango/appincubator.
Tagged with: augmented reality, CES, project tangoIn this Real News Network report, Michael Hudson discusses the news blackout in the US as far as critical developments in the Ukraine are concerned, and how the distortions and gaps in reporting exceed those in the runup to the Iraq War. From the top of the interview:
Late last week, the German television program ARD Monitor, which is sort of their version of 60 Minutes here, had an investigative report of the shootings in Maidan, and what they found out is that contrary to what President Obama is saying, contrary to what the U.S. authorities are saying, that the shooting was done by the U.S.-backed Svoboda Party and the protesters themselves, the snipers and the bullets all came from the Hotel Ukrayina, which was the center of where the protests were going, and the snipers on the hotel were shooting not only at the demonstrators, but also were shooting at their own–at the police and the demonstrators to try to create chaos. They’ve spoken to the doctors, who said that all of the bullets and all of the wounded people came from the same set of guns. They’ve talked to reporters who were embedded with the demonstrators, the anti-Russian forces, and they all say yes. All the witnesses are in agreement: the shots came from the Hotel Ukrayina. The hotel was completely under the control of the protesters, and it was the government that did it.
So what happened was that after the coup d’état, what they call the new provisional government put a member of the Svoboda Party, the right-wing terrorist party, in charge of the investigation. And the relatives of the victims who were shot are saying that the government is refusing to show them the autopsies, they’re refusing to share the information with their doctors, they’re cold-shouldering them, and that what is happening is a coverup. It’s very much like the film Z about the Greek colonels trying to blame the murder of the leader on the protesters, rather than on themselves.
Now, the real question that the German data has is: why, if all of this is front-page news in Germany, front-page news in Russia–the Russian TV have been showing their footage, showing the sniping–why would President Obama directly lie to the American people? This is the equivalent of Bush’s weapons of mass destruction. Why would Obama say the Russians are doing the shooting in the Ukraine that’s justified all of this anti-Russian furor? And why wouldn’t he say the people that we have been backing with $5 billion for the last five or ten years, our own people, are doing the shooting, we are telling them to doing the shooting, we are behind them, and we’re the ones who are the separatists?Image caption "Insider" attacks by Afghan forces risk undermining Nato training programmes, observers say
Four US soldiers with the Nato-led force in Afghanistan have been killed in an attack by suspected Afghan police, say US and Afghan officials.
Five police were missing after the checkpoint attack in southern Zabul province and one was killed, they said.
The incident brought to 51 the number of Nato troops killed in "insider attacks" this year.
The latest incident comes a day after two UK soldiers were killed at a checkpoint by a man in police uniform.
On Friday, two US marines were killed in a Taliban attack on Nato's Camp Bastion base in southern Afghanistan.
Militants breached the perimeter of the sprawling Camp Bastion base in Helmand province, destroying six US Harrier aircraft.
Checkpoint attack
The four US soldiers were killed as they tried to stop an insurgent attack on a police checkpoint in Mezan, a remote area of Zabul near the border with Pakistan, said Zabul deputy police chief Ghulam Jelani Farahiof.
They were killed by a man in an Afghan national police uniform, he said.
An Afghan report that they were members of the special forces has been denied by Nato.
Senior Afghan officials said one suspected policeman had died in the attack and five had gone missing since. It was not clear whether the five were involved in the attack or had fled fearing they would be held responsible.
A number of international troops were wounded in the attack, reports said. An investigation has been launched.
In other developments:
At least 20 Taliban fighters were killed when they attacked police headquarters in Hisarak in the eastern province of Ningarhar on Saturday night, in a battle which lasted several hours, the district's governor told the BBC
A Taliban spokesman told the BBC its forces had killed five Afghan local police in the Jogak area of the district
Hundreds of university students gathered in Kabul, shouting anti-US slogans in protest at a film made in the US mocking the Prophet Muhammad
Further details have been released about Saturday's rogue attack on British soldiers in Helmand province.
Analysis Nato wants to present a message of progress in Afghanistan - that the Afghan security forces are now taking responsibility for their own country. But the events of the last few days have undermined that message - the greatest concern the rising toll of so-called green-on-blue killings. On a visit to Kabul last week the UK defence minister said he was "reassured" by President Hamid Karzai that the Afghans were addressing the problem with more stringent vetting. But with Nato churning out more than 25,000 Afghan army recruits each month and thousands more police no-one can guarantee that such incidents will not recur. The insurgency has been weakened, but this weekend's brazen attack on the heavily defended Camp Bastion shows that it can still mount well-planned and co-ordinated attacks. Though the attack was eventually repelled, the insurgents still managed to destroy half a dozen US warplanes, damage infrastructure and raise more security concerns about the safety of the UK's Prince Harry. Inevitably this week will have raised questions about what progress is being made.
It is understood that the Afghan had claimed to be injured when members of the British patrol went to assist him to receive medical treatment, says the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Kabul.
As the soldiers came to help him the uniformed man opened fire, killing the two soldiers before he was himself killed in return fire.
If confirmed, Sunday's attack takes the number of Nato soldiers killed in insider - or so-called "green-on-blue" - attacks to 51 for this year alone.
They risk undermining the programme to train Afghan forces, correspondents say.
The rash of attacks prompted the US to suspend training for new recruits to the Afghan local police (ALP) earlier this month.
'Well-rehearsed attack'
Some 700 members of the Afghan security forces have been ejected in the past month as part of increasingly thorough check being put into place by authorities, according to Afghan officials.
But ultimately, it is very hard to guarantee against this type of killing, our correspondent says.
Meanwhile, more details have emerged about the attack on Camp Bastion, which the Taliban said was in retaliation for a film mocking Islam made in the US.
In a statement, Nato said the attack had been carried out by 15 insurgents dressed in US Army uniforms who "appeared to be well-equipped, trained and rehearsed".
"The insurgents, organised into three teams, penetrated at one point of the perimeter fence," it said.
As well as the six American AV-8B Harrier jets destroyed, two were significantly damaged. Three refuelling stations were also destroyed, and six aircraft hangars were damaged.
Fourteen of the insurgents were killed, Nato said, and one was taken into custody. Nine coalition personnel were wounded.9 K-pop artists you should know from KCON NY and LA
South Korean boy group Block B performs during the KCON 2016, at the Bercy Arena, in Paris, Thursday, June 2, 2016. (Photo: Thibault Camus, AP)
The K-pop wave has been on the verge of hitting the U.S. for years — but you can get a splash of it at this year’s KCON, the annual K-pop music festival and convention in New York and Los Angeles. Started in 2012 in southern California, KCON has since expanded to the East Coast and beyond the coasts — now holding events in Abu Dhabi, Chiba, Japan, and Paris.
Popular K-pop artists have been flocking to perform at KCON since its inception, but with the con's rapid growth in its five-year existence, there are nearly too many good (and not-so-good) boy bands and girl groups to count.
Here are the acts you should know at the 2016 KCONs in both New York and LA.
BTS (NY and LA)
With crisp, striking choreography that could rival America’s best dance crews, and soaring choruses mixed with EDM-infused hip-hop, BTS is one of the most promising young K-pop boy bands. The septet’s socially conscious lyrics set them apart from the rest of the lovestruck boy band crowd, but it's their equal exuberance for both ballads and bangers that elevates them.
Mamamoo (NY)
Put four Cool Girls in a room, give them brassy funk-pop songs and eye-popping hair colors, and you’ve got Mamamoo. Nicknamed the “dark horse of the battle of girl groups,” the quartet’s jazzy retro sound is complemented by their strong vocals — not to mention the miles of midriff each of the four ladies proudly flaunt.
Crush (NY)
One of Korea’s foremost hip-hop and R&B singer-songwriters, Crush quickly rose to fame since his debut in 2012, bringing a renewed edge and sexiness to the K-R&B genre. His collaborations with Block B rapper Zico and fellow R&B artist Zion T have given the Korean R&B a creative boost that it hasn’t seen in years.
Dean (LA)
Los Angeles is getting their own honey-voiced R&B artist with Dean, whose sultry tunes are a shade darker than the more mellow Crush. The singer-songwriter actually made his musical debut in the States, with the Eric Bellinger collaboration I’m Not Sorry before heading over to South Korea to make his mark.
Ailee (NY)
Arguably one of the strongest female singers in the world of sweet-toned bubblegum pop, Ailee boasts a chesty, raw voice that shines in both her ballads and dance pop songs. A native of New Jersey, the Korean-American singer will be making a homecoming with her KCON performance at Newark’s Prudential Center.
Girls Generation - TTS (LA)
Three of the most interesting members of Girls Generation, Taeyeon, Tiffany and Seohyun, formed the subgroup TTS or TaeTiSeo. Taeyeon and Tiffany have both embarked on successful solo acts, with Tiffany’s I Just Wanna Dance emerging as one of the best songs of the summer. Girls Generation remains the popular girl group in Korea, and their continued success as one of the main purveyors of classic, saccharine retro pop showcases the lasting strength of K-pop.
Block B (LA)
Boasting one of the best rappers in South Korea, Block B’s brand of frenetic and dynamic hip-hop sets them apart from the crowd and have let them keep their status as one of the strongest and more fascinating boy bands since their debut in 2011. Their leader and producer Zico has notably crossed over into the underground hip-hop scene, and has collaborated with many famed rappers and R&B singers.
Eric Nam (NY)
One of the artists at KCON less known for singing than for his television hosting skills, Eric Nam is one to watch out for. A Korean-American who was discovered through his cover songs on YouTube, Nam recently made a soft U.S. debut with Into You, a catchy tropical house dance collaboration with EDM upstart Kolaj.
SHINee (LA)
One of the old guard of K-pop, SHINee is a good glimpse into what the Korean music scene was like before the EDM craze. Dance pop and bubblegum are their strengths, and those are a few of the reasons the five-member band is still around after eight years.
KCON New York is held June 24-June 25 at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. KCON LA will take place at the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles from July 29-31. A live stream of the event is available here.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/28VOZhrLegal groups brought suit against homeland security and Customs and Border Protection, saying people at US-Mexico border had been blocked from process
US border officials have systemically blocked asylum seekers from accessing the asylum process, in violation of US and international law, according to a lawsuit filed by immigration advocates on Wednesday.
A collection of legal groups brought the suit, which claims that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have put asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border in grave danger by threatening, misleading or rejecting them.
'Your life becomes like hell': refugees fear drawn-out fight over Trump's travel ban Read more
Erika Pinheiro, policy and technology director at Al Otro Lado, a not-for-profit group that is a plaintiff in the case, said immigration agencies had been emboldened since Donald Trump was elected president.
“We’ve seen a drastic increase in illegal turnbacks since Trump was elected in November 2016,” Pinheiro said. “CBP agents, perhaps emboldened by the hateful, anti-immigrant rhetoric surrounding the election, have unilaterally undone decades of international diplomacy and domestic legislation by systematically denying refugees the right to seek asylum at the US-Mexico border.”
She said advocacy groups had witnessed an increase in CBP rights abuses in 2014, when there was a surge in unaccompanied children crossing the border to flee violence in Central America, but ultimately “the vast majority” were able to eventually access the asylum process.
There has been another uptick in these abuses, according to the lawsuit, which cites a June 2017 Amnesty International report that documented CBP officials lying to asylum seekers by telling them the asylum process no longer exists and that people would need a “ticket” from Mexican authorities to seek asylum.
Trump's rigorous asylum proposals endanger domestic abuse survivors Read more
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, CBP is required to give individuals the right to seek asylum at ports of entry.
The agency has used tactics, including misrepresentations, intimidation and physical force, to deny people access to the asylum seeking process, according to the lawsuit.
A spokesperson for CBP told the Guardian that they could not comment on pending litigation.
The plaintiffs, who were anonymized to protect their safety, claim they have nowhere to turn for safety except for the United States and were turned away from seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border.
Beatrice Doe, a Mexican woman with three children under the age of 16, sought asylum with her children and nephew three times because she was subjected to domestic violence and has been targeted by a drug cartel, according to the lawsuit. The suit alleges she was coerced into signing a document stating she and her children have no fear of returning to Mexico.
Another plaintiff, Jose Doe, fled Honduras after being attacked there by the 18th Street Gang. He sought entry into Texas, but was denied access to the process and ended up fleeing from the border because he was approached by gang members there twice, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit said the prevalence of CBP denying people access to the asylum process has been documented by the group, Al Otro Lado, as well as the non-governmental organizations Human Rights First, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Plaintiffs also include the group Al Otro Lado, which said it was harmed because it has had to divert resources to respond to to CBP’s “unlawful conduct” at the border.
Trump humiliates Mexican president again over border wall Read more
Al Otro Lado and individual asylum seekers are represented by the American Immigration Council, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and an international law firm.
Baher Azmy, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the plaintiffs turned to a lawsuit because “the Trump administration, which has expressed unbridled antipathy towards immigrants, shows no signs of abating this illegal practice”.
The lawsuit asks the court to review CBP’s asylum process, declare transgressions from protocol illegal and introduce a mechanism to ensure effective oversight and accountability.
“Finally, because the individual plaintiffs have been stranded on the US-Mexico border, in very precarious conditions and imminent danger, we currently plan to file a motion with the court seeking emergency relief for them,” Azmy said. “We will ask the court to order CBP to remit these individuals to enter the US immediately for purposes of applying for asylum.”The WP REST API team met yesterday in the #core-restapi Slack channel to discuss the status of the existing post, term, user, and comment endpoints. There are a few outstanding issues with these four core objects, which the team wants to tackle via a feature plugin approach instead of holding the API back from merge. These outstanding items include things like password-protected posts, autosaves and post previews, and meta handling.
“For now, we’re not going to support them, and will be working on them in a separate feature plugin instead,” WP REST API project lead Ryan McCue said. “Again, this will be an enhancement to the API in the future, and doesn’t block compatibility here.”
In September 2015, McCue and contributors outlined a merge plan for the REST API which brought the infrastructure into the 4.4 release with the endpoints on deck to follow one release later in 4.5. Contributors to the REST API believe that the project is still on track for this goal.
“Our proposal is that we merge the four core objects in the REST API with full read, create, update, delete support, with the more peripheral features to come when they’re ready,” McCue said.
Several WordPress contributors, including project lead Matt Mullenweg, voiced concerns about the REST API shipping without the features that have been temporarily spun out.
“I know it’s a minority opinion, but I would be pretty skeptical of merging a partial API into core,” Mullenweg said. “I think it would do a lot more damage than benefit.”
McCue contended that the team has been working towards shipping a product that can be progressively enhanced.
“The API is specifically structured around progressive enhancement, which is a key difference from many APIs,” he said. “Allowing clients to detect features and support them when they’re ready allows us huge flexibility.”
Does the WP REST API Need Full wp-admin Coverage?
Aaron Jorbin noted that while the four core object types allow for some innovative themes and content editors, they do not yet allow for full wp-admin replacements. This particular point was a deal breaker for several contributors attending the meeting.
“The cases where the current API covers today aren’t terribly interesting because they’re not really enabling something that was impossible to do before,” Mullenweg said. “It’s just a different approach to doing something that was already possible before. I don’t even think we have XML-RPC parity of feature support yet.
“I wouldn’t have included REST examples in the SoTW, or encouraged plugins to use the scaffolding, or even let the scaffolding in the last release, if I didn’t think it was the most promising thing out there right now,” he said. “But uptake definitely feels slower than I would have expected. It’s taken so long to get to this point, if we don’t pick up the pace, it could be another year or two before we get full wp-admin coverage.”
Despite the fact that the WP REST API recently had its own conference dedicated to it, most of the people who are building with it are those who are also contributors on the project. Adoption is not yet widespread, but this could be due to the fact that many developers don’t want to build on it until the core endpoints are officially merged.
“We’ve got a bit of a chicken and egg: without core adoption, potential API consumers are hesitant to take the plunge, but without adoption it won’t be tested sufficiently to be merged,” REST API contributor K. Adam White said.
“From a project point of view I’m not really excited about shipping an API that has ‘some assembly required,’ vs making the core release paired with interesting non-trivial killer apps (mobile apps, something calypso-like, big plugins using / supporting it),” Mullenweg said. “To me a complete API is one that covers everything that’s possible within wp-admin. A subset of that is a partial API.”
Multiple contributors on the REST API project, however, agreed that shipping with full admin replacement capability is unrealistic, especially after Mullenweg confirmed that it should support everything possible in the admin, including the file editor.
“We’re significantly more interested in getting read/write access to core types, so that we can interact with WP from a host of other platforms,” K. Adam White said. “I think that pushing everything off until it’s ‘Calpyso ready’ blocks myriad use cases before they can get off the ground.”
In response, Mullenweg asked why WordPress should support something in its web interface that isn’t supported through its official API. At the conclusion of the two-hour meeting he summarized his final proposal: “No partial endpoints in core. Let’s design a complete API, not half-do it and foist it on millions of sites,” he said.
This is a critical juncture for the WP REST API project. While most contributors seemed agreed on further iterating the existing endpoints and ramping up usage before merging them into core, attendees remained divided about the need to have full wp-admin coverage prior to merge.
WP REST API team members are squarely committed to iterating separately on peripheral features, but another contingent of WordPress contributors who joined the meeting yesterday are adamant about seeing a more polished API with better support for the admin. A plan forward has not yet emerged.
Like this: Like Loading...Neil Young & Promise Of The Real
Beale Street Music Festival
Tom Lee Park
Memphis, TN
April 29, 2016
Download: FLAC/MP3
** 16 BIT **
Source: Sonic Studios DSM-6P w/3-way lo-cut filter > Tascam DR-2d (-6 dB copy) @ 16 bit/44.1 kHz
Mastering:.WAV > Sound Forge Pro 11.0 (Build 299) (minor edits, normalize, & fades) > CDWav (tracking) > Trader’s Little Helper (level 5) >
FLAC > TagScanner 5.1 (tagging)
Location: FAR from the stage, by “electrical box 5”, at least 150-200 yards from the stage
Recorded by: Steve “ballsdeep” Hagar
Mastered by: Dennis Orr
Setlist:
01 Down By The River
02 Country Home
03 Seed Justice
04 Monsanto Years
05 Western Hero
06 Out On The Weekend
07 Are There Any More Real Cowboys?
08 Someday
09 Fuckin’ Up
10 Cinnamon Girl
11 Chat & Tuning
12 Rockin’ In The Free World
13 Love And Only Love
Neil Young – lead vocvals, guitars, piano, & harp
Lukas Nelson – guitar & backing vocals
Micah Nelson – guitar & backing vocals
Corey McCormick – bass & backing vocals
Anthony Logerfo – drums
Tato Melgar – percussion
Taper Notes:
– “Down by the River” was played for almost 36 minutes.
– “Are There Any More Real Cowboys?” was dedicated to Willie Nelson in honor of his 83rd birthday.
– Beale is right on the banks of the Mississippi in a flat park on the riverbank, so more of an “open air” sound vs. echoes.
– Neil’s first show in Memphis since 1983.
Mastering Notes:
– Some annoying crowd chatter, and at one point Steve tells a girl to quit bumping him because he’s filming.
– Some “swirling” of the stereo effect, likely due to the distance Steve was from the stage in an open air venue.poster="https://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201611/1878/1155968404_5222189420001_5222154189001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Gingrich: Kushner may need nepotism waiver
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich voiced support for the idea that President-elect Donald Trump could tap his son-in-law to revamp peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. But he cautioned that a decades-old nepotism law could require Trump get a waiver for Jared Kushner.
“I think they would have to get a waiver to the anti-nepotism law,” Gingrich, a longtime Trump surrogate, said on "Fox and Friends" on Wednesday. “That might be a little tricky, although I think if they worked at it, they could do it.”
Trump reignited the speculation over Kushner’s role in his administration when Trump floated the possibility that the 35-year-old could become a key broker for peace talks during an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday.
“I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians,” Trump said. He added that Kushner “would be very good" at such a job, and that “he knows the region.”
Congress passed the anti-nepotism law in 1967, possibly motivated by President Kennedy’s nomination of his brother Robert to become attorney general, but the law appears to apply to government posts far below the Cabinet level. Legal experts say Kushner's appointment to a senior White House role would most likely trigger a debate over the statute. Kushner could be protected, however, by an obscure passage from a 1990s federal court decision related to Hillary Clinton’s role in trying to pass health-care reform.
Calling him one of the “smartest people I’ve worked with,” Gingrich praised how Kushner, whose experience, like Trump, is primarily in real estate, could add a fresh perspective to peace negotiations.
“Certainly I would favor Jared Kushner's intelligence and skills being put to good use in the United States wherever he would feel committed to invest his time and his life. And having somebody with a totally fresh approach might be a good starting point in the Middle East," Gingrich said.RT’s 360 panoramic footage has caught an exclusive look at the rehearsal for Moscow’s V-Day parade celebrating the 71st anniversary of victory in World War II – right from the top of a tank.
The rehearsal showing dozens of armored infantry vehicles took place at the Alabino firing range outside the Russian capital.
The WWII parade will include last year’s sensations, such as T-14 Armata battle tanks, T-15 heavy infantry combat vehicles and Kurganets-25 light tracked armored vehicles.
Russia’s missile systems are also set to roll out on May 9, among them the tactical Iskander missile complex, Yars mobile strategic ballistic missile complexes and medium-and short-range Tor and Buk complexes.
T-90 battle tanks, BTR-80 armored personnel carriers and a variety of armored personal carriers will also take part in the annual parade.Tiger Woods went on a New York City media tour Wednesday and Thursday to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the Tiger Woods Foundation.
Appearing on ‘Charlie Rose’ and ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’, Woods answered questions about golf, his foundation, and his family.
Woods was very candid on both shows but discussed much more about his golf game in the hour long interview with Charlie Rose.
Rose started off with the hot issue of the week, Woods withdrawing from the Safeway Open.
Woods offered a very lengthy but somewhat confusing explanation;” I had been playing good at my home course before the Ryder Cup. Shooting some good numbers. Then I wasn’t able to play during the Ryder Cup. When I got back from the Ryder Cup I went to Stanford and practiced with the team and played some rounds with them and again played well. But the feel of my shots had changed. I was close to being the same before the Ryder Cup but something was missing. I lost the feel of how good I had been playing. I was in a grove when I played at home. In my heart I know I couldn’t go out there and shoot 63’s and 64’s with the guys on tour. It’s tough, I can get the feel of it, but it’s not there yet.”
Rose pressed Woods for what the problems were, physical, mental, “what is it” said Rose avoiding the “yip” word, but hinting that there was much speculation of what was wrong.
“There are alot of Monday morning Quarterbacks out there, so yes I’ve heard that. It’s everything. It’s not just my putting, my driver, irons, not one particular part of my game. And I feel great, so it’s not physical. I am about 10 yards shorter than years ago, but I can still put it out there with the boys. This is the longest layoff in my career and I have taken my time to make sure I get it right this time, and that is what I am doing. I know time is not on my side. said Woods.
“Do I miss playing? Absolutely, but I can’t do things I used to do. My body won’t let me. So I have to find a different way to win.”
Rose said, “You seem to be making a transition from golfer to an entrepreneur with your announcement of you new brand and reorganization.”
“Exactly. I don’t want to have to hit a golf ball for the rest of my life. I want to build a business empire, along with my foundation.” I think the second chapter of my life out of golf will accomplish much more than the first half of my life in golf”, said Woods.
Just my observation, Woods is preparing himself and his life for exiting golf. He will always be involved, but you won’t see him struggling to make cuts till he is 50 and join the Champions Tour. By concentrating on “his empire” he will make a graceful exit from the game he gave so much to, but also got back so much from too.
All we really know is that he said he would play the Hero in December, but, the word withdraw is certainly in his vocabulary. He is running out of chances to show up and play.
Time is not on Tiger’s side…..Q+A with Lewis Hamilton
2008 World Champion Lewis Hamilton endured his first season in Formula One as a non-championship contender since his debut in 2007, with a difficult battle at end of the season with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen for fourth place in the standings. Although the young McLaren driver says he is more in love with the sport than ever in this interview courtesy of his personal website.
“Not really. Of course, it’s disappointing not to finish a race – particularly when you’re at the front leading it – but I have to be realistic: to have got through nearly three seasons of racing and to only now be stopped by a mechanical failure is an incredible statistic.
“You almost take reliability for granted these days, so it was weird to be stood in the garage watching the race rather than being in it. But I think we can all be proud of what we’ve achieved this year. We started the season with what was the slowest car in the field, but we never gave up, and on Saturday in Abu Dhabi, you could argue that we had the fastest car out there. That’s an absolutely incredible achievement – and I can’t think of a single team other than Vodafone McLaren Mercedes that could have done that.
“It would have been great to have won the race and sent us into the winter with our heads held high, but it wasn’t to be. I loved the circuit – for a new track, it has a good blend of corners and it needs you to be very focused and precise to get the best from the laptime. We’ll be back to try and win it next year!”
"I think there are a few moments that will stay with me from this year. The first was at Silverstone, where I arrived knowing that I wouldn’t be able to fight for a win, and where I was just overwhelmed by the amount of support from the people at the circuit. I would never have imagined it would have been such a positive and inspiring weekend for me – even if our results weren’t that great.
"I’d had such an amazing race at Silverstone in 2008, and it really meant a lot to me to see that people had kept the faith and were behind me even if I couldn’t score a win for them.
“On the track, one of my biggest highlights was in Germany, when we tried the upgrade package for the first time. Before I’d even driven the car, you could see that it was a big step – we’d completely changed the front wing, the top body and the floor, and there was a lot of pressure for it to be right – and it looked good, the car looked fantastic.
“And it only took me a few laps to realise that the car was an incredible improvement. Finally, after months of struggling, I could finally get the car to do what I wanted: I could get it turned in properly, and get hard on the power and just rely on the grip to get me out of a corner. Coming out of the Nurburgring hairpin and heading uphill into the fast esses, I accidentally left my radio switched on, and the whole team could hear me yelling and screaming because the car felt so good!
“I felt a bit embarrassed afterwards, especially when Martin told me he’d played the recording back to the whole team! But I can see now that that was important for everyone’s morale.
“The other highlight was winning in Hungary. I’d always said that winning a race this year was going to feel sweeter than anything else we’d achieved, just because it would be such a satisfying conclusion to all our hard work. And the Hungarian Grand Prix was just a dream come true – to be able to measure my pace over the others and to get the car home first was just unbelievable. Total satisfaction…”
“There were a few. The first difficulty we faced this year was during testing: we knew the car wasn’t the fastest but, at the Barcelona test in week 11, it became really clear to us that we were struggling and we just didn’t have the pace of the frontrunners. I remember phoning Ron and Martin and explaining to them that we had a lot of work ahead of us if we were going to turn MP4-24 into a race winner.
“That was a difficult call, but Ron and Martin gave me their full support and we actually started to look at a rescue plan immediately – there was no waiting. So what was a difficult experience at first actually turned into a positive one.
“The other tough moment happened not long after, in Melbourne and Malaysia. And that was a difficult time for me personally – but I strongly believe that I used that experience to grow as a person and to become stronger through it. I’m a firm believer that every experience you have – even the bad ones – help to define and build your character. You can’t change the past, but you can definitely learn from it, and I overcame that situation in Melbourne, I had the courage and conviction to man up about |
2010, he drew criticism for his support of the Hyde Amendment, which bars certain federal funds for aborting pregnancies that are not the result of rape or incest. Under his Affordable Care Act, many insurance plans will be required to fully cover birth control without co-pays or deductibles.
Romney is campaigning as a staunchly pro-life candidate in this election, but his stance has shifted since he originally supported choice when he ran for Massachusetts governor despite his personal opposition to abortion. He has voiced his belief that Roe v Wade should be overturned by a future Supreme Court, so that states can make the decision individually. He has said he would stop federal aid to Planned Parenthood.
However, Romney refused to sign an anti-abortion pledge put forth by Susan B Anthony List, a conservative non-profit organisation that seeks to illegalise abortion in the US, which would bind him to excluding pro-choice candidates from certain government positions.
The national debt - the accumulated total of deficits plus interest - helped cause a downgrade in the US' credit rating in 2011, after bipartisan politics in Congress temporarily stalled in raising the debt ceiling. National debt is currently more than $15tn. Republicans want to close the budget deficit - the annual gap between government spending and revenue - by slashing government spending, while Democrats advocate a mixture of reduced spending and raising taxes to close the gap. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that under current fiscal policies cumulative deficits will reach $11tn by 2022 if left unchanged.
Obama has unveiled a plan to cut the national debt by about $4tn over a decade. The strategy hinges on eliminating wasteful spending in government programmes like Medicare and generating revenue by ending some of the Bush-era tax cuts for high-income households and closing tax loop holes. The plan also includes troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, imposing spending caps for future overseas military operations, and a $32bn cut on direct payment to farmers over 10 years.
Romney wants to bring federal spending down from 24.3 to 20 per cent of GDP by 2016. He plans to reduce spending by repealing Obama's healthcare reforms, privatising Amtrak, cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and cutting foreign aid.
Romney's plan has drawn criticism for lacking specifics, which he has said would be worked out by Congress.
Polls indicate that the economy continues to be the single most important election issue to voters. Jobs and employment, as cornerstones of the economy, have been at the forefront of presidential debate. The unemployment rate, which has become stagnant at around 8.2 per cent, has been persistently high, although the economy has shifted from losing to gaining jobs in the last four years.
Obama, who took office during a severe economic recession, has presided over a gradual recovery. He has pushed job policies that include initiatives to improve manufacturing jobs, push exports via free trade agreements, prevent job outsourcing, and provide new support for education and training. He also believes short-term government spending on infrastructure and hiring more state and local workers will create between 1 and 1.9 million new jobs.
Obama's "Bring Jobs Back Home Act", which would have provided a 20 per cent tax break for companies moving jobs back to the US and eliminate expense deductions for companies overseas, failed to clear Congress.
Romney says his private sector experience as CEO of Bain Capital makes him an ideal candidate for job creation. In response, the Obama campaign has accused Romney of heading a carpet-bagging corporation that destroyed domestic companies, sent jobs overseas, and forced bankruptcy onto a number of firms.
Romney's proposed approach to creating jobs hinges upon less regulation, a balanced budget, more trade deals to promote growth, and cutting the corporate tax rate to 25 from 35 per cent. He has also proposed replacing unemployment benefits with an unemployment savings account, as well as repealing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that gives the federal government new powers to regulate Wall Street after the financial meltdown of 2008.
How much Americans should pay in taxes has been one of the primary points of economic debate. At the end of the year, automatic tax increases and spending cuts will kick in unless action is taken to reverse them, including Bush-era tax cuts that were lauded by Republicans and disparaged by Democrats.
Obama wants to increase taxes on the wealthy so that they pay at least 30 per cent of their income. He favours extending Bush-initiated tax cuts for everyone making under $200,000 ($250,000 for couples), even though he approved a two-year extension of the lower rates for everyone in 2010. He also unveiled a plan earlier this year to reform the corporate tax code by cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 to 28 per cent while eliminating dozens of business tax breaks.
He has also said he would slash the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 per cent, and eliminate taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains - earnings from investments - for families earning less than $200,000.
In public schools across the country, performance continues to fall short of federal standards.
Meanwhile, former President George W Bush's "No Child Left Behind" law, which standardised testing of students and introduced a system of school penalties for low test scores, is still on the books. While the bill was originally passed with bipartisan support, a rewrite of the law has stalled in Congress due to disagreements among the two parties.
Obama approved waivers to excuse states from central provisions of "No Child Left Behind", with more than half of the states currently receiving exemptions. He also launched the "Race to the Top" competition, which has awarded billions of dollars to states agreeing to use test scores to evaluate teachers, promote charter schools – public schools exempt from many standard regulations in exchange for results - and undertake other Obama-backed reforms. His administration has also introduce nationwide standards in reading and maths which have been adopted by 45 states.
Romney supports the federal obligations dictated by the Bush-era's "No Child Left Behind" law. He believes that the federal government should have less control of education, and that education reform should be left to individual states. In general he is in favour of charter schools, facilitating school choice - the option for students to attend schools outside their districts - and using vouchers, or subsidies that would help families afford private schools, or transportation costs, for out-of-districts schools.
A poll conducted by the Brookings Institute found that 62 per cent of Americans now believe the climate is changing, and almost half of them attribute their belief to changes in weather patterns. While Democrats tend to rally behind curbing carbon emissions, many Republicans continue to express their doubts about the science behind global warming, also warning against the possible negative economic impacts of changes to energy policy. Fears over the rising price of energy sources in the face of an uncertain economy is also a primary voter concern.
Obama has repeatedly voiced his belief that human activity contributes to climate change. But during his first term, he failed to enact large-scale federal regulation, including the “cap-and-trade” bill to limit carbon emissions. He has been praised by environmentalists for new regulations in fuel economy standards that will force car makers to nearly double the average gas mileage of all cars and trucks by 2025.
Despite a temporary freeze on off-shore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, is currently "at an eight-year high" under Obama, and all forms of energy production have increased under his administration. The president has allocated $90bn for green energy projects - like the development of wind and solar power - and intends to cut oil imports in half by 2020.
Romney has expressed scepticism about the causes of climate change, a shift from former statements he made while he was governor of Massachusetts. He opposes "cap-and-trade" initiatives and efforts to regulate carbon emissions. The centrepiece of Romney's energy plan is to make North America energy-independent by 2020. He plans to do this by expanding fossil fuel production - including opening up protected lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling - and empowering states to speed up fracking, a controversial drilling technique used to extract natural gas, on federal land. He also plans to discontinue government investments in wind and solar power.
While polls indicate that Americans are far less concerned with foreign policy than bread-and-butter issues, recent protests and violence at US foreign missions across the world, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, has focused debate on how each candidate would approach such challenges if elected. Obama's approach to foreign policy, which favours diplomacy and negotiation over war, has been blasted by Republican for being "hands-offs" and weak.
Afghanistan: Plans to withdraw troops by the end of 2014 and favours a negotiated peace involving the Taliban.
China: Did not designate the country as a "currency manipulator" to avoid possibility of a trade war. Brought lawsuits against the country to the World Trade Organisation regarding unfair trading practices.
Iran: Committed to blocking the development of nuclear weapons, but favours diplomacy and economic sanctions to solve the issue, unless Iran makes concrete steps to acquire the bomb.
Israel/Palestine: Believes Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, but that the issue must be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinians. Called for a two-state solution with pre-1967 borders as starting point for negotiations in May 2011.
Afghanistan: Like Obama, would withdraw troops by 2014, but has rejected the idea of negotiating with groups like the Taliban.
China: Wants to label China as a "currency manipulator" out of belief that the country's unfair policies steal jobs from Americans.
Iran: Also committed to preventing the development of nuclear weapons. Says he differs from Obama seeing a need for "action, as opposed to just words", but also believes the US should avoid military action.
Israel/Palestine: Shares Obama's view that peace must be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians. Backs Israeli military action against Iran.
The events of July 20, 2012, when a gunman opened fire in a Colorado cinema and shot 12 people dead, have put the topic of gun control back into the limelight in the election run-up. While Democrats traditionally support more restrictions on gun ownership, Republicans tend to block further controls.
Obama promised in 2008 not to take away anyone's guns, and has since then repeatedly voiced his support for the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. During his first term, he has not passed stricter gun laws, despite saying he would push for a renewed ban on assault weapons and close loopholes that allow gun purchases without background checks at gun shows. He also signed a bill legalising the carrying of concealed guns in national parks and in luggage on Amtrak, the US rail system.
Romney, a member of the US biggest gun lobbying group National Rifle Association since 2006, has said he does not support any gun-control legislation, although he supported several new such laws during his time as Massachusetts governor, including a ban on some assault weapons and background checks.
A key legacy of the president's first term, the Affordable Care Act, labelled by Republicans as "Obamacare", is the most significant reform of the US health system since 1965. Although it was upheld by a US Supreme Court ruling, Republicans are still lobbying for a repeal of the law - which mandates everyone to buy health insurance - on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.
Obama's healthcare law - and the Supreme Court's decision to uphold it - is widely regarded as the president's biggest political victory. The sweeping set of reforms aims to get more Americans insured and will provide an estimated 30 million impoverished citizens with medical coverage.
Romney plans to repeal "Obamacare" if elected, even though he passed a similar healthcare bill on a state-level when he was Massachusetts governor. Romney says that the decision to penalise uninsured Americans should be left to the states, not the federal government.
With an estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants in the US as of 2011, the politically explosive issue of immigration was reignited this summer when Obama halted deportation for some youths brought illegally to the US as children, which critics saw as an attempt to bypass Congress. In addition, the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a controversial Arizona immigration law on the basis that states do not have the power to enforce federal laws in local jurisdictions was hailed as a victory for Democrats. At the same time, Obama failed to enact a complete overhaul of the immigration reform as promised in 2008, blaming the economy and partisan politics.
Obama supports the DREAM Act - a bill creating a path to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants enrolled in college or enlisted in the military - which stalled in a deadlocked Congress. In June 2012, he issued a directive providing illegal immigrants, who arrived in the US as children, protection from deportation and the possibility to apply for work permits if they meet certain criteria.
Obama's first term saw a record number of illegal immigrants deported, with almost 400,000 forced to leave in 2010 alone.
Romney opposes the DREAM Act and offering legal status to illegal immigrations who attend college – although he favours creating a pathway to citizenship for those that served in the armed forces. He wants to establish a national immigration-status verification system for employers and sanction workers who hire non-Americans without work authorisation. He also supports building a US-Mexico border fence.
Once a primary concern on previous campaign trails, the issue of "terrorism" has received less attention during this election cycle. A major reason for this has been the killing last year of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, by a team of Navy SEALs on Obama's orders.
The Obama administration introduced a policy that the US would no longer use harsh interrogation techniques for "terrorism" suspects. Amid much criticism following the deaths of civilians, it has significantly increased the use of unmanned drones, defending their use with the argument that they do not put US troops in harm's way.
While Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay during his 2008 campaign, suspects continue to be detained there.
Romney believes that foreign "terrorism" suspects should have no constitutional rights and has said he would allow more aggressive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which many consider to be a form of torture. He has also criticised the president's use of sanctions and diplomacy as not being not assertive enough, but has not been explicit about how he would proceed if elected.
One of the greatest disagreements between Republicans and Democrats centres on how big a role the federal government should play in regulating business, social, and everyday life. While Democrats tend to favour greater government intervention - from spending, taxes, or bailouts - Republicans generally advocate for states' rights and smaller central government.
Obama believes the federal government should play an integral role in regulation. He has backed a number of measures that give the federal government a greater role, including his healthcare reform bill. He also instituted a federal stimulus plan, which injected $800bn into the economy to promote recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, and supported a 2009 bailout of the failing auto industry.
Romney is critical of much government regulation, and believes in lowering taxes and encouraging a free market economy. He sides with tea partiers and conservatives on their complaints about big government, and champions states' rights instead. He has criticised Obama for "excessive regulation" and taxes, which he says have made businesses wary of hiring. Romney also wants to reduce the size of the federal work force.
With public opinion about same-sex marriage becoming more favourable, the role of the issue in the upcoming election is uncertain. In the US, same-sex marriages are legal in only a handful of states. The Defence of Marriage Act bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages and gives individual states the possibility to refuse recognition of such marriages.
Obama reversed his stance on same-sex marriage earlier this year, announcing he supports legal recognition of same-sex marriage and taking the Defence of Marriage Act off the books. He also backed the repeal of "Don't Ask Don’t Tell", which barred openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from serving in the military.
Romney is against same-sex marriage. If elected he plans to uphold the Defence of Marriage Act and add a federal amendment to the Constitution banning same-sex marriage.
Preserving social security entitlements and Medicare - a programme that provides medical coverage for seniors - is non-negotiable for Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, see these programmes as opportunities to reduce spending. While both parties agree that changes are necessary, the debate centres on the shape those changes should take, which are currently the greatest threats to the federal budget over the coming years.
While Obama has repeatedly pledged not to privatise social security, he has not proposed concrete reforms to amend the programme. His Medicare reforms slashed $716bn from the programme, but he has defended his proposal by saying the cuts rid wasteful spending and rein in insurance companies without touching benefits.
Romney, like Obama, is against privatising social security, and opposes plans to hand it over to individual states. He plans to raise the retirement age and link benefits to prices rather than wages, which is the present practice. Romney says that for people who are currently retired now, or who are 55 and older, nothing will change, but those who are 54 and younger will receive a fixed payment from the government, adjusted for inflation, to pay for either private insurance or a Medicare-modelled government plan.
Follow Sophie Sportiche on Twitter: @slsportA wave of strikes will be launched by thousands of workers this week, hitting rail, post and airline industries in the run-up to Christmas.
A series of disputes have flared over issues including jobs, pay, pensions and safety involving some of the country's biggest trade unions.
Members of the Communication Workers Union have gone on strike for five days, in protest at job losses, the closure of a final salary pension scheme and the franchising of Crown Post Offices.
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Officials dismissed any suggestions that the strikes were co-ordinated or part of a conspiracy to bring down the Government.
But they come come amid growing tensions with the government and have been described and potentially "disastous” for the public, according to Diane Abbott.
The biggest disputes include:
Baggage handlers: 1,500 check-in staff, baggage handlers and cargo crew at 18 UK airports are planning a 48-hour strike from December 23 in a pay dispute. All work for Swissport and are members of the Unite union. Unite and Swissport will hold talks on Tuesday.
Cabin crew: Up to 4,500 British Airways cabin crew members based at Heathrow will strike on December 25 and 26 in a pay dispute backed by Unite. BA said it has approached conciliation service Acas to organise talks.
Pilots: Virgin Atlantic pilots will take industrial action short of a strike and work "strictly to contract" from December 23 over a union representation dispute.
Post Office workers: 4,000 Post Office workers will strike for five days from December 19 in a dispute over job security and pensions. Talks between the Post Office and the Communication Workers Union broke down on Thursday.
Rail workers: Southern Railway conductors are due to hold a two-day strike from Monday, and over the New Year. A five-day train drivers' strike is due to be held from January 9 over the removal of guards from trains.
The shadow Home Secretary criticised Southern Rail, which is locked in a bitter dispute with union chiefs over plans to introduce a “Driver Only Operation”, urging the public to remember “it takes two to cause a strike”.
“It is not just the trade union, it is also the problems and the incompetence of some management, and Southern Rail is an example of that,” Ms Abbott said.
Shape Created with Sketch. UK rail operators ranked Show all 22 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. UK rail operators ranked 1/22 Grand Central - 79% Here is the list of best and worst train operators with their overall customer score 2/22 Hull Trains - 73% 3/22 Merseyrail - 70% 4/22 Virgin Trains West Coast - 69% 5/22 C2C - 62% 6/22 East Coast/Virgin Trains East Coast - 61% 7/22 Chiltern Railways - 60% 8/22 Scotrail - 59% 9/22 East Midlands Trains - 58% 10/22 London Overground - 56% 11/22 Cross Country Trains - 55% 12/22 First TransPennine Express - 55% 13/22 London Midland - 55% 14/22 TfL Rail - 52% 15/22 South West Trains - 51% 16/22 First Great Western/Great Western Railway- 50% 17/22 Northern Rail - 50% Phil Sangwell 18/22 Arriva Trains Wales - 49% 19/22 Southern - 48% 20/22 Abellio Greater Anglia - 47% 21/22 Southeastern - 46% 22/22 Thameslink and Great Northern - 46% 1/22 Grand Central - 79% Here is the list of best and worst train operators with their overall customer score 2/22 Hull Trains - 73% 3/22 Merseyrail - 70% 4/22 Virgin Trains West Coast - 69% 5/22 C2C - 62% 6/22 East Coast/Virgin Trains East Coast - 61% 7/22 Chiltern Railways - 60% 8/22 Scotrail - 59% 9/22 East Midlands Trains - 58% 10/22 London Overground - 56% 11/22 Cross Country Trains - 55% 12/22 First TransPennine Express - 55% 13/22 London Midland - 55% 14/22 TfL Rail - 52% 15/22 South West Trains - 51% 16/22 First Great Western/Great Western Railway- 50% 17/22 Northern Rail - 50% Phil Sangwell 18/22 Arriva Trains Wales - 49% 19/22 Southern - 48% 20/22 Abellio Greater Anglia - 47% 21/22 Southeastern - 46% 22/22 Thameslink and Great Northern - 46%
"Of course we think about the public we serve, and, of course, these strikes are going to be very disastrous, if they all go ahead, for the public over Christmas time, but people do have a legal right to strike.”
Her comments came after her Labour colleague Meg Hillier, Public Accounts Committee chairman, said union chiefs needed a “wake-up call” about the impact on hard-working people over Christmas.
"I think it's absolutely right people should have the right to strike, but I think it is a very unfortunate combination for people travelling, workers, at a particularly difficult time of year.
"And I think that all trade unions, even though they are fighting for their rights, need to really think about the impact on the people they are actually there to serve, their customers, or their passengers.
"And I think that there needs to be a bit of a wake-up call about the impact on hard working people who are trying to get to work, or go on holiday. And I think that if they are not careful they could be shooting themselves in the foot.”
The RMT has held 22 days of strike action since April to dispute Southern’s plans to change the guard’s role to "onboard supervisor” — checking tickets and helping passengers but not opening or closing the doors.
Members of Aslef, the drivers’ union, held three days of strikes last week in protest, closing the entire Southern network on each of the strike days.
RMT members will also walk out on Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 December, with a four-day walkout planned across the New Year from Saturday 31 December to Tuesday 2 January.
Drivers will then strike for most of the second week of the New Year: Monday 9 to Saturday 14 January.
Critics of the strikes have said the overarching reason for the walkouts is a political motivation to discredit the Conservative Government.
On Sunday it emerged the union leader behind the Christmas rail strikes said industrial action had been coordinated to “bring down this bloody working-class-hating Tory government”,
RMT president Sean Hoyle said the union's "rule number one" was to “strive to replace the capitalist system with a socialist order”.
The claims were downplayed by the RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, who insisted train workers are staging a series of strikes this Christmas because they are worried about the safety of passengers.
Conservative Home Secretary Amber Rudd also criticised the unions, calling for an end to "this miserable period".
“It is totally unacceptable that our local area and communities will suffer further strikes over driver-only operated trains when they already run safely across much of the UK network, and when current staff will take home the same pay following the changes proposed by the train company,” Ms Rudd said.
“Southern's plans, opposed by the unions, will lead to better journeys for passengers. I call on both sides to come together and bring an end to this miserable period of strikes and industrial action suffered by our constituents.”
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “There will be little or no impact on Royal Mail as a result of the CWU strike at the Post Office. Deliveries will carry on as normal and the last posting dates for Christmas remain unchanged. Our 120,000 Royal Mail frontline colleagues are not involved in the Post Office dispute.
“Post Office limited has over 11,000 branches which will continue to operate as normal. Customers who need to post at a Post Office should use these branches.
"Royal Mail customers will also continue to have access to Royal Mail services including pre-paid parcel drop- off through over 1,200 Customer Service Points at Delivery Offices nationwide."
It is not just the railways likely to cause chaos for Britons travelling over the festive period, dubbed the "Christmas of discontent".
Planned industrial action is likely to be carried out by rail, postal, and airport workers.
Up to 4,500 British Airways cabin crew based at Heathrow airport are to strike on Christmas Day and Boxing Day in a row over pay and conditions.
1,500 Swissport check-in staff, baggage handlers and cargo crew at 18 UK airports are planning a 48-hour strike from December 23 in a pay dispute.
Union Unite will hold talks with Swissport next week in an attempt to avert the action.
Virgin Atlantic pilots will also work "strictly to contract" from December 23 over a union representation dispute.
4,000 Post Office workers will strike for five days from December 19 in a dispute over job security and pensions, with talks between the Post Office and Communication Workers Union breaking down last week.
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Subscribe nowA Toronto emergency room doctor believes there is a loophole that needs to be closed, which involves drunk drivers and the medical system.
Dr. Brett Belchetz is calling for changes to the law so that doctors can report suspected impaired drivers to police.
The doctor says he recently treated a woman who refused blood tests and then left hospital before police arrived. She had been involved in a collision that left two others injured.
"Those are just heartbreaking times where I see somebody who I know has committed a crime walking out the door and a lot of the time, the patient looks at me and they know that I know that they've gotten away with it," he said in an interview with CBC News.
The incident has prompted Belchetz to speak out. He wants Ontario law to be changed, so that doctors can report suspected impaired drivers to police, as they can with gunshot wound victims.
MADD Canada supports the idea as well.
But some argue that it is possible for doctors to notify police in some cases, if they believe a suspected drunk driver will get behind the wheel and hurt themselves or others.
Calvin Barry, a criminal defence lawyer, told CBC News that "it's a real conundrum in terms of the law as it sits right now, because it’s a very high level of privilege with a doctor and a patient."
Toronto police say they have taken steps to try to ensure impaired drivers don’t escape the law.
Click on the video above to see a full report from the CBC's Sue Sgambati.The airstrike that destroyed the home of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh who was photographed after being pulled from the rubble has claimed the life of his brother.
Ali, 10, was not with his younger brother at home but playing with friends out in the street when the bomb fell on Wednesday. While his family sustained minor injuries when their home collapsed he was more seriously hurt in the blast.
It emerged today that he had died from his injuries in hospital. The boys’ father received mourners at his temporary home after news broke of the death.
Kenan Rahmani, a Syrian activist wrote online: “Omran became the ‘global symbol of Aleppo’s suffering’ but to most people he is just that – a symbol. Ali is the reality: that no story in Syria has a happy ending.”
There is growing frustration in rebel-held Aleppo that grief at the plight of Omran has not been accompanied by rage at those who dropped the bomb.
The image brought renewed global focus to the suffering of civilians in the eastern part of Syria’s largest city, living under near-siege conditions and a constant bombardment of barrel bombs dropped from government aircraft and more targeted Russian airstrikes.
But those who live every day with the fear that their homes will be the next target, that their children will be the next ones carried into an ambulance, say tears are not enough, and the world must push harder to end the war.
“All Syrians, and me, thank the world for their feelings of sorrow, but why don’t you help us to find peace?” said Aisha, a mother of two who fled the city after barrel bombings intensified but who still lives in the countryside near Aleppo. “The cause of this is Bashar al-Assad.”
They want an end to an aerial bombing campaign that has taken a disproportionate toll on civilians and point out that only one party to the conflict has aircraft. The rebels launch rockets into government-held areas, but their reach is far more limited than aircraft.
Russian and Syrian air force planes have a track record of hitting civilian targets, from schools to hospitals and markets, although both governments deny running a campaign of terror. Syrians have long been frustrated that western horror at atrocities by Isis has diverted attention from a far higher, but less publicised, civilian death toll at the hands of government forces and their allies.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Omran Daqneesh sits in the back of an ambulance following the airstrike. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Civilian casualties from Russian bombings have overtaken civilian deaths at the hands of Isis for the first time, the activist group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said last week.
By ignoring the political and military context of Omran’s plight, they are cheapening his suffering and that of all the people who have chosen to stay on in opposition-held areas of Aleppo, or have not had an opportunity to leave.
“We don’t want the world to know we are dying as civilians here, that is not enough. We want the world to know who is killing us, who is targeting us,” said an English-language professor at the university, whose six-month-old daughter was born in one of the city’s few remaining hospitals. “If people in Britain and United States know that Russia and Assad are doing this, they will help us, they will do something with their government to help us. But if they don’t know, what kind of help can we get?”
There was anger about a video that went viral of CNN anchor Kate Bolduan struggling to hold back tears as she presented a segment on Omran, because she said it was not clear who had bombed his family’s apartment. “Their home is inside Aleppo, Syria. It was hit by a bomb, an airstrike. Who’s behind it, we do not know,” she said. That emotion was hailed by viewers outside Syria as an understandable human response to terrible tragedy.
For some closer to the violence, crying at Omran’s injuries without naming those responsible seemed more of a betrayal than a tribute. “While tears were pouring down her face, she talked about the child and his lost family, without mentioning who was behind it,” wrote one angry Facebook commentator, Abu Khled, frustrated that the coverage focused more on those bombed than the bombers.
“CNN is trying to deceive [viewers],” said Mohammad, a teacher in Aleppo who was trying to organise exams this month as the bombing continued. “We are all going to die if Assad remains president of Syria.”The Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview has been made available for download.
Though not a complete, finished version of Ubuntu’s new ‘convergent’ interface, the preview offers developers and enthusiasts alike the chance to go hands-on with the most talked about interface change in Ubuntu’s history.
But it must be stressed that it is an unfinished version of Ubuntu that is not intended for use as your sole mobile phone OS.
Device Support
So far four devices are officially being supported. These are:
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
LG Nexus 4
ASUS Nexus 7
Samsung Nexus 10
Feature Support
Apps
Being an early release there isn’t an awful lot to play with. The only ‘working’ applications are:
Gallery
Phone (Dialer, SMS, Address Book)
Camera
Web Browser
Media Player
Notepad
Other applications included are either web-links (Ubuntu One, Twitter, Facebook, etc) or static interface snapshots of example apps (Music, Weather, Ski game).
Developer can install their own applications. But as the preview lacks a Terminal application this has to be done via SSH. More details about that can be found on the Phablet Wiki page.
Functionality
As if to emphasise the ‘not ready for a default phone os’ is the lack of support for key mobile technologies in this preview.
WiFi works, but 3G/Data doesn’t. And although GSM (for voice and SMS) is technically supported you may find it patchy, or non-existent, at times.
You also won’t find Bluetooth; a WiFi ‘off’ button; or a settings pane for advanced network set-up.
Issues
Some ‘known issues’ (see the release notes) there a significant number of issues affecting the Nexus 7.
Interface stuck in portrait
Video and audio decoding don’t work
Camera doesn’t work
Login-screen looks awry
No multi-user login
Download
So you’re eager to play with the preview? You’ll need a Nexus device (unlocked), a cup of coffee and a link to the following page…
Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview WikiOn the 10th anniversary of the US military airstrike on Baghdad which killed at least a dozen people, RT looks back at the indiscriminate attack brought to light by WikiLeaks in ‘Collateral Murder.’
Whistleblower and former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning leaked the damning footage. She was released in May after serving nearly seven years of confinement from the date of her arrest.
US Apache helicopters launched an aerial attack in East Baghdad on July 12, 2007, killing at least 12 people. Among them were Reuters photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and camera assistant Saeed Chmagh.
Saleh Matasher Tomal, a driver who tried to help those wounded was also killed, while his two children were injured. A 2007 military investigation cleared everyone involved of wrongdoing, and claimed to find no information of how the two children were hurt.
‘Collateral Murder’ video leaked by Chelsea Manning shows an aerial attack by US Apache helicopters in East Baghdad https://t.co/hPEC4Jq1yy — RT America (@RT_America) May 17, 2017
Reuters requested footage of the airstrikes under the Freedom of Information Act in 2007 but was unsuccessful.
WikiLeaks published the footage in 2010 after it was leaked to them by intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning.
Manning was subsequently charged under the Espionage Act and sentenced to 35 years in military prison. Her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017, with Manning released in May 2017 having served seven years.
Dean Yates, Reuters bureau chief in Iraq at the time of the attack, told ABC last month that the news agency was not aware of the US military’s rules of engagement.
“What we didn't realise at that time was that the US military had decided that anyone seen in the streets of Baghdad with a weapon was considered hostile, and could, therefore, be engaged, they could be shot at and we just didn't know this.”While news of McLaren’s progress in its efforts to switch from Honda engines has not been forthcoming in public, behind-the-scenes developments appear to show it has succeeded.
High level sources have confirmed that Sainz’s deal has been agreed as part of a sweetener for Renault to end its Toro Rosso contract early.
With the Sainz deal agreed, that has opened the way for Toro Rosso to finalise a switch to Honda engines next year, which in turn ensures McLaren gets hold of its supply of customer Renaults for 2018.
Sainz element
After a frantic Italian Grand Prix weekend, where discussions to sort the McLaren-Honda situation had been intense, it emerged that Sainz was becoming a key part of the equation.
Renault indicated that it wanted some incentive to switch its customer supply from Toro Rosso to McLaren - and with Sainz, it has a promising youngster that it can place alongside Nico Hulkenberg to help its efforts to move up the grid.
Although the provisional deal is for 2018, sources have suggested that Sainz could join Renault as early as this year’s Malaysian Grand Prix if the outfit elects not to continue with Jolyon Palmer.
If the Sainz switch happens from Sepang, then it is likely that Pierre Gasly will be given the call-up to join Daniil Kvyat at Toro Rosso.
No firm decision has been taken regarding Sainz’s replacement for 2018, but one contender would be Honda junior driver Nobuharu Matsushita, who will likely be released from his McLaren development driver role.
However, Matsushita does not yet have enough superlicence points to be able to race in F1, so needs to have a strong end to his F2 campaign to be in with a chance of a step up.
McLaren to Renault
Sainz’s Renault deal has cleared the way for Toro Rosso to complete its switch to Honda engines, with the Faenza-based team also taking a supply of McLaren gearboxes for the Japanese power unit.
Once the Toro Rosso-Honda agreement has been finalised, then the final issue to be sorted will be McLaren’s Renault contract – although that will then likely be a formality.
It is thought that all the deals will be complete by |
their pages, even in part.
You can read more from Fletcher and Moebius after the cut.Jared Fletcher is an Eisner-nominated letterer whose work is being spotlighted in a major way in the form of the new logos seen across the X-Men line of Marvel Comics. He described his working life to Aaron:
I am always working on a bunch of different projects at the same time. Right now, my biggest thing is redesigning the new X-Men logos that are going to be used after "Schism" wraps up. I have been living inside of that project the past few weeks, and it is far from over. But I love it. It's easily one of the biggest projects of my career so far. Nick Lowe continues to be a champion for me and my design work at Marvel. His whole crew is solid. I am also lettering all of "Schism" and designing the covers and variant covers too. I design the recap and Cutting Edge pages for four of the Wolverine books and "Uncanny X-Force" every month. I am lettering a handful of the new #1's at DC, including Cliff's "Wonder Woman" (great stuff). I am finishing lettering on "DMZ," and a few other Vertigo graphic novels, too.
Fletcher's dedication is not unusual for letterers, and while their work is as a matter of course more "invisible" than that of writers, pencillers, inkers and colorists, letterers have been recognized for their skills for quite a long time. Indeed, talents like Todd Klein, Richard Starkings, Ken Bruzenak, John Workman and Gaspar Saladino are as much "household names" to dedicated comics readers as practically any writer or artist you can think of.
However, that is not the case in Europe -- at least according to Moebius, or at least the Moebius of 1988, when lettering talents like those mentioned above were still working by hand and not with computers. While he seemed to acknowledge the professional skills of a letterer, he was unequivocal in his belief that the words on a page are as integral to the artist's work as the pictures themselves, regardless of whatever illegibilities or other mistakes might occur. It's an intriguing viewpoint from an accomplished authority, and Moebius' complete remarks are as follows:
To me, the lettering is a form graphology. It reflects your own style and personality. A page of comics without text has its own personality. But when you add the balloons, it suddenly takes up a whole, new different look. For example, I was quite disappointed about the look of my pages The Silver Surfer at first. Without the balloons, I thought they looked too dull, too drab. Then, I lettered them and they changed completely. It became something complete, dynamic. The lettering brought it together. That's why I don't really understand how an artist can entrust something that is important to a hired hand, no matter how good he may be. A letterer may a professional, but he's very likely someone who has stopped to see lettering as something amusing, but just as another job. To me, it's monstrous to have an important part of the look of a page determined by an outsider. If an artist's lettering style is truly not legible, then he should learn. I learned my own lettering from Jije, who himself was very influenced by the American masters, like Caniff. I do the best I can. My letter is alive, it dances on the paper. It reflects my personality. To me, the only rule is that lettering should be consistent within its style, that is, all your "s"'s should look the same, etc. In the case of The Silver Surfer, my lettering on some of the pages is not always as good as I'd like it to be. Some days, I felt tired, less able to concentrate. Also, I was a little bit handicapped by the fact that English isn't my mother tongue, and maybe I rushed a little too much in places. But, in spite of all these problems, I'd still rather have my own letters than the intrusion of someone else's style on my page. I really fail to understand how artists can tolerate this. The excuse of legibility is, I think, a very poor one. It is something that must be done away with. The reader can be educated to read any style of lettering. Comic strips prove it every day. The Underground proved it years ago. Some of those people's lettering was terrible -- barely legible -- but the readers followed it. We got rid of this attitude in Europe in the early nineteen-seventies. Now, every artist does his own lettering, which is coherent with the art, and it looks much better.This is part 2 of a story about South by Southwest's cancellation of two gaming panels. To read part 1, click here.
While most of the mainstream technology media insist that the online movement known as GamerGate is a harassment movement, that same media ignores the actions and accusations of those claiming to oppose such harassment.
Following the cancellation of the two South by Southwest panels, those who oppose GamerGate (and who refuse to address the claims of media bias or unethical media practices) began making accusations.
Game developer Brianna Wu claimed in a tweet that, as she understood it, the "Open Gaming Alliance" (she probably meant the "Open Gaming Society") had been suspended from Twitter "for harassing me and others." She also claimed "It was openly planned" on Kotaku in Action, a Reddit forum (subreddit) dedicated to discussions of GamerGate's portrayal in the media and ethical lapses in games media.
As for the Twitter account being suspended, neither OGA's nor OGS's Twitter accounts are currently suspended. OGS' (the group involved with the SXSW panel) was suspended for a short time back in March. Perry Jones told the Examiner the claims were "bull----" and based on a single tweet long ago in which Jones sarcastically tweeted at Wu about removing an image of a cleavage-heavy video-game character.
Around the same time, there was a backlash against Lionhead Studios for a tweet featuring a woman with cleavage holding two mugs of beer with a caption that read: "The Foaming Jugs," a reference to an in-game tavern. The studio apologized for the tweet. Jones said at the time of his Twitter suspension that he "essentially gave Brianna Wu a taste of her own medicine," as she had been a driving force behind Lionhead's apology.
Jones told the Examiner that that is his only communication with Wu and called his short suspension "an overreach of Twitter's definition of 'harassment.'"
Wu responded to the Examiner in a condescending tone similar to the humor Jones used back in March, writing: "Yeah, Ashe. I had a really high-level secret source on this one. The Open Gaming Society." She included a screenshot of OGS' explanation for their suspension, which I referenced above.
Wu added: "I think if you team up with Scooby-Doo, you can solve that mystery. <3"
Wu did not respond to a follow-up question asking for evidence of harassment (sarcasm is not harassment) and for clarification about why she believes Jones' tweet is harassing. If Jones' tweet was harassment, how is Wu's response to me not also harassment?
Jones also denies that the panel was "openly planned" on r/KiA. Jones said he didn't even create a Reddit account until the panel was created and due to the little time he had to plan and present a panel, he was not able to get input from Twitter, Reddit or anywhere else. "We took most of the comments available into consideration, but in the end the decision, speakers and topics came from the top(me)," Jones said.
Sarah Nyberg, another outspoken critic of GamerGate, tweeted that "founding members of the 'Open Gaming Society' were involved in my original doxxing in January." (Doxxing refers to the tactic of posting someone's personal information online, usually to incite harassment.)
When asked by the Examiner if she was claiming Jones had doxxed her, as he was the only founding member of OGS, Nyberg clarified that she was referring to "members listed in the founding documents."
Jones responded in an email to the Examiner with a link to that founding document and said there were no "founding members" of OGS — just him. He said the people listed in the document were not founding members but rather "people who read the document and gave their criticism." He reiterated that he "was the sole founder of the organization and the sole author of that document."
Zoe Quinn, whose online harassment following a breakup was used as part of the foundation to claim GamerGate was a hate group, insulted the SavePoint panel as a group of " randos-at-best" compared to the "professionals and experts on the online harassment panel." She called the comparison "Quite frankly, f------ disgusting at best."
The "randos" of the SavePoint panel were Lynn Walsh, a professional journalist and president-elect of the Society for Professional Journalists; Mercedes Carerra, an adult film actress and activist (who has had her fair share of harassment); and Nick Robalik, a game developer and head of PixelMetal Games. To describe them as "randos" is, well, rude. We can't at the very least be courteous and acknowledge that both panels consisted of professionals and experts?
And to speak of Walsh directly, she was a "neutral observer" on the August GamerGate panel (just to reiterate, I was also on the panel, but on the pro-GamerGate side). In an email to the Examiner, Walsh described her disappointment over the cancellations.
"I am disappointed to hear of the cancelations because I was looking forward to sharing my experiences as a journalist and talking more about responsible and ethical reporting," Walsh said.
Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist who critiques games as sexist, tweeted that "SXSW should reinstate the online harassment panel and release a statement apologizing for including the GamerGate panel in the first place."
Sarkeesian did not respond to an Examiner tweet informing her that the SavePoint panel, like the anti-harassment panel, didn't mention GamerGate. Nor did she respond to a question about whether people should be allowed to talk about ethics in games journalism, on which much of the panel was to focus. She also didn't respond to any number of other Twitter accounts asking similar questions.
Panelists on the anti-harassment panel also insisted that theirs was not about GamerGate. Panelist Katherine Cross, a sociologist and Ph.D student, tweeted that she "had zero interest in litigating or discussing the [GamerGate] panel at SXSW." She also said fixating on GamerGate "leads to an unproductive myopia" and that her panel would focus on broader topics.
Another panelist, Randi Harper, also tweeted that her panel "was not GamerGate-related."
It seems unlikely that GamerGate could have been avoided in either panel, unless the question-and-answer session was heavily policed or removed, even if the panelists themselves made no mention of the movement.
In response to the cancellation of both panels, Buzzfeed released a statement threatening to withdraw its support from SXSW unless the festival reinstated the two panels. Jones also said he would find a way to "organize, fund and host the panel ourselves." He added that he would try to host the panel "around the same time as SXSW to allow for the largest possible audience."
Jones ended his announcement by imploring supporters of both panels to avoid criticizing SXSW over the cancellation.
"I know all of you, on both sides, must be incredibly upset that this has happened, but take our honest advice; Step away from your computers/phones for a moment," Jones wrote, adding, "Let's all be calm and civil about this."
Correction: An earlier version described Mercedes as a game animator. She is not, but says she would love to learn someday.Read Story Transcript
When Dion Leonard lined up at the start of the Gobi March last June, he was there to win.
The gruelling ultramarathon takes racers across the Gobi Desert in Asia in extreme heat. The runners carry their own food and water on the six-stage race, which has competitors running about 40 kilometres each day with the final leg being twice that far.
Dion Leonard first noticed Gobi begging from racers around the campfire. (@findinggobi) After the first day of the race, Leonard noticed a little dog begging from the racers around the campfire.
"I didn't think much of it but I thought there is no way I'm going to feed her," he tells The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.
The next morning Leonard sees the dog again. This time she's hanging around the start line.
He started running near the front of the pack, and the dog that he would later name Gobi started running beside him.
Leonard kept expecting she'd drop back but instead, she ran with him for the whole stage of the race.
When he got to the finish line that day, people were cheering. But he quickly realized that they were cheering for the dog running right behind him.
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That's when he says he realized what the dog must have been through that day.
"That's when the bond started to form. She came into the tent with me and I started giving her food because obviously she didn't have any of her own," says Leonard.
Again the next day, the dog follows Leonard on his race, but she really tested him when they came to a deep river crossing. Leonard was halfway across with the rushing water up to his chest when he heard her.
Do I keep running and try to win the race or do I turn around and help this little dog? - Dion Leonard
"She's yelling and barking and squealing and yelping and it was the most horrific noise that I'd ever heard and it made me stop in my tracks," he recalls.
"I turned around and realized that she wasn't going to be able to cross the river without my help. I had a decision to make there — do I keep running and try to win the race or do I turn around and help this little dog?"
Gobi ran alongside Dion Leonard for nearly 128 km in the extreme heat. (@findinggobi)
He turned around and carried her across the river. Leonard says his own abusive and volatile upbringing made him feel the dog's pain at that very moment.
"She has this grin on her face when she's running. She's just so happy to be next to me that it made me realize there was more to life than the race and more to life than all the past demons inside of me," says Leonard.
They said to me she'd been sitting in that heat all day looking at the horizon waiting for me. - Dion Leonard
He went on to win that stage of the race.
The next stages were too hot for Gobi to run — Leonard was sure she would die if she tried — so he arranged to have her transported to the next rest stop by car. One of the days was particularly hot, over 50 degrees, and he'd rescued one runner who collapsed, and later collapsed himself from the heat.
But there was Gobi waiting for him at the finish line.
Finding Gobi chronicles Dion Leonard's journey of forming an unexpected bond with a dog in China and bringing her back home to Scotland. (HarperCollins) "She just came running out. They said to me she'd been sitting in that heat all day looking at the horizon waiting for me," he says.
"It made me cry. I'd been through so much that day with the race, and then to see her cemented the bond even more."
Leonard ended up finishing second in the Gobi March, but his journey with Gobi the dog wasn't finished.
He decided to take her home with him to Scotland, a task that didn't prove easy. He flew back to China when she went missing for more than 10 days and faced threats and intimidation as he worked to get her out of the country — a story Leonard tells in his book, Finding Gobi.
Six months later, he finally brought her home to Edinburgh where they live now.
"I say that finding Gobi was one of the hardest things," he says.
"But her finding me was one of the best."
Listen to Gobi and Dion's full story at the top of the web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Liz Hoath.LEGACY CONTENT. If you are looking for Voteview.com, PLEASE CLICK HERE
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The Polarization of the Congressional Parties
Updated 21 March 2015
Recent Papers
Graphs
the level of political polarization
liberal-moderate-conservative
Voting on race related issues now largely takes place along the liberal-conservative dimension
Polarization in the House and Senate is now at the highest level since the end of Reconstruction.
1. Congress Number 2. First Year of the Congress 3. Difference in Party Means - first dimension 4. Moderates 5. Percentage of moderate Democrats 6. Percentage of moderate Republicans 7. Overlap 8. Percentage of overlapping Democrats 9. Percentage of overlapping Republicans 10. Chamber Mean - first dimension 11. Chamber Mean - second dimension 12. Democratic Party Mean - first dimension 13. Democratic Party Mean - second dimension 14. Republican Party Mean - first dimension 15. Republican Party Mean - second dimension 16. Northern Democrat Mean - first dimension 17. Northern Democrat Mean - second dimension 18. Southern Democrat Mean - first dimension 19. Southern Democrat Mean - second dimensionFor years, many - and certainly this website - had mocked both European and US stress tests as futile exercises in boosting investor and public confidence, which instead of being taken seriously repeatedly failed to highlight failing banks such as Dexia, Bankia and all the Greek banks, in the process rendering the exercise a total farce. The implication of course, is that regulators, thus central bankers, openly lied to the public over and over just to preserve what little confidence in the system has left.
Now we know that far from merely another "conspiracy theory", this is precisely the policy intent behind the "stress tests" - as Reuters reports citing a paper co-authored by a Bundesbank economist, "banking supervisors should withhold some information when they publish stress test results to prevent both bank runs and excessive risk taking by lenders."
In other words: lie.
Essentially the authors recommend instead of being a useful measure of banking sector health, all stress tests should do is boost skepticism in the entire financial system since bankers are too scared and too insecure to admit the full extent of the ugly picture.
Or, as Jean-Claude Juncker put it: "when it gets seriousm you have to lie."
Why is this emerging now, and is it, well, about to "get serious"?
As Reuters notes, European banking authorities are due to carry out a fresh round of stress tests next year as they try to restore investor and depositor confidence in the continent's banks after the financial crisis. So the answer is probably "yes."
The paper, presented at a conference in Mannheim last week but yet to be published in its current form, says stress tests should be used to influence depositor behaviour and warns against giving too much away."
Said otherwise, regulators should outright lie to the public. Why? "If depositors know from the watchdog that banks are in trouble, they will withdraw their cash, threatening lenders' survival and causing the panic the supervisor is trying to avoid, the paper said.
Perhaps someone needs to explain to the Bundesbank central banker what the word "regulator" means: a quick scan through the thesaurus does not reveal "liar" as one of the synonyms. That, however, is irrelevant: the authors push on saying that the amount of information disclosed by supervisors should decrease the more vulnerable the banking sector is expected to be.
"The optimal level of 'informativeness'... depends on the objective probability that the banking sector is vulnerable," authors Wolfgang Gick, from the Free University of Bozen, and Thilo Pausch, an economist with the Bundesbank, wrote.
"As we find, the higher the latter probability, the less informative the optimal disclosure mechanism should be designed.""
It gets better: central banks should, the authors allege, also lie about healthy banks: "giving banks a clean bill of health also carries risks, according to Gick and Pausch, by encouraging depositors to leave their money in banks. That would undermine market discipline and lead lenders to take excessive risks, they wrote."
For that reason, supervisors should always keep depositors on their toes by maintaining a degree of uncertainty about the health of banks, the paper concludes.
Brilliant: so on one hand, supervisors should lie about failing banks, but on the other "they should keep depositors on their toes."
And the punchline: "The optimal stress-testing mechanism will leave depositors with some amount of residual uncertainty."
When asked the Bundesbank said the paper does not necessarily reflect its view and is based on a specific theoretical model, noting different settings may produce different results. The European Central Bank declined to comment on the paper.
But others promptly agreed with the liars, pardon, the authors:
Richard Reid, a research fellow in finance and regulation at the University of Dundee, agreed that giving extensive details could lead to even bigger problems and rob regulators of a window to rectify problems, or make it harder for policymakers to deal with wider issues like sluggish growth. "It's an age-old problem for regulators, how much transparency there should be," Reid said. "There is an argument of 'let's flush it out,' but in the current situation the weak upturn is a key concern to central bankers, and if you spook markets about banks, then it might further complicate the provision of credit to the economy."
True: it's best to lie to depositors until the last minute, and when everything fails, to pull a Greece and threaten the country with civil war as Alexis Tsipras recently did unless the capital controls imposed on all depositors are implemented.
So to summarize: earlier today the "smartest ECB banker in the room" confirmed it was unable to predict the inflationary or GDP future as far ahead as just one quarter, and now the "regulators" are suggesting that any information coming from central banks will be nothing but lies.
And yet in this bizarro world where the smartest people are actually the dumbest, and those supposed to be the most honest are the biggest liars, the fate of everything lies in the hands of the Fed's decision whether or not to hike rates from 0.0% where they have been for 7 years, to 0.25%...
Sorry, The Onion, but your IPO window is now forever gone.Hypothetically, if Sen. Marco Rubio were not an American citizen and could not provide food for his family, he says he would cross the border illegally to come to the United States.
While discussing immigration policy in his new memoir, "An American Son," Rubio (R-Fla.) called for "common decency" in dealing with undocumented immigrants and said that if put in a similar position as those who are fleeing destitution, he would break the law, too.
"Many people who come here illegally are doing exactly what we would do if we lived in a country where we couldn't feed our families," Rubio writes in his book, which went on sale Tuesday. "If my kids went to sleep hungry every night and my country didn't give me an opportunity to feed them, there isn't a law, no matter how restrictive, that would prevent me from coming here."
[Related: Rubio to Obama: Call me maybe?]
Rubio, a member of a political party that has largely opposed efforts to extend a path to citizenship to those in the country without documentation, has been crafting his own version of an immigration reform bill that would let some children of undocumented immigrants avoid being deported.
[Related: Faith a major theme in Rubio's memoir]
Rubio is considered a possible vice presidential running mate for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who spent the primary season voicing opposition to an immigration plan that would give those who came illegally permanent residency or citizenship without returning to their home country first.California’s woes will almost certainly leave a jagged fiscal scar on the nation’s most populous state, an outgrowth of the financial triptych of above-average unemployment, high foreclosure rates and plummeting tax revenues, and the state’s unusual budgeting practices.
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“No other state is in the kind of crisis that California is in,” said Iris J. Lav, the deputy director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group in Washington.
The roots of California’s inability to address its budget woes are statutory and political. The state, unlike most others, requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislature to pass budgets and tax increases. And its process for creating voter initiatives hamstrings the budget process by directing money for some programs while depriving others of cash.
In a Legislature dominated by Democrats, some of whom lean far to the left, leaders have been unable to gather enough support from Republican lawmakers, who tend on average to be more conservative than the majority of California’s Republican voters and have unequivocally opposed all tax increases.
And then there is Governor Schwarzenegger, whose budget woes far outweigh those of his predecessor, Gray Davis, whom he drummed from office in a 2003 recall that stemmed from the state’s fiscal problems at the time. The governor has failed to muster votes among lawmakers in his own party, whom he often opposes on ideological grounds, resulting in more scorn from Democrats.
Furthermore, Republican leaders in the Senate and the Assembly who have agreed to get on board with a plan have been unable to persuade a few key lawmakers to join them. The package needs at least three Republican votes in each house, to join with the 51 Democrats in the Assembly and the 24 Democrats in the Senate.
For months Republicans have vowed not to raise taxes, which in California means no increase in either the sales, gas or personal income tax.
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“It is a dramatic time,” said Darrell Steinberg, the State Senate’s president pro tempore. “The solvency of the state is on the line. It is really quite a system where the fate of the state rests upon the shoulders of a couple of members of a minority party. The system frankly needs to be changed.”
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In the meantime, drivers are met with “closed” signs at Department of Motor Vehicles offices two days a month, environmental programs are left unattended, piles of dirt mark where highway lanes are to be built to ease the state’s infamous traffic congestion, school systems mull layoffs and counties prepare to sue the state for nonpayment of bills.
Last week, Mr. Schwarzenegger and the four legislative leaders concurred on a series of bills that included $15.1 billion in budget cuts, $14.4 billion in tax increases and $11.4 billion in borrowing, much of it subject to voter approval.
The Senate Republican leader, Dave Cogdill, said he thought he had all the votes needed to get the deal done in each house. But on Sunday, two Republican senators — Dave Cox, who was originally thought to be the last vote needed, and Abel Maldonado, whom Mr. Schwarzenegger had been able to woo into voting against his party in the past — said they would reject the plan.
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Democrats, who had already given into Republicans’ long-held dreams of large tax cuts for small businesses and for some of the entertainment industry and a proposed $10,000 tax break for first-time home buyers, balked at Mr. Maldonado’s request that the Legislature tuck a bill into the package that would allow voters to cross party lines in primaries.
“I think with an open primary, we would have good government that would do the people’s work,” Mr. Maldonado said.
Sunday evening ended in frustration and exhaustion for lawmakers, who returned to work on Monday facing the state’s uncertain future.
“My boss will continue to work toward a responsible budget solution,” said Mr. Cogdill’s spokeswoman, Sabrina Lockhart. “There are real risks and real consequences for not passing a budget.”The man who President Donald Trump is reportedly eyeing to be the United States’ European Union liaison said Thursday that he wants to help bring down the group.
“I helped bring down the Soviet Union, so maybe there’s another union that needs a little taming,” Ted Malloch said when asked by BBC’s “This Week” why he wanted to be the EU ambassador.
Remarkable statement by Ted Malloch, reported to be Donald Trump's pick as US ambassador to the EU, speaking on BBC's #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/LDQtyRCdpa — Jonathan Walker (@jonwalker121) January 27, 2017
Malloch, who worked for the United Nations in the late 1980s, has never held back his contempt for the EU, which he has referred to as “elitist supranational organization.” In addition to being a supporter of Britain’s decision to leave the bloc, Malloch has also called NATO “old and tired” and said that he believes the euro may soon “collapse.”
“President Trump was in favor of Brexit and thinks it was a wise decision taken by the British people,” he told the Daily Express. “I am a U.S. citizen and could therefore not vote but I did support the Leave campaign intellectually and spiritually.”Newly-worked team kit revealed two days before race starts
Having named Sharp as a new co-title sponsor on Monday, the Garmin-Sharp team today launched its new jersey, two days prior to the start of the Tour de France.
The Castelli-manufactured jersey is evocative of the previous Garmin-Barracuda design, although there have been some obvious changes. The most notable of those is a red band across the chest and back of the jersey bearing the Sharp logo; this is also present on the right arm of the team kit.
In addition to that, the previously white stomach area of the jersey is now blue, although the white panel at the back, which helps deflect the sun’s rays and thus cool the rider, remains in place.
The trademark argyle design which featured around the base of the previous jersey has disappeared. Instead, the solid blue sections now have a subtle argyle pattern on them.
The Garmin and Barracuda logos remain in place on the jersey.
Steve Smith, Castelli Brand Manager, welcomed Sharp on board. “Team Garmin-Sharp-Barracuda is the most tech-savvy team in the peloton and the addition of this new sponsor, prominently displayed on the new kit, is special for all of us involved.”
Calling the team clothing ‘the most comfortable and technically-advanced,” he said that riders would be using updated versions of the hot weather shorts and jerseys that were tested in the Giro d’Italia.
The team will be led by Giro winner Ryder Hesjedal, who will be attempting a Giro-Tour double last achieved by Marco Pantani in 1998. In an interview with VeloNation, Garmin-Sharp manager Jonathan Vaughters said that he believed Hesjedal could succeed where Alberto Contador and Ivan Basso could not in recent years.
“While in recent times there hasn’t been a rider who has been able to recover from winning the Giro to come and get the podium in the Tour de France, I think Ryder is unique in that he is very robust, physically,” he said.
“He also hasn’t taken a lot of the promotional opportunities, dinner with the prime minister of Canada and so on and so forth. He has actually just gone back and trained very hard for the month of June and recovered. From that respect, he has kept a very low profile and he has focussed on the Tour de France.
“And at the very end of the Giro, he was riding better than at the beginning. So, I have no reason to believe that he can’t be a contender at the Tour de France.”
Hesjedal will be joined by previous fellow top ten finishers Christian Vande Velde and Tom Danielson, who are both capable of stepping forward if the Canadian is too fatigued, Irish Tour debutant Dan Martin, team sprinter Tyler Farrar, Robbie Hunter, time trialists David Millar and Dave Zabriskie plus the 2011 Paris-Roubaix winner Johan Vansummeren.
The team won four stages plus the team classification last year.As city, county and state officials implored the region’s water customers to conserve water last year amid a worsening drought, San Diego city government’s own water use grew 19 percent over the year before.
The city’s drawdown from its water supplies was 3.56 billion gallons in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014.
That’s up from 2.99 billion gallons the year before, and it represents the highest water use of any of the past six years, according to U-T Watchdog’s review of city water-bond data, where the usage information is disclosed.
The city’s increase in its own water use outstripped that of its customers, whose consumption went up less than 5 percent during the 12 months in question.
The city’s high watermark for its own use was set as the county went into a drought alert and the San Diego City Council voted to ask residents to start cutting back.
The drought measures came at the tail end of a dry, hot year.
“The high-level answer is hotter weather, less rain,” Mike Vogl, deputy director for the city’s public utilities department, said Tuesday. “That’s why the city’s usage is higher.”
Watering parched parks and recreation areas helped drive the nearly 565 million gallon increase over 2013, Vogl said.
“The city as a whole has 1,300 to 1,500 service connections,” Vogl said. “Most of them are in parks. So parks and recreation is certainly where we use the most.”
The city’s second-biggest use was for water treatment itself, Vogl said. The city uses tap water from its own supplies to dilute the chemicals that are used for treating imported water at city plants. It then re-treats the water that was used for water treatment and supplies it to customers.
“It’s not really consumed by us,” Vogl said. “It’s used.”
In the dry, hot months leading up to the drought alert and new conservation efforts, the city and its residents were using more water than usual, Vogl said. Water production was up 3.5 percent in the 12 months ending June 30, 2014, city records show.
“Water consumption across our service area was higher,” Vogl said. “So the more water we sell, the more we have to produce. And the more we produce, the more water we have to use in the treatment process.”
The city wasn’t the only governmental agency buying more city water last year, bond disclosure documents show.
Seven of the city’s 10 biggest retail customers, among government agencies, increased use in the 2014 budget year. Three cut back.
All the government water users who responded to the Watchdog on Tuesday said they were working to conserve water. They attributed higher water use to a variety of factors, including bigger jail populations and leaky infrastructure.
The three government agencies that used less city water attributed their savings to conservation efforts and water-efficiency upgrades.
On a percentage basis, the most significant increase among government water users was at San Diego State University, which saw a 23 percent boost in water use, to 234.9 million gallons.
The school’s biggest reasons for the increase included landscaping needs, leaks and aging infrastructure, said spokeswoman Natalia Elko. She said the school was addressing all of those things, and working to mitigate water use outside the university’s control, such as the water used by students living in student housing.
Officials with the San Diego Housing Commission said its 18 percent increase in city water use reflected a retroactive bill for a meter at an apartment complex that had been going unread for years. Those charges represented about 22 percent of the housing commission’s water bill last year, so the agency had a net decrease in use.
The Port of San Diego’s city water use increased 5 percent last year over 2013, but its overall use was down about 4 percent when figuring in water from its other two suppliers, said spokeswoman Tanya Castaneda.
An average 65 percent of the Port’s annual water use goes to landscaping in parks, medians, and other open spaces throughout the tidelands, Castaneda said.
The County of San Diego’s use of city water increased 2 percent last year over 2013, according to city records.
Michael Workman, a spokesman for the county, said the main reason for the uptick was an 18 percent increase in the downtown jail’s average daily population between 2013 and last year. The increase is a result of a state program diverting more prisoners to county jails.
Workman also said the county’s overall water use, including suppliers outside the city, is down.
The University of California San Diego was the biggest water-saver in the 2014 budget year, compared to the year before, city data showed. It bought almost 170 million gallons fewer than it did in the 2013 budget year. That’s a 23-percent drop.
Gary Matthews, vice chancellor of resource management and planning at UCSD, said the savings reflected years of work to improve water efficiency at the school.
“Before the drought, and certainly before the governor’s mandate, we recognized that we live in the desert and we should start acting that way,” Matthews said.
The school has invested in energy-efficient buildings, drought-tolerant landscaping, water-saving appliances, and education, Matthews said. For example, the school has a system that allows re-use of water that |
8 aboard the Bush, one of the key improvements to the status quo that Precision Landing Modes officers is the luxury of fewer power adjustments as the aircraft nears the carrier.
"When a pilot is landing an aircraft, if he wants to come down quicker, he's going to pull power, and if he wants to slow that down, he's doing to add power," McCall said. "As you get closer to the back end of the ship, any power-off correction tends to get folks' hair raised a little bit. Because, obviously, if that were to result in a large rate of descent, getting the engines to spool back up to do the other correction, reducing the rate of descent, it's not instantaneous."
With PLM flight control logic, the descending F/A-18 Hornet or E/A-18 Growler will use its flaps to help control rate of descent, allowing for a more consistent throttle speed and fewer manual corrections.
On the Bush, a Nimitz-class carrier, pilots have 786 feet of flight deck to work with, less than a tenth of a traditional runway length. But the requirements of landing are far more precise; pilots told Military.com they needed to fly the nose of the aircraft through a an imaginary box about one foot across in order to properly align their descent and snag a landing cable. On a dark night, Hornet pilots have described the experience of executing such a landing on a carrier as "emotional."
One pilot assigned to the wing's Strike Fighter Squadron 87, the Golden Warriors, which flies the F/A-18E Super Hornet, said the use of the new technology had caused accuracy rates to skyrocket -- so much so that the target arresting cable, usually the second of three on the Bush, was wearing out faster than the others and had to be rotated.
"We were statistically too accurate," said "JoJo," the training officer for VFA-87, who asked to be identified by his callsign.
Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, head of Naval Air Forces, said something similar last August about the carrier-variant F-35C, which was designed with native PLM technology, known in that platform as Delta Flight Path.
"They were landing in the same spot on the runway every time, tearing up where the hook touches down," he told a Washington, D.C. audience about field testing of the capability. "So we quickly realized, we needed to either fix the runway or adjust, put some variants in the system. So that's how precise this new system is."
Aboard the Bush, McCall said the system had reduced landing touchdown dispersion by about 50 percent, a remarkable improvement in accuracy. In April, he said, he sent an email message to the Navy's other air wing commanders, sharing the unit's findings about the system the positive impact it's had so far.
The system is currently planned for a 2019 full roll-out to Super Hornet and Growler squadrons across the Navy. McCall said the only element the current system lacked was full redundancy as a fail-safe.
"Because it doesn't have full redundancy, we still expect our youngest aviators to come out of our training pipeline and learn how to fly the jet manually, so they have a baseline to fall back on in case of some sort of aircraft malfunction," he said. "I do expect those requirements to change as the system is fully redundant."
PLM doesn't guarantee a perfect landing or take the pilot out of the game, however. During observation of daytime carrier landings May 3 and 4, Military.com saw at least one bolter, when an aircraft fails to snag an arresting hook, and multiple wave-offs, in which planes weren't correctly aligned in their approach and were told to circle and try again.
Nor does it take the fun out of flying, JoJo said. Only one pilot in the entire air wing didn't love the system, he said, and that pilot did not have much experience on it. Nostalgia for the old way of landing was essentially nonexistent, he said.
"We just think it's the greatest," he said. "It makes [landing] so easy and safe, and you're able to focus more on the tactical execution. I have no complaints."
-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi.
You mention cutting with yy and complain that you almost never want to cut whole lines. In fact programmers, editing source code, very often want to work on whole lines, ranges of lines and blocks of code. However, yy is only one of many way to yank text into the anonymous copy buffer (or "register" as it's called in vi).
The "Zen" of vi is that you're speaking a language. The initial y is a verb. The statement yy is a synonym for y_. The y is doubled up to make it easier to type, since it is such a common operation.
This can also be expressed as dd P (delete the current line and paste a copy back into place; leaving a copy in the anonymous register as a side effect). The y and d "verbs" take any movement as their "subject." Thus yW is "yank from here (the cursor) to the end of the current/next (big) word" and y'a is "yank from here to the line containing the mark named 'a'."
If you only understand basic up, down, left, and right cursor movements then vi will be no more productive than a copy of "notepad" for you. (Okay, you'll still have syntax highlighting and the ability to handle files larger than a piddling ~45KB or so; but work with me here).
vi has 26 "marks" and 26 "registers." A mark is set to any cursor location using the m command. Each mark is designated by a single lower case letter. Thus ma sets the 'a' mark to the current location, and mz sets the 'z' mark. You can move to the line containing a mark using the'(single quote) command. Thus 'a moves to the beginning of the line containing the 'a' mark. You can move to the precise location of any mark using the ` (backquote) command. Thus `z will move directly to the exact location of the 'z' mark.
Because these are "movements" they can also be used as subjects for other "statements."
So, one way to cut an arbitrary selection of text would be to drop a mark (I usually use 'a' as my "first" mark, 'z' as my next mark, 'b' as another, and 'e' as yet another (I don't recall ever having interactively used more than four marks in 15 years of using vi; one creates one's own conventions regarding how marks and registers are used by macros that don't disturb one's interactive context). Then we go to the other end of our desired text; we can start at either end, it doesn't matter. Then we can simply use d`a to cut or y`a to copy. Thus the whole process has a 5 keystrokes overhead (six if we started in "insert" mode and needed to Esc out command mode). Once we've cut or copied then pasting in a copy is a single keystroke: p.
I say that this is one way to cut or copy text. However, it is only one of many. Frequently we can more succinctly describe the range of text without moving our cursor around and dropping a mark. For example if I'm in a paragraph of text I can use { and } movements to the beginning or end of the paragraph respectively. So, to move a paragraph of text I cut it using { d} (3 keystrokes). (If I happen to already be on the first or last line of the paragraph I can then simply use d} or d{ respectively.
The notion of "paragraph" defaults to something which is usually intuitively reasonable. Thus it often works for code as well as prose.
Frequently we know some pattern (regular expression) that marks one end or the other of the text in which we're interested. Searching forwards or backwards are movements in vi. Thus they can also be used as "subjects" in our "statements." So I can use d/foo to cut from the current line to the next line containing the string "foo" and y?bar to copy from the current line to the most recent (previous) line containing "bar." If I don't want whole lines I can still use the search movements (as statements of their own), drop my mark(s) and use the `x commands as described previously.
In addition to "verbs" and "subjects" vi also has "objects" (in the grammatical sense of the term). So far I've only described the use of the anonymous register. However, I can use any of the 26 "named" registers by prefixing the "object" reference with " (the double quote modifier). Thus if I use "add I'm cutting the current line into the 'a' register and if I use "by/foo then I'm yanking a copy of the text from here to the next line containing "foo" into the 'b' register. To paste from a register I simply prefix the paste with the same modifier sequence: "ap pastes a copy of the 'a' register's contents into the text after the cursor and "bP pastes a copy from 'b' to before the current line.
This notion of "prefixes" also adds the analogs of grammatical "adjectives" and "adverbs' to our text manipulation "language." Most commands (verbs) and movement (verbs or objects, depending on context) can also take numeric prefixes. Thus 3J means "join the next three lines" and d5} means "delete from the current line through the end of the fifth paragraph down from here."
This is all intermediate level vi. None of it is Vim specific and there are far more advanced tricks in vi if you're ready to learn them. If you were to master just these intermediate concepts then you'd probably find that you rarely need to write any macros because the text manipulation language is sufficiently concise and expressive to do most things easily enough using the editor's "native" language.
A sampling of more advanced tricks:
There are a number of : commands, most notably the :% s/foo/bar/g global substitution technique. (That's not advanced but other : commands can be). The whole : set of commands was historically inherited by vi's previous incarnations as the ed (line editor) and later the ex (extended line editor) utilities. In fact vi is so named because it's the visual interface to ex.
: commands normally operate over lines of text. ed and ex were written in an era when terminal screens were uncommon and many terminals were "teletype" (TTY) devices. So it was common to work from printed copies of the text, using commands through an extremely terse interface (common connection speeds were 110 baud, or, roughly, 11 characters per second -- which is slower than a fast typist; lags were common on multi-user interactive sessions; additionally there was often some motivation to conserve paper).
So the syntax of most : commands includes an address or range of addresses (line number) followed by a command. Naturally one could use literal line numbers: :127,215 s/foo/bar to change the first occurrence of "foo" into "bar" on each line between 127 and 215. One could also use some abbreviations such as. or $ for current and last lines respectively. One could also use relative prefixes + and - to refer to offsets after or before the curent line, respectively. Thus: :.,$j meaning "from the current line to the last line, join them all into one line". :% is synonymous with :1,$ (all the lines).
The :... g and :... v commands bear some explanation as they are incredibly powerful. :... g is a prefix for "globally" applying a subsequent command to all lines which match a pattern (regular expression) while :... v applies such a command to all lines which do NOT match the given pattern ("v" from "conVerse"). As with other ex commands these can be prefixed by addressing/range references. Thus :.,+21g/foo/d means "delete any lines containing the string "foo" from the current one through the next 21 lines" while :.,$v/bar/d means "from here to the end of the file, delete any lines which DON'T contain the string "bar."
It's interesting that the common Unix command grep was actually inspired by this ex command (and is named after the way in which it was documented). The ex command :g/re/p (grep) was the way they documented how to "globally" "print" lines containing a "regular expression" (re). When ed and ex were used, the :p command was one of the first that anyone learned and often the first one used when editing any file. It was how you printed the current contents (usually just one page full at a time using :.,+25p or some such).
Note that :% g/.../d or (its reVerse/conVerse counterpart: :% v/.../d are the most common usage patterns. However there are couple of other ex commands which are worth remembering:
We can use m to move lines around, and j to join lines. For example if you have a list and you want to separate all the stuff matching (or conversely NOT matching some pattern) without deleting them, then you can use something like: :% g/foo/m$... and all the "foo" lines will have been moved to the end of the file. (Note the other tip about using the end of your file as a scratch space). This will have preserved the relative order of all the "foo" lines while having extracted them from the rest of the list. (This would be equivalent to doing something like: 1G!GGmap!Ggrep foo<ENTER>1G:1,'a g/foo'/d (copy the file to its own tail, filter the tail through grep, and delete all the stuff from the head).
To join lines usually I can find a pattern for all the lines which need to be joined to their predecessor (all the lines which start with "^ " rather than "^ * " in some bullet list, for example). For that case I'd use: :% g/^ /-1j (for every matching line, go up one line and join them). (BTW: for bullet lists trying to search for the bullet lines and join to the next doesn't work for a couple reasons... it can join one bullet line to another, and it won't join any bullet line to all of its continuations; it'll only work pairwise on the matches).
Almost needless to mention you can use our old friend s (substitute) with the g and v (global/converse-global) commands. Usually you don't need to do so. However, consider some case where you want to perform a substitution only on lines matching some other pattern. Often you can use a complicated pattern with captures and use back references to preserve the portions of the lines that you DON'T want to change. However, it will often be easier to separate the match from the substitution: :% g/foo/s/bar/zzz/g -- for every line containing "foo" substitute all "bar" with "zzz." (Something like :% s/\(.*foo.*\)bar\(.*\)/\1zzz\2/g would only work for the cases those instances of "bar" which were PRECEDED by "foo" on the same line; it's ungainly enough already, and would have to be mangled further to catch all the cases where "bar" preceded "foo")
The point is that there are more than just p, s, and d lines in the ex command set.
The : addresses can also refer to marks. Thus you can use: :'a,'bg/foo/j to join any line containing the string foo to its subsequent line, if it lies between the lines between the 'a' and 'b' marks. (Yes, all of the preceding ex command examples can be limited to subsets of the file's lines by prefixing with these sorts of addressing expressions).
That's pretty obscure (I've only used something like that a few times in the last 15 years). However, I'll freely admit that I've often done things iteratively and interactively that could probably have been done more efficiently if I'd taken the time to think out the correct incantation.
Another very useful vi or ex command is :r to read in the contents of another file. Thus: :r foo inserts the contents of the file named "foo" at the current line.
More powerful is the :r! command. This reads the results of a command. It's the same as suspending the vi session, running a command, redirecting its output to a temporary file, resuming your vi session, and reading in the contents from the temp. file.
Even more powerful are the! (bang) and :...! (ex bang) commands. These also execute external commands and read the results into the current text. However, they also filter selections of our text through the command! This we can sort all the lines in our file using 1G!Gsort ( G is the vi "goto" command; it defaults to going to the last line of the file, but can be prefixed by a line number, such as 1, the first line). This is equivalent to the ex variant :1,$!sort. Writers often use! with the Unix fmt or fold utilities for reformating or "word wrapping" selections of text. A very common macro is {!}fmt (reformat the current paragraph). Programmers sometimes use it to run their code, or just portions of it, through indent or other code reformatting tools.
Using the :r! and! commands means that any external utility or filter can be treated as an extension of our editor. I have occasionally used these with scripts that pulled data from a database, or with wget or lynx commands that pulled data off a website, or ssh commands that pulled data from remote systems.
Another useful ex command is :so (short for :source ). This reads the contents of a file as a series of commands. When you start vi it normally, implicitly, performs a :source on ~/.exinitrc file (and Vim usually does this on ~/.vimrc, naturally enough). The use of this is that you can change your editor profile on the fly by simply sourcing in a new set of macros, abbreviations, and editor settings. If you're sneaky you can even use this as a trick for storing sequences of ex editing commands to apply to files on demand.
For example I have a seven line file (36 characters) which runs a file through wc, and inserts a C-style comment at the top of the file containing that word count data. I can apply that "macro" to a file by using a command like: vim +'so mymacro.ex'./mytarget
(The + command line option to vi and Vim is normally used to start the editing session at a given line number. However it's a little known fact that one can follow the + by any valid ex command/expression, such as a "source" command as I've done here; for a simple example I have scripts which invoke: vi +'/foo/d|wq!' ~/.ssh/known_hosts to remove an entry from my SSH known hosts file non-interactively while I'm re-imaging a set of servers).
Usually it's far easier to write such "macros" using Perl, AWK, sed (which is, in fact, like grep a utility inspired by the ed command).
The @ command is probably the most obscure vi command. In occasionally teaching advanced systems administration courses for close to a decade I've met very few people who've ever used it. @ executes the contents of a register as if it were a vi or ex command.
Example: I often use: :r!locate... to find some file on my system and read its name into my document. From there I delete any extraneous hits, leaving only the full path to the file I'm interested in. Rather than laboriously Tab -ing through each component of the path (or worse, if I happen to be stuck on a machine without Tab completion support in its copy of vi) I just use:
0i:r (to turn the current line into a valid :r command), "cdd (to delete the line into the "c" register) and @c execute that command.
That's only 10 keystrokes (and the expression "cdd @c is effectively a finger macro for me, so I can type it almost as quickly as any common six letter word).
A sobering thought
I've only scratched to surface of vi's power and none of what I've described here is even part of the "improvements" for which vim is named! All of what I've described here should work on any old copy of vi from 20 or 30 years ago.
There are people who have used considerably more of vi's power than I ever will.If you’ve been to a convention recently in Toronto, chances are that you’ve seen someone dressed as Batman or as Robin. Some costumes are intricately crafted and designed by devoted fans of the DC Comics duo featuring their favorite ‘look’ of the caped crusader and his boy wonder and con-goers can’t help but notice the work put into every costume. But there’s something different about the Arkham Batman and Robin duo, and one of the main reasons people take note is because of Batman’s height. Speaking to fans at Toronto Comic Con, they were always quick to compliment the brilliant costumes, some especially favoring Robin’s eye mask, and other fans have said they are in awe of a Batman that tall, who has the complete looming presence of the Dark Knight that they love (For the record, Batman’s cosplayer is six feet and ten inches tall). Barely able to walk a few feet without stopping to have a photo taken, Arkham Batman and Robin may easily be one of the most popular fan favorites in recent conventions. I had a chance to catch up with the duo to talk to them about their costumes, conventions, and what people think seeing them on public transportation.
Tell us a little about yourselves.
Batman: I’m originally from Collingwood, Ontario which is a couple hours North of Toronto. I just moved to Toronto this past year and started making the costume around the same time and it’s been a constant work in progress ever since.
Robin: I’ve moved around a lot but basically settled around Collingwood as well. I started my costume after he (Batman) made his and if you look at him it’s all fitting. If you look at the relationship we have had since high school; Batman and Robin definitely made sense.
Batman: Yeah, we’ve known one another since high school and even back then we were both quite similar to each other. Me being Bruce and him being Tim, it all worked out well in relativity to the comics.
How long did it take you to design your costume? What are they made of?
Batman: Our costumes are made out of all kinds of things, it’s been a constant work in progress for coming up on a year now. The initial core costume of the Batsuit was made in a couple of months and has been slowly upgraded piece by piece ever since. My costume as you see it now is less made by me and more by people far more talented than I. Robin’s costume though is almost completely made by the two of us other than his mask (made by Fourth Wall Design) and the cape we had my girlfriend help with.
Why did you choose Arkham Batman and Robin? What appealed to you about their costumes in particular?
We chose the Arkham suits because I found the Arkham universe a brilliant mix of the comics, the old Animated series, and the new darker directions Batman is being taken in. It was the perfect balance of old and new. The comic look, fused with the armoured look of the movies. Plus it included the pointy ears, and angry brows I like so much in Batman’s cowl. As For Robin, we enjoyed the mix of Robin’s classic look, fused with an older, and more serious tone.
Do you go to many conventions as Arkham Batman and Robin?
Robin: We try to go to as many as possible that happen in the area.
Batman: On top of the conventions we go to we do events like the Toronto Drop Zone event where we rappelled down a 17-story building in costume for charity. That was incredible! Next weekend we are doing the children’s day at York University.
Was the Drop Zone event your first charity event? Do you plan to do more?
Batman: Yeah, it was our first. We don’t as much go out and try to do as much as we could, but whenever the offer comes up, it’s something we like to do whenever we can.
Did Drop Zone ever let you know how much money you raised for charity?
Batman: Yeah, for the event we each had to raise $1,500 and we ended up breaking that amount. We did some interesting projects to raise the money; we started in the local fair back in Collingwood, we hosted a yard sale at a relatives house where I sold off all my old toys and comic books.
Will we be seeing you at Niagara Falls Comic Con this year?
Batman: We hope so! I had to take the Bat-subway here though so transportation could be a bit of an issue.
Have you ever encountered negative reactions from the public on subways or buses?
Robin: We usually get the really cool bus drivers that just kind of nod and smile at us, but there was one occasion where we were told to take off our masks or we wouldn’t be allowed on. I guess it just depends on who you get.
Check out Arkham Batman and Robin on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ArkhamKnights
Photos courtesy of Marc Daniel Photography for The GCE http://www.marcdanielphoto.comQueensland-based law firm Shine Lawyers is investigating a class action against Apple Inc to get compensation for users of older iPhones affected by updates that slow down their smartphones.
In mid-December, when Reddit members discovered that Apple had issued updates that caused older iPhones to slow, the tech giant issued a formal statement that these updates were to prolong the life of devices.
Shine Lawyers is looking into a class action for older iPhone users in Australia affected by Apple's slowing of their devices. Photo: Rohan Thomson
Class actions were then filed across the United States against Apple, claiming it defrauded iPhone users by slowing their phones without warning to make up for poor battery performance. A case was also filed in Israel.
Now, Australia might have its own class action with Shine Lawyers saying the firm was considering taking its own legal action against the technology giant and encouraging affected Australian iPhone users to come forward.
Shine Lawyers class action expert Jan Saddler said there were several cases that could be brought against Apple for iPhone 6, 6S, SE and 7 defects.
“In Australia, we will be looking at a class action for strict product liability, negligence, breach of warranty, and a violation of consumer trust,” she said.
“There was no express consent among iPhone users to have their phones slowed down.”
While it would take "some investigation" to determine whether the legal action would proceed, with different laws in Australia to the United States, Ms Saddler said the firm would have made a decision on whether to commence the action by early 2018.
She said the company had “misled millions of consumers globally into believing that their iPhones were malfunctioning, causing them to upgrade to newer and more costly devices” and that slowing down the devices gave the company an “unfair sales advantage over their competitors”.
These actions could contravene Australian Consumer Law and so the action would be "likely" to go ahead, she said.
What compensation might result from a class action if successful is difficult to discern, but she said it would not be unreasonable for class action members who had upgraded due to a slowing phone to seek compensation for the cost of the replacement.
In some cases, the cost of a smartphone upgrade can exceed $1000.
Tech commentator Peter Griffin told Stuff legitimate reasons existed for the Apple updates, but the reason for a class-action lawsuit was the the lack of transparency.
He said there was a lot of mistrust that technology companies make things with "built in obsolescence", that companies only make a phone or computer to last a certain amount of time so people are "locked into an upgrade".
He also said it was expensive and difficult to change the battery in the iPhone without going to a third party agent, which would void the warranty.
An Apple spokeswoman previously issued a statement about the slowing of iPhones, saying lithium-ion batteries became less capable in cold conditions, when they had low battery charge or when they aged over time "which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components".
She said a feature was released in 2016 to smooth out the peaks when needed in certain older devices to prevent them from unexpectedly shutting down.
Apple would not provide further comment.
with StuffThis light, fresh savory strawberry salad dressing is a great choice for most any salad. Easy and so delicious.
This post may link to ingredients, cookbooks and cookware on Amazon.com. If you make a purchase after clicking one of these links, I may earn an affiliate advertising/referral fee at no extra cost to you.
Does that sound weird? Savory strawberry salad dressing? Maybe a little, but you’ve got to try this. It’s a little strawberry sweet, a little balsamic tangy, a touch of hot mustard exciting, and it’s all coming together in this creamy, all-natural dressing. Your salad is begging you to make this. I literally licked my plate clean when I had it last night.It’s nice when strawberries are in season and we can get them for good prices and throw them around in all kinds of deliciousness. I got these to go in my strawberry peach smoothies, but I got too many. Like, a whole extra flat too many. So I decided this was the time to perfect a strawberry salad dressing I really like. I’ve tried many times and always felt they were too sweet or too vinegary, but this time I got it just right. Ooh, I can’t wait for you to try it!!It’s really easy to make. Nuke some strawberries so they get all super juicy, and blend them with some non-nuked berries for a fresh and tart meets super sweet strawberry thing. Then blend in some savory goodness like English mustard, balsamic, a little garlic and a pinch of rosemary. Oh, and a shot of olive oil and maple syrup. It’s delectable. My mom even loved it, and she’s usually a Ranch type of gal. And she’s mentioned how she wants it again at least twice since she’s had it.
If a vegan, clean, all-natural savory strawberry salad dressing can convert a Ranch gal…I think it’s pretty good. 🙂
Savory Strawberry Salad Dressing Eat Healthy Eat Happy Yields 1 Savory Strawberry Salad Dressing is creamy, a little tangy, a little sweet and a whole lot good. 5 minPrep Time 5 minCook Time 10 minTotal Time Save Recipe Save Recipe Print Recipe My Recipes My Lists My Calendar Ingredients 1 1/2 c hulled strawberries
2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
1/4 c olive oil
1 Tbs hot mustard (I used Chinese but English and Dijon are similar)
1 Tbs maple syrup
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp salt
pinch dried rosemary
black pepper to taste Instructions Microwave 1 cup of the strawberries for about 3 minutes. Combine the cooked and raw berries and the rest of the ingredients in a blender or food processor and process until smooth and creamy. Store in a covered container in the fridge for up to a week. Notes [wpipa id="9548"] 7.8.1.2 123 https://eathealthyeathappy.com/savory-strawberry-salad-dressing/
Here’s a pinnable:
I love this dressing so much I created a salad to go with it. Seriously – three ingredients. With a dressing this good, you don’t need more. Here it is if you want to check it out:
Spinach and Strawberry Salad
Big hugs, and have a great weekend! ~GinAccording to the IMF research report “Since the launch of the Swachh Bharat program, close to 31 million toilets have been built in rural areas, resulting in a 17.5 percent increase in the number of Indian rural households with a latrine facility”.
When PM Narendra Modi started the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’ with the tagline ‘Ek Kadam Swacchta ki ore’, it was a step in the right direction! The Country report by The International Monetary Fund which was released last month clearly indicates that PM Modi is the only politician who has really cared about women’s rights and issues like sanitation. According to the IMF research report “Since the launch of the Swachh Bharat program, close to 31 million toilets have been built in rural areas, resulting in a 17.5 percent increase in the number of Indian rural households with a latrine facility”.
Recent IMF research on India also states that “improved access to sanitation facilities, by reducing the unpaid home and care burdens of women and by improving public safety of women, increases their labor force participation, leading to a positive impact on India’s real output and real per-capita incomes.3 Specifically, an improvement in public sanitation provisions which reduces womens’ time spent in home and care work by close to 10 percent leads to a 1.5 percent increase in female labor participation and a 1.4 percent gain in real GDP.”
The report also talks about the declining CSR numbers. “Although there has been a rise in awareness, advances in technology and an increase in literacy levels, India’s child sex ratio (number of girls per 1000 boys) continues to decline”. To reverse these declining CSR numbers, the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Celebrate Girl Child, Enable her Education) scheme was aunched by Prime Minister Modi in January 2015. With a budget of Rs 199.99 crore, this scheme has been implemented in 100 selected districts low in CSR, the report states. It further adds that “Increasing engagement at the state level, deepening community participation and long-term growth-supporting policies will help the success of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme”.
The report also lauds the initiatives taken by the government in enhancing financial inclusion. “The government’s introduction of gold monetization schemes can boost financial intermediation by channeling domestic gold holdings to gold savings accounts, although uptake thus far has been minimal. The launch of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) in August 2014 led to the opening of bank accounts for 254 million previously unbanked individuals. There is now continued emphasis on increasing transactional volumes on the PMJDY accounts (including by Aadhaar-supported direct benefit transfers).
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The Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) scheme has sought to facilitate access to formal finance for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises through collateral-free loans, with close to 1 percent of GDP in loans having been disbursed under this scheme.”It was only a matter of time before any protest movement which had a Sinn Fein presence turned to violence and sectarianism.
That is what has happened with the anti-fracking 21st century Luddite movement in Fermanagh this week. The petrol bombs thrown at Tamboran workers and sectarian abuse directed at them is just typical of what we have grown to expect from Sinn Fein, who seem to be at the centre of the opposition to a development which could bring an economic bonanza to Fermanagh and the Northern Ireland economy as a whole.
It is typical of the contrariness of some people in Northern Ireland and the economic destructiveness of our green zealots that at a time when we are facing energy insecurity, record levels of fuel poverty, loss of competitiveness because of energy costs and a shortage of manufacturing jobs, that protests are mounted against exploiting a local energy source which could help deal with all these issues.
Fossil fuels are essential to the working of a modern economy. We use oil, petrol, gas and coal every day to heat our homes, drive our cars, light our houses and operate our businesses, and the Fermanagh greens even use fossil fuels to manufacture their petrol bombs!
The pipedream of producing our energy needs from the wind is a green fairytale, or to be more accurate given the cost of such energy and the destructiveness of thousands of 320ft windmills across our beautiful countryside, more like a green nightmare. So we need fossil fuel and currently we import most of it from unstable parts of the world, be it the Middle East or Russia. It is madness to continue to rely on these sources if we have hundreds of years of reserves under our own country.
The environmentalists argue that drilling for the gas and oil trapped in shale up to 3,000 ft underground will pollute ground water, release radioactive or other hazardous substances, increase noise and air pollution, industrialise the countryside and destroy tourism and farming. None of these claims have any substance and ignore the fact that since the 1940s this technique has been used in 1.25million wells across the world without these cataclysmic outcomes. Those who are concerned about the impact on tourism in Fermanagh have no cause for concern. Alberta in Canada has 500,000 wells and yet sustains a thriving tourist industry.
Let us be clear how this method of gas and oil extraction works. A hole the size of a pizza is drilled to a depth of between 1,500 to 3,000 ft. The wells are cased in cement and steel pipe to ensure that the extracted gas cannot leak into groundwater. Once the well reaches the depth of the gas-bearing rock a series of horizontal drillings are made and then water and sand are pumped along them at 2,000 PSI, the same pressure as a typical household pressure washer. This opens up the fissures in the rock, and the sand keeps them open. The water is then pumped out and stored for reuse or else taken away and the gas contained in the rock then flows to the surface. The only evidence of the work is a drilling rig which may be in place for a year depending on the depth of the shale rock and afterwards a structure the size of a barn containing a compressor and a couple of well heads.
The irony is that gas wells 3,000 ft underground will be less intrusive on the landscape than the 300 ft plus wind turbines which are invading our landscape like triffids and yet are loved by the environmentalists who are going apoplectic about these few wells in Fermanagh.
The direct benefits of shale gas projects are enormous. Investment will be measured in billions of pounds. The industry is labour intensive and has huge employment potential for local people |
Carribean to meet with the CFU members.
Meanwhile, Warner said he had no plans to meet the investigators: "I have not received any summons asking me to speak with them [the investigators] nor do I plan to do so."Ryan Fitzpatrick had about as much chance of being considered a franchise quarterback in the NFL as most women have of being considered "the one" by Derek Jeter.
Many were drawn. None have been chosen.
Fitzpatrick was the St. Louis Rams' seventh-round pick (the 250th overall) out of Harvard in 2005, the first Crimson player drafted into the NFL since the Seahawks chose Isaiah Kacyvenski in the fourth round of the 2000 draft. In fact, until this year, the last time Fitzpatrick entered the season as the starting quarterback for any team, he was a senior at Harvard.
That was seven years ago.
Anyone who says they saw Fitzpatrick as someone other than a seat-filler until the Buffalo Bills, who signed him as a free agent in February 2009, could find a "real" quarterback must be related to him.
Ryan Fitzpatrick is enjoying the kind of start usually reserved for quarterbacks named Brady or Manning. Joel Auerbach/Getty Images
It's still early in the season, but a few conclusions can be drawn. The Bills, who face the New England Patriots on Sunday, are relevant again after a 2-0 start. And after enduring 10 starters at the position since legend Jim Kelly retired in 1997, Buffalo finally appears to have found a franchise quarterback.
A sixth-year quarterback with his third team -- just who everyone imagined, right?
"This is the first time he was able to come in and be named the starter," Bills running back Fred Jackson said Wednesday. "He's relishing that role. He's taking full advantage of making plays for his team, going in the right spots, and I love playing with him."
Fitzpatrick's rise to the role as an entrenched NFL starter is fascinating because it isn't exactly indicative of how things work in the league. Sure, the NFL is viewed -- rightfully -- as the ultimate meritocracy, but when it comes to quarterbacks, politics, prejudices and perceptions have their place.
Let's be honest. No one ever looked at Fitzpatrick and saw Aaron Rodgers.
Journeyman? Yes.
Career backup? Definitely.
People were never enamored with him like they were with Kevin Kolb, another backup who waited his turn until this season. Until now, it's arguable whether any of Fitzpatrick's previous teams even showed as much confidence in him as Pete Carroll exhibited in Tarvaris Jackson when he handpicked Jackson for Seattle.
To borrow a line from Phil Collins, Fitzpatrick now has the right to tell a bunch of people, "Take a look at me now."
"Is he capable of being a guy that can play for you and win for you a long time? Yes he is," Bills coach Chan Gailey said.
And Gailey isn't just being a supportive coach. According to various reports, Buffalo offered Fitzpatrick a contract extension last week.
On the surface, it might not look wise to secure a quarterback with a 12-23 record to a long-term contract, but this is a smart move. Fitzpatrick is not only good, he fits the identity of this team, which is filled with plenty of other almost-didn't-happens. Fred Jackson, the team's leading rusher, is from Division II Coe College. And the top receiver, Stevie Johnson, was a seventh-round pick, just like his quarterback.
It's been a while since Bills fans could get behind their starting QB like this. Rick Stewart/Getty Images
Fitzpatrick is their football soul mate.
"I know that you guys always love throwing labels and things in making sure that everybody's put in a box of what they are," Fitzpatrick said. "Franchise quarterback, a gunslinger, whatever it is. For me, I feel like right now that I'm the leader of this offense. I love the guys I'm playing with and I feel like we fit well together; so however you want to define that, that's what I feel like I am."
Considering how often teams are criticized for making poor personnel moves, it's only fair that we give the Bills credit for the move they didn't make regarding Fitzpatrick.
Buffalo had the third pick in this year's draft -- its highest since 1985 when it took Hall of Famer Bruce Smith with the No. 1 pick -- and it could have used the pick on a quality alternative to Fitzpatrick. Cam Newton was gone by the time the Bills' turn came in the first round, but they certainly could have drafted Jake Locker or Blaine Gabbert. Picking any quarterback -- even someone as head-scratching as Christian Ponder -- would have created some buzz and perhaps bought the Bills more time to build a playoff-caliber team.
The Bills also could have gone with Option No. 2: aggressively pursuing a veteran quarterbacks such as Kolb, Vince Young or Donovan McNabb.
The pressure was on during the draft and the offseason to dazzle the fans and media with a new face. But instead, they used the draft pick on Marcell Dareus, a defensive lineman from Alabama, and chose a third option for their quarterback issue, which was to support the player who has six wins in his last nine starts.
Can you imagine the criticism the Bills would be taking had Fitzpatrick made them look like fools in the early going this fall?
It's refreshing to see a franchise show some backbone. One reason the situation in Denver has become complicated is that the Broncos seem fearful of informing their fans that Tim Tebow is buried so deep on the depth chart the team trainer might get starting snaps before he will.
Coincidentally, Denver starter Kyle Orton and Fitzpatrick are the same age. And if it's any consolation to Broncos fans, Fitzpatrick is an example of how people can be so blinded by a quarterback's journey -- not being a big name or having been labeled the franchise guy early -- that they overlook what he can offer.
Maybe beating Kansas City and Oakland in the first two weeks isn't the same as beating, say, the Jets and the Packers. But Fitzpatrick clearly has something special going right now. He was near flawless in the season opener against the Chiefs, throwing four touchdowns and completing 17 of 25 passes for 208 yards. And regardless of what you might think of the Chiefs, an eyebrow raises when a team that was 4-12 a year ago opens the next season with a 41-7 victory.
He was very good as a senior at Harvard, but the translation from the Ivy League to NFL stardom was too complex for most to grasp. AP Photo/Victoria Arocho
Things weren't so easy against the Raiders. Buffalo was booed at home after falling behind 21-3 at halftime. But Fitzpatrick apparently jumped into the phone booth in the locker room and quick-changed into a superhero. He lit Oakland up in the second half. The Bills scored on all five of their second-half possessions -- the first time that's been done in the NFL in 18 years -- and Fitzpatrick added a thrilling 38-35 comeback win to his resume. His three-touchdown day ties him for the league lead with Tom Brady and Matt Stafford.
Before this season's surprising start, Fitzpatrick had shown occasional signs that he could be a legitimate starter in this league. It's just that no one noticed. He has never been on a team that finished with more than eight wins, and he has always been considered the ultimate substitute teacher. In his NFL debut in St. Louis in 2005, Fitzpatrick came in for injured starter Jamie Martin and threw for 310 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Rams to a 33-27 overtime win over the Texans. St. Louis, by the way, was down 24-3 at halftime.
Sound familiar?
Fitzpatrick put up respectable numbers in Cincinnati (2007-08) -- in 12 starts, he threw for 1,905 yards, eight touchdowns and nine interceptions -- filling in for an injured Carson Palmer. But the Bengals finished 4-11-1.
His role in Buffalo wasn't expected to be much different. But then Trent Edwards became the Bills' latest failed experiment at quarterback, joining an underwhelming class that includes J.P. Losman and Rob Johnson. Gailey named Fitzpatrick the starter in Week 3 last season, and even though Buffalo finished 28th in scoring, Fitzpatrick passed for more than 3,000 yards.
"If you play quarterback long enough -- if you play short enough, too -- there's going to be some rough games," Fitzpatrick said. "That's just the way that it goes. I know that I've had plenty of time for personal growth with some of the games that I've had over my career. "
Sunday's game against New England is a big test for Buffalo and Fitzpatrick. As encouraging as the Bills' start has been, their legitimacy hinges on how they measure up to the Patriots, who have won 15 straight games against Buffalo, including a 34-3 beatdown in the last meeting.
What's ironic is that the marquee matchup of this game is between two quarterbacks -- one chosen in the seventh round, the other in the sixth -- who came into the league with little fanfare and no expectations that they'd be franchise players.
Of course, I'm not crazy enough to put Fitzpatrick in Brady's class based on a couple games. But it's fair to say that, like Brady, Fitzpatrick is a reminder that you never know who or where a franchise quarterback might be.
Jemele Hill can be reached at jemeleespn@gmail.com.
MORE COMMENTARY »Graeme Swann is currently the No. 3 bowler in ODIs © Getty Images
Graeme Swann, the England offspinner, has said he would favour a scrapping of one-day international cricket to ease the congestion in a packed fixture list but doesn't expect many supporters for his controversial idea.
Swann, who is currently the No. 3 bowler in ODI cricket and reached the top spot during the English season, admitted he prefers Test and Twenty20 cricket but has no plans to quit the 50-over format in the near future. Although he is 32, being a spin bowler means that Swann has a realistic chance of being part of the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand should he want to continue that long.
"I think one-day cricket will have to give at some point, hopefully for everyone," Swann told BBC Sport. "I don't think that game should carry on for much longer. For me it's not as enjoyable to play in. I think Test cricket and Twenty20 are the way forward for cricket."
Swann managed just two wickets in four one-dayers on England's tour of India during October but has been a key part of the limited-overs team since returning to the side in 2007 and has taken 90 wickets in 64 matches with a career-best of 5 for 28. He has recently filled in as Twenty20 captain in the absence of the injured Stuart Broad.
"We do play too much cricket and if something had to give my choice would be 50-over cricket, or make it 40-over cricket or something," he added. "But that's a purely personal choice. I don't think many people agree with me. I think I will finish [playing] before any changes take place so I will carry on playing whatever they put in front of me."
Swann also added that the postponement of the Test Championship until at least 2017 was "disturbing" and said that for England the five-day game is rated higher than the Champions Trophy, an ODI competition, which will now be played in 2013 as scheduled.
Earlier this week David Collier, the ECB chief executive, insisted the English board remained committed to making the Test Championship a reality. "It is common knowledge that we were the main advocates for the Test Championship and we still believe in that very strongly," he said
England are currently the No. 1 ranked team in Test and Twenty20 cricket but have struggled to rise above mid-table in the 50-over format. They exited the 2011 World Cup at the quarter-final stage and although they beat India and Sri Lanka during their home season they were whitewashed 5-0 in India.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.It’s been 10 years since gamers were introduced to the underwater city of Rapture and the iconic Big Daddy, and it looks like 2K Games plans on holding a celebration in honor of this, announcing a BioShock 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and an anniversary celebration party that will be held at PAX West 2017.
The BioShock 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition won’t add much to the series in terms of gameplay or content, as it simply includes BioShock: The Collection, all three games in 1080p with all DLC attached, that came out last year. However, it does also come with a 11” Collectible Big Daddy & Little Sister Statue which features lights, audio, and a motorized drill. Of course, it wouldn’t be a 10th anniversary collector’s edition without a hefty price tag, and this one will cost U.S. residents (its unavailable everywhere else) $199.99.
As for the BioShock 10th anniversary celebration party, dubbed “Return to Rapture,” the event will be held at PAX West 2017 on Sept. 2 and feature cosplay contets, music, photo opportunities, themed food and drinks, and will be completely open to the public.
Those interested in getting their hands on the BioShock 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition should move fast as its in extremely short supply and its already available for pre-order at GameStop and the 2K Store.
On the other hand, if you have no sense of urgency or simply not interested in being in possession of the collector’s edition, then check out a trailer commemorating BioShock‘s 10th anniversary below:Tens of thousands of people marched in Dublin on Saturday in the latest protest against the government’s new water charges. It is the latest show of public opposition to the austerity measure put in place by Ireland’s coalition government, which hopes the country’s economic growth will quell the discontent.
Ireland’s economy surged by a post-crisis high of 4.8% last year and is forecast to be the fastest-growing in the European Union again in 2015, but many have been left frustrated by the uneven nature of the recovery.
One year before it seeks re-election, the government has begun directly charging households for water use. It is the final piece of a seven-year, €30bn (£21.7bn) austerity drive, but also the measure that has elicited the largest public backlash. Saturday’s mass protest was the fourth since October.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters voice their opposition to the water charge in Dublin city centre. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images
Organisers said 80,000 protesters marched in the capital – many holding Greek flags to show solidarity with the stricken eurozone member. The national broadcaster, RTE, said the crowd was 30,000 to 40,000 strong.
“This government believes that the anti-water charges campaign is dying, that we are on our last legs. Well, today we have sent them a message,” said Lynn Boylan, a member of the European Parliament for the opposition Sinn Féin party.
“These families simply cannot take any more. The government is pushing people over the edge.”
“This campaign is going from strength to strength. We are on the march. And we will not stop until water charges are scrapped and Irish Water is abolished.
“Sinn Féin warned the government that Irish Water was nothing more than a toxic quango. The citizens of Ireland in their hundreds of thousands told [minister for the environment] Alan Kelly that they cannot and they will not pay.
“Europe has warned the government that their back of the envelope calculations do not stack up. How do they respond? By jailing protestors and spending €650,000 on a new ad campaign; not to mention wasting over €85m on private consultants, €539m wasted on water meters. Hundreds of Garda hours wasted on policing the ill-fated installation of water meters.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Water charges and Irish Water must be consigned to the dustbin of history,’ said the Sinn Féin politician Lynn Boylan. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA
Boylan also questioned how people could pay the charge when they “cannot afford to keep the roof over their head”.
She said: “The lengths that this government will go to defend their precious Uisce Éireann [Ireland’s water company] is astounding. Local authorities have begun the process of handing over the details of tenants. Landlords are being forced to do the same. For Sinn Féin this is a red line issue. Let this message go out loud and clear;: water charges and Irish Water must be consigned to the dustbin of history.”
The trade unions affiliated to the campaign – the CPSU, CWU, Mandate, Opatsi and Unite – are also calling for a referendum to be held “following abolition of the charges” to enshrine public ownership of Irish Water in the Constitution.
The trade unions will present the outline of their draft water management policy at their forthcoming May Day conference.BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The 12th game turns 7 years old as a permanent part of college football. If the idea was to schedule Jackson State, Troy, South Alabama and Middle Tennessee, as Mississippi State does in 2012 to be bowl eligible, the 12th game works marvelously.
Mississippi State is hardly alone in raising ticket prices over the years only to schedule more cupcakes. The sport is filled with undesirable schedules and recently lost a cool future series between the Big Ten and Pac-12.
How the 12th game happened reflects the history of college football: More money was desired. Shocking, I know.
Spending on college sports was accelerating at an unsustainable rate (which is still the case today). So the NCAA Board of Directors concluded in 2005 to play one more game each year. Reform-minded advocates, college football coaches and the ACC objected, citing the physical and mental toll on the players.
Jon Solomon is a columnist for The Birmingham News. Join him for live web chats on college sports on Wednesdays at 2 p.m.
But hey, untapped revenue is like undrilled oil. Drilling for oil won the NCAA vote 8-2 with one abstention.
For schools with 100,000-seat stadiums, the 12th game was worth approximately $3 million beginning in 2006. Today, the high-end value for the 12th game is more like $4 to $6 million.
"I would understand if the media misinterpreted the motive for the 12th game as a long-term fiscal fix, but I would be disappointed if athletics administrators saw it as anything but a short-term salve," NCAA President Myles Brand wrote in 2005. "I believe most administrators and presidents understand that the decision is not a panacea for fiscal responsibility."
No, that's why a playoff is coming. But I digress.
To be fair, there are some quality games due to the 12th game. Alabama-Michigan may not have occurred without the 12th game creating value for lucrative neutral-site games that many fans have no shot of attending.
Alabama's seven-game home schedule features one team that had a winning conference record in 2011: Western Kentucky. The Crimson Tide's home opponents -- Western Kentucky, Florida Atlantic, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Texas A&M, Western Carolina and Auburn -- went a combined 17-40 in their respective leagues last year.
This is no problem for Alabama, which sells out of season tickets these days. Supply and demand works in Tuscaloosa at the moment.
But it's worth watching what nonconference schedules across the country will look like in the future. Come 2014, strength of schedule will play a role with the playoff selection committee.
Will conferences truly beef up their opponents? More likely, they'll try to manipulate the system the way college basketball teams sometimes exploit the Ratings Percentage Index. The goal: Beef up the bottom teams so their strength of schedule is more palatable to the conference's elite programs when they play.
There's a science in gaming the system. Considering how the 12th game has gamed fans, bet on manipulation.
Since the 12th game started in 2006, the Pac-12 (with nine league games) has produced the most challenging nonconference schedule. Forty-five percent of the Pac-12's nonconference games have come against BCS-conference opponents, just ahead of the ACC (43 percent).
The SEC has played 29 percent of its nonconference schedule against BCS schools. That's in the neighborhood of the Big 12 (28 percent) and Big Ten (30 percent).
Not surprisingly, the SEC has lived up to its stay-at-home reputation, which is worth millions of dollars by playing an extra home game. Since 2006, the SEC has played only 17 percent of its nonconference games at opposing campuses. True road games for other leagues: Big Ten, 22 percent; Big 12, 25 percent; ACC, 29 percent; Pac-12, 33 percent.
The SEC's road games in 2012 reflect the "challenges" the league usually tackles on opposing campuses: Texas A&M at SMU; Vanderbilt at Northwestern and Wake Forest; Missouri at Central Florida; Mississippi State at Troy; Ole Miss at Tulane; South Carolina at Clemson; Florida at Florida State; and Kentucky at Louisville.
One reason the NCAA used in justifying the 12th game was fans wanted more football.
True. But did they really understand what they would be paying to watch?
Write Jon at jsolomon@bhamnews.com. Follow him at twitter.com/jonsol.The overnight “Blue Night” network will see many changes and additions this fall. These will be rolled out in two waves: first with the September/October schedules on Labour Day weekend, and the remainder with the October/November schedules at Thanksgiving.
This is part of a more extensive expansion of service beginning in September that relates to the Ten Minute Network, All Day Every Day service, and improved crowding standards on routes with frequent service. Those and other changes will be described in a separate article.
Here are maps of the network as it exists now, and with the two stages of additions:
Several of the routes will be renumbered so that the night services match the daytime routes except for the using “300” series. In the case of the King and Spadina night services, they will run, at least initially, with the daytime route numbers because there are no roll signs for “304 King” or “317 Spadina” in the CLRV/ALRV fleet. This problem will vanish as the routes convert to Flexity cars with programmable signs.
All services will operate on 30 minute headways.
This implementation is a work-in-progress, and Service Planning does not expect to turn to the question of timing points until the routes are in place. This is a vital piece of work for a network with wide headways where TTC performance stats show that headway (and, by implication, schedule) adherence is very weak. Riders of these routes should be able to depend on vehicles appearing at expected times and connections to work in a predictable way. This is as important a part of the new service as simply putting the buses and streetcars on the road. If service is not predictable in the middle of the night, riders cannot be expected to use it especially for trips that are time-sensitive such as early morning work shifts.
Route changes for September are:
325 Don Mills: Steeles to Eastern via the existing 303 Don Mills route to Danforth, then via the 72 Pape route to Eastern. Service on Broadview will now be provided by the 304 King night car.
329 Dufferin: Steeles to Exhibition via the 105 Dufferin North and 29 Dufferin routes.
334 Eglinton East: Eglinton Station to Finch & Neilson via the existing 305 Eglinton East route to Morningside & Ellesmere, then via the existing 321 York Mills route north via Neilson to Finch.
332 Eglinton West: Route renumbered from 307 Eglinton West.
315 Evans–Brown’s Line: New route from Royal York Station south and west via the 15 Evans route to Sherway, then east and south via Brown’s Line to Long Branch Loop.
339 Finch East: Route renumbered from 308 Finch East.
336 Finch West: Route renumbered from 307 Finch West.
337 Islington: Route renumbered from 311 Islington.
341 Keele: New route from Keele Station to York University via the 41 Keele route. Note that the maps above show both routings of the daytime 41 Keele including the express branch on Weston Road north of St. Clair. However, the service announcement memo shows all night buses going via the “local” route on Old Weston Road
343 Kennedy: New route from Kennedy Station to Steeles via the 43 Kennedy route.
304 King: All night service on the 504 King route.
354 Lawrence East: Eglinton Station to Starspray via the 54 Lawrence route. Service now operated to UTSC will be taken over by 395 York Mills.
363 Ossington: Route renumbered from 316 Ossington.
365 Parliament: All night service on the 65 Parliament route.
384 Sheppard West: New route from Sheppard Station to Weston Road on the 84 Sheppard West route.
317 Spadina: All night service on the 510 Spadina route. Plans call for both Union and Spadina Stations to remain open overnight and be crewed with Station Collectors.
396 Wilson: Route renumbered from 319 Wilson.
395 York Mills: Route renumbered from 321 York Mills. The route will operate east on York Mills and Ellesmere through the loop at UTSC and then east and north via Meadowvale to Meadowvale Loop at Sheppard. Service on Nielson to Malvern will now be provided by 334 Eglinton East.
Route Changes planned for October:
300 Bloor-Danforth: Extension to Kennedy Station.
302 Kingston Road – McCowan: Route renamed from 302 Danforth Road – McCowan. South end extended to Kingston Road & Victoria Park following the route of 12A Kingston Road (via Variety Village).
335 Jane: Rerouted to Jane Station at the south end replacing 312 St. Clair; extended to York University at the north end. Service on Dundas north of Bloor to be provided by 312 St. Clair – Junction; service south on Roncesvalles to be provided by 304 King.
352 Lawrence West: Route expansions east to Sunnybrook Hospital and west to Pearson Airport.
312 St. Clair – Junction: Rerouted to Dundas West Station at the south end replacing the Jane night bus on Dundas north of Bloor.
353 Steeles: Extension to Staines Road and south to Malvern Centre.This amazing video of an octopus literally crawling out of the water and walking across dry land was captured at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in California. But it turns out that this behavior is not as uncommon as you might expect. Captive octopuses actually escape with alarming frequency. While on the lam, they have been discovered in teapots and even on bookshelves.
"Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They'd leap off the mesh and onto the floor — and then run for it. Yes, run. You'd chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat," Middlebury College researcher Alexa Warburton says. "It's so weird!"
That said, capturing the escape on film is quite rare. Mainly because studies on octopuses are so limited due to the creatures’ typical shyness and their brief lifespan of about three years.
Octopuses were the first animals to walk on two limbs without a hard skeleton, according to the journal Science. However, these findings all took place underwater.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if other octopus species also walk,” said Science writer Christine Huffard of the University of California, Berkeley.
It seems like they do! Copyright Treehugger 2012
Octopus crawls out of water and walks on land
Octopuses were the first animals to walk on two limbs without a hard skeleton.This is a list of friendly fire incidents by the U.S. Military on allied British personnel and civilians. The topic has become prevalent in British culture due to some recent incidents, and is often satirically portrayed in the media.[citation needed]
5 December 2006: Royal Marine Jonathan Wigley's death was caused by gunfire from a U.S. F-18 aircraft. [4]
July 2007: British Guardsman Matthew Lyne-Pirkis, of the Grenadier Guards, was wounded along with three other allied soldiers of the Afghan National Army after being hit by gunfire from a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship. [5]
23 August 2007: A bomb dropped by an F-15 killed three soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment and wounded a further two. [6] During the subsequent inquest, issues such as inadequate communication equipment and incorrect coordinates from a British forward air controller were raised. [7] The coroner finally stated it was down to the "flawed application of procedures" rather than individual errors or "recklessness". [8]
During the subsequent inquest, issues such as inadequate communication equipment and incorrect coordinates from a British forward air controller were raised. The coroner finally stated it was down to the "flawed application of procedures" rather than individual errors or "recklessness". 21 December 2009: 1 British soldier was fatally shot by a US helicopter crew in Afghanistan who thought they were attacking an enemy base. Gunfire from the helicopters left 11 injured on the ground. [9] The coroner criticised the British commanders for the fact Patrol Base Almas was not marked on military maps, for the 'unprofessional' use of grainy images and for insisting there were no friendly forces in the area to the Apache crew. [10]
The coroner criticised the British commanders for the fact Patrol Base Almas was not marked on military maps, for the 'unprofessional' use of grainy images and for insisting there were no friendly forces in the area to the Apache crew. 5 December 2010: Private John Howard was killed by American troops after soldiers called for backup. Private Howard is understood to have died as the low-flying pilot attempted to strafe an enemy target with cannon fire.[11][12]By Vikram Venkateswaran
Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Harekela Hajabba lives in Newpadupu
He's a philanthropist, a fruit seller, an illiterate and he gave his village something priceless - a school. Harekela Hajabba lives in Newpadupu, 25 kilometers from Mangalore city (India). He single handedly changed the future for dozens of the village children.
There's nothing extraordinary about the men of Newpadupu - mostly contract laborers or hawkers who ply their trade in the city. Nothing unusual about the women either - they roll the 'beedis', small cigarettes. But it's the children who set this village apart. Their hands are neither calloused by the lifting of bricks and mortar, nor stained by rolling beedis. They carry nothing heavier than a pen in their hands and the only burden they bear on their shoulders is that of a schoolbag.
The fruit seller philanthropist
The village of Newpadupu is living out the dreams of eminent philanthropist, reticent illiterate and resident fruit hawker Harekela Hajabba.
It was in the busy marketplace of mangalore city, where he began selling oranges as a teenager, that Hajabba's story begins.
"I am illiterate, but in the beginning, I did not even know how to speak Kannada. I could only speak behri, the local language. I could not even understand when someone asked 'how much?' "
And that is when Hajabba decided that the lot of the children of his village should be better than his own. He began saving from his meager profit of 60-70 rupees a day and with two years worth of savings, set up the a school in the local madarsa, with a total strength of about 28 children.
With a bigger dream to realize, he approached the collector who promised to donate land, but then said that building the school would be his responsibility.
"In addition to my savings, I would ask everyone I met to donate money for the school. I asked all the customers I sold oranges to. Mostly they would ignore me or scold me. But a few of them donated", Hajabba said.
After twelve years of saving and campaigning for funds for the school, the 'Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat Higher Primary School' stands proud with a strength of over three hundred children.
Often his work and financial circumstances force him to miss a meal. But each morning, come what may, he never misses school, where he sweeps out and cleans the entire premises. He cleans the bathrooms before leaving for the city and fruit market.
"I cannot read or write, so this is the only way I can help the students to study and do something for the school".
A 'Real Hero'
He was awarded named a 'Real Hero' and awarded five hundred thousand rupees by CNN-IBN, a national news channel. He donated the entire amount to the school, which now boasts of a playground.
But the school of Newpadupu is only yet another beginning to Hajabba. His next step, his new dream for the children of Newpadupu, is to build a college.
"I pray that all of you please help so that these children study well and become big (successful) people", he pleads with folded hands to anyone he encounters. This has become his refrain, his new mantra that he chants constantly and works incessantly towards.
Source: Radio NetherlandsATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — The new Miss America isn't worried that she may start her year-long reign by starting a Twitter war with the nation's Tweeter-In-Chief.
Newly crowned Miss America 2018 Cara Mund celebrates after being crowned on September 10, 2017 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Donald Kravitz/Getty Images for Dick Clark Productions ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Cara Mund is not worried that she may begin her year-long reign as Miss America by starting a Twitter war with the nation's Tweeter-In-Chief.
The 23-year-old Miss North Dakota won the crown Sunday night in Atlantic City after saying in an onstage interview that President Donald Trump was wrong to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.
Mund topped a field of 51 contestants to win in the New Jersey seaside resort, where most of the 97 Miss Americas have been selected.
In one of her onstage interviews, Mund said Trump, a Republican, was wrong to withdraw the U.S. from the climate accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
"It's a bad decision," she said. "There is evidence that climate change is existing and we need to be at that table."
Meeting with reporters after winning the crown, Mund stood her ground, saying she wanted first and foremost to give a real answer to the question.
"I wasn't really afraid if my opinion wasn't the opinion of my judges," she said. "Miss America needs to have an opinion and she needs to know what's happening in the current climate."
She's not concerned about any pushback from Trump, who said the Paris accord was a bad deal economically for the United States and who also called global warming a hoax.
Trump had not mentioned Mund or her comment on the Paris accord on Twitter as of early Monday morning.
"He is our president and we need to support him," Mund said. "I may not agree with all of his opinions, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to support the president."
In an interview with The Associated Press before preliminary competition began, Mund, who lives in Bismarck, North Dakota, said her goal is to be the first woman elected governor of her state.
She said she wants to see more women elected to all levels of government.
"It's important to have a woman's perspective," Mund, who had an internship in the U.S. Senate, told the AP. "In health care and on reproductive rights, it's predominantly men making those decisions."
An Ivy League graduate from Brown University who is headed to law school, Mund went to high school with Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz.
"I said, 'If Carson Wentz can do it, Miss North Dakota Cara Mund can become Miss America,'" she said after winning the title.
She is the first contestant from her state to win the Miss America crown.
Mund will take the traditional winner's morning-after dip in the Atlantic City ocean Monday morning outside Boardwalk Hall, where she won the crown.The Minnesota Wild become a much better team with Chris Stewart on it, and the team should be worried about signing him before he hits free agency.
Maybe its machismo, maybe its a general disgust of weakness in a sport where toughness and ruggedness is so revered that the accusation of being called soft is rather damning. I think most Wild fans have heard that claim bantered about team message boards and on various call-in hockey radio shows like KFAN‘s Beyond the Pond and Wild Fanline.
Minnesota Wild fans have weighed in over opponents like the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche and Winnipeg Jets taking liberties with ‘our’ players. Seeing Mikael Granlund tossed like a rag doll by the Jets’ Dustin Byfuglien or assaulted after the draw by Cody McLeod was enough to make some fans’ blood boil. They called in asking where was the response from their teammates and who was going to step up to hold such thuggery accountable. The Wild now have that answer in Chris Stewart.
Chris Stewart has the size (6’2″, 231lbs) and toughness the Minnesota Wild sorely needed. With his arrival, teams stopped taking many liberties with Wild players knowing they would have to answer against a strong and powerful player who isn’t just a pair of knuckles either. The day of the one-dimensional enforcer are over.
Chris Stewart has proven he can be that rare combination of toughness, size, speed and skill that has resulted in a tremendous fit playing on a line along side Mikko Koivu and Nino Niederreiter. This line has shown it can be very effective working the puck down low, using their 6’2″+ bodies to protect the puck as the smallish blueline of the Calgary Flames found out a week ago.
“Chris Stewart is a big, strong guy, certainly a guy who brings a lot of toughness to our team. But he’s a player who has contributed |
was willing to change her own appearance if it suited the character.[113]
Davis' signature and handprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
As she entered old age, Davis was acknowledged for her achievements. John Springer, who had arranged her speaking tours of the early 1970s, wrote that despite the accomplishments of many of her contemporaries, Davis was "the star of the thirties and into the forties", achieving notability for the variety of her characterizations and her ability to assert herself, even when her material was mediocre.[118] Individual performances continued to receive praise; in 1987, Bill Collins analyzed The Letter (1940), and described her performance as "a brilliant, subtle achievement", and wrote: "Bette Davis makes Leslie Crosbie one of the most extraordinary females in movies."[119] In a 2000 review for All About Eve (1950), Roger Ebert noted: "Davis was a character, an icon with a grand style; so, even her excesses are realistic."[120] In 2006, Premiere magazine ranked her portrayal of Margo Channing in the film as fifth on their list of 100 Greatest Performances of All Time, commenting: "There is something deliciously audacious about her gleeful willingness to play such unattractive emotions as jealousy, bitterness, and neediness."[121] While reviewing What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) in 2008, Ebert asserted that, "No one who has seen the film will ever forget her."[122]
A few months before her death in 1989, Davis was one of several actors featured on the cover of Life magazine. In a film retrospective that celebrated the films and stars of 1939, Life concluded that Davis was the most significant actress of her era, and highlighted Dark Victory (1939) as one of the most important films of the year.[123] Her death made front-page news throughout the world as the "close of yet another chapter of the Golden Age of Hollywood". Angela Lansbury summarized the feeling of those of the Hollywood community who attended her memorial service, commenting, after a sample from Davis' films was screened, that they had witnessed "an extraordinary legacy of acting in the twentieth century by a real master of the craft" that should provide "encouragement and illustration to future generations of aspiring actors".[124]
In 1977, Davis became the first woman to be honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award.[125] In 1999, the American Film Institute published its list of the "AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars", which was the result of a film-industry poll to determine the "50 Greatest American Screen Legends" in order to raise public awareness and appreciation of classic film. Of the 25 actresses listed, Davis was ranked at number two, behind Katharine Hepburn.[126]
The United States Postal Service honored Davis with a commemorative postage stamp in 2008, marking the 100th anniversary of her birth.[127] The stamp features an image of her in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve. The First Day of Issue celebration took place September 18, 2008, at Boston University, which houses an extensive Davis archive. Featured speakers included her son Michael Merrill and Lauren Bacall. In 1997, the executors of her estate, Merrill and Kathryn Sermak, her former assistant, established The Bette Davis Foundation, which awards college scholarships to promising actors and actresses.[52]
Academy Awards milestones [ edit ]
Dark Victory (1939), in which she gave one of her 10 Oscar-nominated performances Davis in the trailer for(1939), in which she gave one of her 10 Oscar-nominated performances
Bette Davis became the first person to earn five consecutive Academy Award nominations for acting, all in the Best Actress category (1938-1942).[128] Her record has only been matched by one other performer, Greer Garson, who also earned five consecutive nominations in the Best Actress category (1941-1945), including three years when both these actresses were nominated.[128]
In 1962, Bette Davis became the first person to secure 10 Academy Award nominations for acting. Since then only three people have surpassed this figure, Meryl Streep (with 21 nominations and three wins), Katharine Hepburn (12 nominations and four wins), and Jack Nicholson (12 nominations and three wins) with Laurence Olivier matching the number (10 nominations, 1 award).[129]
Steven Spielberg purchased Davis' Oscars for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938), when they were offered for auction for $207,500 and $578,000, respectively, and returned them to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[130][131]
Davis' performance in Of Human Bondage (1934) was widely acclaimed and when she was not nominated for an Academy Award, several influential people mounted a campaign to have her name included. The Academy relaxed its rules for that year (and the following year also) to allow for the consideration of any performer nominated in a write-in vote; therefore, any performance of the year was technically eligible for consideration. For a period of time in the 1930s, the Academy revealed the second- and third-place vote getters in each category, Davis placed third for best actress above the officially nominated Grace Moore. The academy's nomination and winner database notes this under the 1934 best actress category and under the Bette Davis search.
Selected filmography [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Devin Toner picked up the man of the match award following 14-man Ireland's heroic win over South Africa and then paid tribute to his father who passed away recently.
Devin Toner picked up the man of the match award following 14-man Ireland's heroic win over South Africa and then paid tribute to his father who passed away recently.
'That's for dad' - Emotional Man of the Match Devin Toner pays tribute to late father after sensational win
The big second row was immense in a gutsy and brave Irish performance as Joe Schmidt's men won in South Africa and with 14 men for most of the match following CJ Stander's red card in the first half.
As an emotional Toner accepted the man of the match trophy after the game, he simply said: "I just want to say, that's for dad," as he pointed to the sky.
Toner admitted he was proud of the whole team for all the work and effort that has gone in to preparing for the South African Tour over the past few weeks.
"I'm really proud of everyone to be honest. I suppose what happened in the first 20 minutes, going down to 14 men, we know we needed to dig deep.
"The Boks are an awesome side, they are a strong side, they are a big side so really needed to knuckle down and thankfully we did that."
Online EditorsMOSCOW — A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off through heavy snowfall in Kazakhstan on Monday morning, beginning a two-day trip to ferry three astronauts to the International Space Station. The flight opens a new era of American dependence on Russia, and eventually on commercial enterprises, for manned space travel, after the end of NASA’s space shuttle program in July.
The rocket launch went off smoothly at 10:14 a.m. from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying an American, Daniel C. Burbank, and two Russians, Anton N. Shkaplerov and Anatoly A. Ivanishin, on the first trip into orbit by astronauts since the final shuttle flight in July.
The Soyuz TMA-22 capsule is scheduled to dock at the space station on Wednesday morning, in time to relieve the crew of three who have been there since June and are due to return to Earth next week.
Still, what might have been a triumphal year for the Russian space program — 50 years after Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space — has been scarred by mishaps and mission failures, which had raised the possibility, now averted, that the space station would be left unstaffed for the first time in more than a decade.
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The Soyuz mission was originally scheduled for September, but was delayed after an unmanned Russian cargo rocket similar to the one used for manned flights failed in August. NASA officials said before the launch on Monday that they were confident that their Russian counterparts had identified and corrected the problems.
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In August, a different Russian rocket also failed, putting a communication satellite in an incorrect orbit. And in a separate mishap last week, a Russian spacecraft that was intended to explore Phobos, one of Mars’s two moons, got only as far as low-Earth orbit, where its engines failed to fire.“How many surf bums who can’t keep a job washing dishes will be up at 5 AM putting on a gritty, sandy wetsuit to paddle out in cold, sharky water for just one shot at a barrel? That’s motivation. If you could bottle that, then what’s possible?”
Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal stood in front of an audience of Silicon Valley tech enthusiasts, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs at a private social club in San Francisco. Their new book, Stealing Fire, was the subject of the evening.
The book explores what they call “non-ordinary” (or altered) states of consciousness and how to use them to achieve peak performance. It’s the result of years of research through their Flow Genome Project, which has brought together world-class athletes, academics, and artists to better understand the science of flow states.
In Stealing Fire, altered states are broken down into three categories:
Mystical states: Induced by practices such as meditation.
Induced by practices such as meditation. Flow states: Often triggered by physical activities and movement.
Often triggered by physical activities and movement. Psychedelic states: Pharmacologically primed or induced.
In altered states, people tend to report four core experiences: feelings of selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness (STER). In part, we can identify these attributes thanks to recent advances in the fields surrounding the study of altered states—psychology, technology, neurobiology, and pharmacology.
Kotler and Wheal believe these four fields are colliding today and taking altered states research to the next level. “This is an interdisciplinary intersection that’s happening right now, and it’s changing the rules of the game,” says Kotler.
Now, Kotler and Wheal are seeing organizations, entrepreneurs, and creatives alike use altered states to help them reach peak mental and physical performance. The thinking goes that whereas we used to experience these states from time to time or serendipitously, today, we can set ourselves up to make them happen more.
Considering the data, it’s no surprise there’s so much interest.
In a flow state, creativity and motivation improve by almost 400 percent and physical and mental performance skyrocket. Kotler calls this, “Big data for our minds.”
In the book, the Navy SEALs’ new training facility, The Mind Gym, is one of many fascinating examples of an organization trying to accelerate learning by getting individuals into peak physiological and neurological states.
The Mind Gym is equipped with technology like sensory deprivation tanks, advanced cardiac monitoring, and biofeedback systems, which are used together to guide SEALs into optimal states. In doing so, SEALS can reportedly learn a foreign language in just six weeks, compared to six months.
But it’s not just elite military units after flow. We all are—even if we don’t call it that.
When Kotler and Wheal calculated the size of what they call the “altered states economy,” they found people are spending a whopping four trillion dollars every year to alter their consciousness.
“It’s a quarter of [America’s] annual GDP,” says Wheal, “That’s a pile of money that we are spending consciously, unconsciously, destructively, productively just trying to get out of our heads.”
Why are people spending so much money to get into an altered state? The answer goes way beyond boosting productivity or profits.
Wheal explains, “Most of us are tired, wired, stressed, and constantly reflexive.” But in an altered state, something very different happens to our minds. Our inner critic finally shuts up, and we get relief from our constant mental chatter. The scientific term for this experience is “transient hypofrontality,” which is when the brain’s prefrontal cortex—the part that controls executive functioning—slows down.
Because of this, altered states don’t just help push physical and mental boundaries, they provide a temporary mental off switch, which many of us desperately need.
Wheal says, “One in four Americans are on psychiatric medicines, and suicide is up for every population ranging from age 7 to 78. There was just a study last week that said that diseases of despair (like depression and anxiety) are the number one killer of middle-class white Americans…Our inability to change the channel, it’s literally killing us.”
Even if only momentary, an altered state experience is so unique and freeing that once people get a taste of it, they’ll often go to great lengths to have another.
But could this ecstatic pursuit become addicting or self-serving?
Wheal says it could, but it certainly doesn’t have to. In fact, there’s a bigger message that Wheal wants readers to take away: “Don’t die wondering.”
At the end of our interview, Wheal said, “If you have questions of whether there’s capital “M” more in life—go find it. It’s there, and it’s there through a dozen different doors.”
Whether altered states help companies increase productivity, entrepreneurs reach a breakthrough idea, or artists tap into their creative genius, they leave us feeling like we got a glimpse of something greater.
As esoteric as it sounds, is that not what life’s really all about?
Image source: ShutterstockA heartbroken Brooklyn mom says a police officer failed to help her as she desperately tried to get her daughter to the hospital following an asthma attack, according to news reports.
Lake County Sheriff's officials aren't working for free.
That's why they stopped providing police service to Winfield, Indiana -- population 4,000. The small town owes the sheriff department about $100,000 for protection this year and they have yet to fork over the cash, according to the Northwest Indiana Times.
Like many Midwestern towns, Winfield is broke. Lake County Sheriff stopped taking 911 calls from the area about three days ago. Sunday they ignored a call to respond to a traffic accident involving a pick-up truck that hit a light pole. Indiana State Police eventually responded and nabbed the driver, who had fled.
Residents, however, are steamed. The Winfield city council mulled the idea of creating a marshal to help police their nabe. Lake County Sherrif Roy Dominguez thinks that could be a good idea. He said the town has been violating state laws for 17 years by not fielding its own force and relying solely on the county sheriff.
That could all become moot after the council meets Tuesday. Dominguez said he met with town officials Monday and that "significant progress" was made.
The council will discuss that progress at the meeting.I anticipated as much, of course. That's why I had scanned the altar before asking permission!
The chance they'd say yes or no outright was virtually nil; I knew most likely they'd stall. Which meant they'd never trust me near the altar again. Six years work and the historic opportunity for the world to see the first ever physical evidence from Shakespeare himself would all be gone in "one fell swoop". I couldn't risk that.
Once the scan results were in though, I had the insurance I needed. Only then did I fly back to Stratford to find out for sure whether they'd do the right thing or not. Had they said yes then I would've told them I'd already done it and just given them the radar files. All I wanted was to secure the truth by documenting the scan so nothing could accidentally 'disappear' later. (In Sonnet 121 the Bard plainly tells us there will be a cover-up: "By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown").
But the town wasn't interested in what their man had gone to great lengths to hide, encode, and pass down to us. Instead of honoring their benefactor's wishes they circled the wagons. The bishop promised to get back to me after taking it to "a higher authority". Given his own highly elevated position he could only mean the Queen or God and apparently they've both been very busy. I've been waiting over five years for that call.
In the meantime I've uncovered much more material that will forever change our concept of this unparalleled genius. Hence my decision to finally go public. Book I of the Holy Trinity Solution series, Dee-Coding Shakespeare, has just been released. Two more will follow in 2017.
It's high time his deeds were shown and the full story told.As of Monday August 8, humans will have officially used up all the resources Earth can regenerate in a year.
The day is known as 'overshoot day', and this year it's happening five days earlier than in 2015 - which means we just burnt through a sustainable amount of resources in less time than ever before.
If we continue to live the way we are right now, as a global population, we would require more than 1.6 planets to meet our demands.
If everyone in the world lived like Americans, we'd need 4.8 planets to have enough to go around - Australians are even worse, using up 5.4 planets worth of resources each year.
Overshoot day is calculated by the Global Footprint Network each year, using United Nations data on thousands of economic sectors, such as fisheries, forestry, transport, and energy production.
When we talk about resources, it's not just water, land, and food - it also refers to things like carbon storage, so we've now reached a point where we're pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere than can be reabsorbed by forests and oceans.
"Carbon emissions are the fastest growing contributor to ecological overshoot, with the carbon footprint now making up 60 percent of humanity’s demand on nature," a press release from the Global Footprint Network explains.
The network has calculated Earth's overshoot day dating back to the 1960s, and has shown that, up until 1970, we were only using as many resources as the planet could sustainably reproduce. In fact, in 1961, we were only using three-quarters of our annual resources.
But in 1970, we burnt through our annual resources by 23 December, and every year since then it's become earlier and earlier.
The good news is that the advancement of the date is gradually slowing down. On average, since the 1970s, Earth Overshoot Day has moved three days earlier per year, but over the past five years, it's slowed to less than one day a year.
And the even better news is that society is finally weaning itself off of fossil fuels. Last year, Costa Rica managed to power the entire country with 100 percent renewables for 75 days in a row.
Germany was powered by 95 percent renewable electricity last year, and Portugal was able to run for four straight days without any fossil fuels. In many countries, renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels.
It's not just CO2 emissions that are on the decline. China has also committed to reducing its citizens' zealous meat consumption by 50 percent by 2030, which is estimated to stop the equivalent of 1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions. And many cities are making big steps towards getting rid of single-use plastic waste.
There are still significant challenges ahead - namely the fact that Earth's population is expected to swell to 11.2 billion by the end of the century - but we're slowly, slowly reducing our toll on the planet.
Maybe next year will become the first year in more than four decades that we push that overshoot date back a few days.Color-changing 'Blast Badge' detects exposure to explosive shock waves
(Nanowerk News) Mimicking the reflective iridescence of a butterfly's wing, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a color-changing patch that could be worn on soldiers' helmets and uniforms to indicate the strength of exposure to blasts from explosives in the field. Future studies aim to calibrate the color change to the intensity of exposure to provide an immediate read on the potential harm to the brain and the subsequent need for medical intervention. The findings are described in the ahead-of-print online issue of NeuroImage.
"We wanted to create a 'blast badge' that would be lightweight, durable, power-free, and perhaps most important, could be easily interpreted, even on the battlefield", says senior author Douglas H. Smith, MD, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair and professor of Neurosurgery at Penn. "Similar to how an opera singer can shatter glass crystal, we chose color-changing crystals that could be designed to break apart when exposed to a blast shockwave, causing a substantial color change."
Blast exposure disrupts the nanostructure of the blast injury dosimeter, resulting in clear changes in color. The color changes may be calibrated to denote the severity of blast exposure in relation to thresholds for blast-related traumatic brain injury.
D. Kacy Cullen, PhD, assistant professor of Neurosurgery, and Shu Yang, PhD, associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering, were co-authors with Smith.
Blast-induced traumatic brain injury is the "signature wound" of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, with no objective information of relative blast exposure, soldiers with brain injury may not receive appropriate medical care and are at risk of being returned to the battlefield too soon.
"Diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury [TBI] is challenging under most circumstances, as subtle or slowly progressive damage to brain tissue occurs in a manner undetectable by conventional imaging techniques," notes Cullen. There is also a debate as to whether mild TBI is confused with post-traumatic stress syndrome. "This emphasizes the need for an objective measure of blast exposure to ensure solders receive proper care," he says.
Sculpted by Lasers
The badges are comprised of nanoscale structures, in this case pores and columns, whose make-up preferentially reflects certain wavelengths. Lasers sculpt these tiny shapes into a plastic sheet.
Yang's group pioneered this microfabrication of three-dimensional photonic structures using holographic lithography. "We came up the idea of using three-dimensional photonic crystals as a blast injury dosimeter because of their unique structure-dependent mechanical response and colorful display," she explains. Her lab made the materials and characterized the structures before and after the blast to understand the color-change mechanism.
"It looks like layers of Swiss cheese with columns in between," explains Smith. Although very stable in the presence of heat, cold or physical impact, the nanostructures are selectively altered by blast exposure. The shockwave causes the columns to collapse and the pores to grow larger, thereby changing the material's reflective properties and outward color. The material is designed so that the extent of the color change corresponds with blast intensity.
The blast-sensitive material is added as a thin film on small round badges the size of fill-in-the-blank circles on a multiple-choice test that could be sewn onto a soldier's uniform.A quick editor’s note: Thank you one million times over to the great Ramsey Campbell, who offered up his list of thirteen must-read, borderline horror novels to HNR. Your contribution, sir, is greatly greatly appreciated, and we’re certain our loyal followers will love every word of this article. Respect to you sir – a legend who took the time to show HNR some serious love!
Written by: Ramsey Campbell
Peter Ackroyd, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994).
Ackroyd has written several novels that deserve a mention here – the darkly occult Hawksmoor, the rurally weird First Light, the alchemical House of Doctor Dee – but Dan Leno is still a revelation: a fast-paced Victorian serial killer novel, witty and ingenious and suspenseful.
John Franklin Bardin, The Deadly Percheron (1946).
What was Bardin’s secret? According to the introduction by Julian Symonds to a Penguin omnibus of the first three novels, Bardin’s mother was a schizophrenic, which may suggest a reason for the author’s focus on abnormal psychology. The Deadly Percheron is the tale to which the Robbie Coltrane character keeps referring in Neil Jordan’s film Mona Lisa. It begins like a story from Unknown Worlds, with the narrator attempting to psychoanalyse a patient who receives mysterious instructions from a dwarf. Soon the narrator is attacked and robbed of his identity. Philip Marlowe would have swapped clothes with his neighbour in hospital and made his escape, but Bardin’s protagonist recognises how paranoid his story sounds and becomes a victim of it. The book progresses further into nightmare and never quite emerges, even managing to extend it into Bardin’s second novel, The Last of Philip Banter. Read that too, and the third, Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly. Alas, his later novel Purloining Tiny is perverse but reads like someone imitating Bardin.
Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable (1953).
Beckett at his most austere and intense. Deirdre Bair’s biography reveals that he wrote the novel as a way of surviving the imminent death of his mother. If it’s a vision of any kind of afterlife, it’s a truly terrifying one, and best read in a single sitting. Characters and memories (if that’s what they are) rise out of the disembodied monologue and vanish like ghosts, bearing fragments of the narrative and the narrator. It may not be an experience for all readers, but if you can take it, it’s unforgettable.
Russell Braddon, Committal Chamber (1966).
“Three men and their women are brought to face the truth about themselves in the committal chamber of a crematorium.” So says the blurb of the British hardcover, accurately enough, but it avoids mentioning that the book is a variation on one of the earliest classic short horror stories. Its understatement only adds to the intensity, and it rises to a fine pitch of terror.
Philip George Chadwick, The Death Guard (1939).
This nightmare vision of a new kind of warfare has seen only two editions. The Hutchinson hardcover is even rarer than the first and only paperback, published in 1992 with an introduction by Brian Aldiss. The novel grew out of the horrors of the First World War, and proposes the creation of a humanoid race bred simply to kill. The humanoids finish off a war and then proceed to overrun humanity in scenes that amply justify Karl Edward Wagner’s inclusion of the book in his list of the best science fiction horror novels. A thread of racism runs through it, but it’s still richly deserving of revival.
Carter Dickson, The Plague Court Murders (1934).
This was John Dickson Carr’s first novel under this transparent pseudonym. Most of Carr’s work is detective fiction influenced by Chesterton, especially in a fondness for apparently impossible crimes. He had a strong sense of the macabre, not least in his titles – The Hollow Man, Skeleton in the Clock, He Who Whispers, It Walks by Night (his very first novel, close to Poe in its Gothic atmosphere and gruesomeness). Another influence is the ghostly fiction of M. R. James – the short story “Blind Man’s Hood” is a spectral tale in that tradition – and this is apparent in The Plague Court Murders, which even quotes James’s “A School Story” near the end. While the murders are solved, the book conveys an almost palpable sense of evil and dread. The haunted house of the title feels oppressively authentic, and a chapter devoted to its history never explains away the supernatural horror. Under both his names Carr is worth reading, but don’t read The Hollow Man first; it includes a chapter that lists many of the solutions to his tricks.
William Goldman, Magic (1976).
Don’t see the film, read the novel. It is indeed magic in a variety of ways. Goldman often plays brilliant tricks on the reader – in Control, for instance, and in the book (though not the movie) of Marathon Man – but this is the most ingeniously sustained. Indeed, this reader didn’t immediately catch it when it was revealed. As an account of a mind at and beyond the end of its tether, the book far outstrips the film (for which the author has to take some blame, since he wrote the screenplay).
Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square.
John Brahm’s film Hangover Square stars Laird Cregar as a deranged Victorian pianist and composer sent into murderous fits by high-pitched sounds. It’s a compelling melodramatic thriller, rendered all the more intense by Bernard Herrmann’s score, and an absolute travesty of the novel by Patrick Hamilton, author of Gaslight and Rope. In the book the protagonist William Harvey Bone suffers blackouts in 1939 London and imagines acts of violence that perhaps he will commit. He’s a precursor of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, disintegrating in an England as bleak as anything in Graham Greene, without even that writer’s hints of religious redemption. By all means see the film, but don’t let it put you off the novel.
Thomas Hinde, The Day the Call Came (1964).
A black comedy of paranoia narrated by the man who’s waiting for the call. Here and in The Investigator (in his collection of two novellas Games of Chance) Hinde conveys how the deranged can pass as sane, not only to themselves.
Ira Levin, A Kiss before Dying (1954).
Levin is best known in the field for Rosemary’s Baby, a tour de force of a horror novel, told very largely through dialogue. A Kiss before Dying is more compulsive still – a study of a sociopath driven by ambition to kill and kill again. The serial killer is today’s fashionable monster, with authors outdoing one another in attempts to elaborate the monstrousness (and too often the unlikeliness). Not the least of Levin’s achievements is to show a murderer as murderers tend to be – inadequate and self-obsessed, with an exaggerated sense of their own worth and a compulsion to prove it – and still make the tale absolutely compelling. It was decently filmed by Gerd Oswald, but the remake begins with a miscalculation as basic as starting Psycho with the first appearance of Mrs Bates. Seek out the book, which is a classic of edgy suspense.
Arthur Morrison, The Hole in the Wall (1902).
My friend the poet Richard Hill brought this to my notice, and I can’t improve on his description of it as a nightmare version of Treasure Island. Morrison specialised in social realism (Tales of Mean Streets, A Child of the Jago), and his view of crime and its sources was much less romantic than Stevenson’s. The child’s viewpoint from which we see events adds to the sense of dread, and the quicklime scene tips the book into real horror.
José Carlos Somoza, The Art of Murder (2001, published in English 2004).
At the time of writing most of my readers may be far less familiar with Somoza than he deserves. Three of his novels are available in English. The Athenian Murders is a detective story Nabokov might have been proud to devise, while Zig Zag invents an impressively malevolent new kind of ghost born of an experiment in string theory. The Art of Murder is perhaps the most disturbing of the three, however. Promoted as crime fiction, it’s primarily speculative fiction about a near future (now the recent past) in which human beings are sold as art objects. The psychological insight into their state – in particular the central character’s – is at least the equal of Ballard.
Jim Thompson, Savage Night (1953).
Noir fiction sometimes ventures into horror – Cornell Woolrich’s Black Alibi, for instance, filmed for Val Lewton by Jacques Tourneur as The Leopard Man – but none of its proponents takes the tendency farther than Jim Thompson. The ending of The Getaway appears to have been too grotesque even for Peckinpah, because what waits over the border in the last chapter of the novel is the territory of Poe. Sometimes Thompson’s work barely contains its excesses – the incestuous sadism that surfaces in King Blood is particularly troubling – but Savage Night is probably the book best suited to the present list. By the final pages it has become either a ghost story or a living nightmare, however living is defined in the context. “In the end,” Geoffrey O’Brien writes, “only the voice remains.” He could be writing about Beckett – indeed, to the very Beckett book I’ve listed – but he has Savage Night in mind.
Again, we cannot thank Ramsey Campbell enough for his contribution. Campbell is a living legend, and the fact that he was more than willing to offer up an amazing piece for HNR means the world to me. Mr. Campbell, you had my respect long before offering up something to share with HNR readers, and now, well… I’m left speechless. And as always, I wish you nothing but the best!
Be sure to check out some of Campbell’s recent works:
Visions from Brichester is available here.
Probably is available here.
Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach is available here.A bill passed by the Michigan State Senate would endanger the health of Michiganders by granting sweeping new powers to practitioners of unscientific bogus medicine and treatments, said the Center for Inquiry.
Have You Had Your Antioxidants Today?
A successful marketing campaign can be scarily effective—make a claim enough times and people will believe it. Then just take the claim for granted; it becomes something everyone knows and no one questions. Back it up with some “sciencey” razzle-dazzle and link it to a combination of fear and hope, and you can have an entire industry based on nothing but marketing hype.
Take antioxidants (or rather, don’t take them): if you believe the hype, then you want them in your food; you want to take them as pills; and you want the maximum most powerful antioxidants that can be found in nature (especially from some obscure tropical fruit). Unfortunately, the evidence does not support the claim that there are any health benefits to taking antioxidants.
The theory behind antioxidant claims sounds very compelling. Oxidants are chemicals (free radicals, also called reactive oxygen species or ROS) that are the products of metabolism; they are highly reactive and can cause damage to proteins and cells. This damage is a major contributor to aging and disease. Antioxidants neutralize these free radicals and prevent damage.
Unfortunately, medical science is rarely so clean and simple. This nice story is true, as far as it goes (the best lies always contain a kernel of truth). Twenty years ago this was the state of our knowledge of ROS and antioxidants, and there was legitimate hope that antioxidants would be a useful therapeutic tool. However, as research continued we learned that the picture is more complex: The body has evolved a natural defense against the onslaught of ROS. These compounds are called free radical scavengers or antioxidants (such as the protein superoxide dismutase and some vitamins like C and E) and their job is to gobble up ROS before they can damage cells.
In addition, some ROS actually serve a purpose in the body, for example as signals to cells or as neurotransmitters (nitric oxide). In fact, the body has evolved a balanced and complex system to maintain homeostasis between ROS and antioxidants. Influencing that system by taking large amounts of exogenous antioxidants may not be such a good idea. In other words, if a balance between ROS and antioxidants has evolved, there is no reason to believe that there are any benefits to tipping the scales in one direction—toward antioxidants. In fact, doing so may cause harm.
What does the actual clinical evidence show? Well, to find out we have to go claim by claim.
The best current evidence shows that antioxidant vitamins are of no use in improving cognitive function or in preventing dementia (Gray et al. 2008). If we look at other specific neurodegenerative diseases, the picture is a bit more complex. Some studies show that vitamin E (but not C) may slightly reduce the risk of motor neuron disease, but only in women (Wang et al. 2011). Overall, the evidence is ambiguous and does not support a benefit for treatment.
In Parkinson’s disease (PD) the picture is more complex. There is some evidence that eating foods rich in vitamin E may help prevent PD, but taking vitamin E supplements does not. So perhaps it is something other than the vitamin E in these foods that is of benefit, or perhaps eating healthy foods in general is simply a marker for some other variable that protects against PD. Other studies show a benefit from taking the vitamin supplements but not changing diet (Miyake et al. 2011). In other words, the evidence is ambiguous.
It is reasonable to conduct further research into antioxidants and degenerative diseases. Current evidence is mixed, without any clear benefit, but there is enough positive preliminary evidence to continue to study the potential of antioxidants in preventing degenerative diseases.
The evidence for taking antioxidant supplements in the general population is also less than definitive. In addition, it actually suggests the potential for harm. A comprehensive review published in 2008 concluded: “We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. Vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E may increase mortality” (Bjelakovic et al. 2008).
That’s right—there might be an increased risk of death from taking vitamins A and E. The data is far from definitive, but it shows that we cannot assume that supplements, even vitamins, are harmless. It also shows that we need to be humble with our simplistic theories of biology. Until the research has had time to fully explore a biological question, we should not be confident in our extrapolations to clinical effect. Therefore, even when the theory sounds good, we always need to do clinical studies to see what the net effects are in humans.
When it comes to antioxidants, there is still the potential that they may be useful in specific situations. At present, however, there is no evidence to support going out of your way to eat lots of antioxidants in food or to take antioxidant supplements. In fact, doing so may be harmful. This evidence is at odds with the overwhelming marketing hype that has successfully created an irrational demand for a dubious product.
References
Bjelakovic, G., D. Nikolova, L.L. Gluud, et al. 2008. Antioxidant supplements for prevention of mortality in healthy participants and patients with various diseases. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 2. Article No.: CD007176.
Gray, S.L., M.L. Anderson, P.K. Crane, et al. 2008. Antioxidant vitamin supplement use and risk of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease in older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 56(2) (February): 291–295, doi: 10.1111/j. |
— Before a new indoor soccer facility opens, neighbors want to see an improved facade, better lighting and more parking.
The owners of Deportiva de Futbol, 3040 W. Lawrence Ave., are awaiting a business license hearing Friday, and heard from representatives from 33rd Ward Ald. Deb Mell’s office, the North River Commission, and two neighborhood associations earlier this week.
They asked questions of owners Carlos Cisneros, Eduardo Gonzalez, and Gonzalez’s wife, Noemi Trevino, and toured the facility Tuesday. They saw the field intended for practices and pickup games, a locker room area, an office, a spare room and restrooms.
Main concerns from those in attendance included the appearance of the outside of the building, and the facility’s painted-over windows — for the privacy of players, owners explained.
The field's layout has a wall that sits in front of the front entrance, a potential barrier that concerned Dana Fritz, chief of staff for Mell.
“There could be a bottleneck situation,” said Fritz.
The owners were encouraged to explore the neighborhood's special services area programs that assist business owners with building improvements.
“It’s a great program, especially for new businesses,” said Eric Filson, a member of the West River Park Improvement Association and the Albany Park Neighbors.
The special service area, which levies a special property tax to pay for services in the area, could also assist with safety issues like lighting, added Roya Mehrnoosh, president of the West River Park Improvement Association.
“We’re trying to encourage businesses to use it,” Mehrnoosh said. “The other thing that bothers me is that the windows are going to be all closed up. Maybe dress them up? Have some nice lighting? So it doesn’t look like the way they are now.”
The owners expressed interest in fixing the building, but worried about the upfront cost of doing so.
“We would love for this building to look way better,” Trevino said. “But it’s a work in progress.”
They are also eager to open soon and begin taking in revenue, after paying for the last few months’ rent without the facility being able to generate income.
“We’ve done what the city has asked, and we’ve been following their process,” Cisneros assured neighbors. “After six months, we couldn’t wait to get going. “
Amy Kozy, of the West River Park Neighbors, expressed concerns about parking.
“We do have a lot of parking trouble in this immediate neighborhood,” Kozy said.
Cisneros said that because the facility has indoor parking and because only so many people would need to park there at once, as time is booked by the hour, parking beyond what’s available on-site should not be needed.
Duka Dabovic, Special Service Area Manager for the North River Commission, voiced concern that the owners could get ahead of themselves with construction.
“I would love for this place to be open but we want to do this right,” he said. “We don’t want the city to come in and shut it down.”
Mehrnoosh seconded these sentiments.
“It’s all for safety,” she said. “It may be better than I think. But we want them to do the right process. We don’t want them to find out after the fact that it costs too much to make it legal to be open to the public.”
The owners remained optimistic and expect to move forward with plans, pending their Friday hearing.
“We put our life’s savings into this place, which we were saving for a home,” Trevino said. “We’re working on this.”
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:The traditional six-monthly Ubuntu release cycle could become a thing of the past, Ubuntu’s founder has suggested.
‘Maybe we’ll soften up on the six-month thing and release updates all the time’
Speaking to PCPro about Canonical’s convergence plans – which will see the same codebase powering mobiles, tablets and desktops by Ubuntu 15.04 at the latest – Mark Shuttleworth reasons that mobile users are accustomed to updates being released ‘whenever’ they’re ready, something that may lead Ubuntu to “soften up on the six-month thing and release updates all the time.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that changes to the Ubuntu release cycle have been proposed. Earlier this year discussions on moving the distro to a pseudo-“rolling release” were broached, while the release of Ubuntu 13.04 brought a change to the way updates are pushed out to users.
Convergence, Phones & Advantages
Those weren’t the only release-related points to be touched upon in the brief natter,
Shuttleworth also expressed his belief that Ubuntu will deliver true mobile/desktop convergence ahead of Microsoft. The Redmond-based company is said to be working on unification of the Windows Phone and Windows 8 platforms and disbanding with the ill-received Windows RT altogether.
Ubuntu stealing a head start, coupled with its basis on Linux, could give Ubuntu an advantage when it comes to courting app developers, argues Shuttleworth.
“Web apps and native apps designed for Android are much closer to being on Ubuntu than they are to being on Windows. Many Android developers use Ubuntu, and develop their apps on Ubuntu, so it’s much easier for them to target that simultaneously.”
‘No Announced Hardware Partners’
Asked whether Canonical has hardware partners willing to produce Ubuntu phones and tablets Mark was a little more coy, saying that while there are currently “no announced partners” they are aware of several “household brands” testing the OS internally on “cutting-edge devices”.
This independent testing is, he says, a “strong signal of interest” and something that Canonical are “comfortable” with.
At December’s Le Web conference in Paris Mark told journalists that a high-end phone is due for release in 2014 following ‘successful’ talks with hardware partners. The name of the company producing the phone has yet to be revealed.
SummaryJeff Luhnow is the general manager of the Astros since 2012. (Photo: David J. Phillip, AP)
ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Cardinals confirmed Tuesday that they are under federal investigation to determine if members of their front office hacked into the Houston Astros' internal database.
"The St. Louis Cardinals are aware of the investigation into the security breach of the Houston Astros' database," the team said in a statement. "The team has fully cooperated with the investigation and will continue to do so. Given that this is an ongoing federal investigation, it is not appropriate for us to comment further."
The FBI and the Justice Department uncovered evidence that front-office officials for the Cardinals hacked into the internal networks of the Astros to potentially steal information, as first reported by the New York Times.
A law enforcement official who is not authorized to comment publicly acknowledged the existence of the inquiry first reported in the Times.
The FBI in Houston declined to comment on the matter, issuing a brief statement indicating that it "aggressively investigates all potential threats to public and private sector systems.''
"Once our investigations are complete,'' the statement said. "we pursue all appropriate avenues to hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace."
This would represent the first known case of corporate espionage involving professional sports teams.
The FBI and Justice Department officials did not specify which Cardinals officials were the focus of the investigation or whether they were aware of it. Yet, the FBI's Houston field office has issued subpoenas to the Cardinals and Major League Baseball officials for electronic correspondence, according to the Times.
Certainly, there has been mistrust between the organizations since the Astros hired Jeff Luhnow to be their general manager in December 2011. Luhnow had been directly involved in the Cardinals' scouting and player development.
"Major League Baseball has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros' baseball operations database,'' MLB said in a statement. "Once the investigative process has been completed by federal law enforcement officials, we will evaluate the next steps and will make decisions promptly."
It's unknown what discipline Commissioner Rob Manfred could levy against the Cardinals, and whether one of baseball's most storied franchises could be fined or surrender draft picks. Yet, no Cardinals official has been suspended or fired.
Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt and general manager John Mozeliak declined to comment. Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said he was called out of his morning workout and was informed of the story, but had no direct knowledge of the investigation.
"Right now, we just go about our business and realize it's something that's being dealt with,'' Matheny said. "This is an uncontrollable (distraction) for us as a club. We'll just focus on what we do, which is play baseball.''
Certainly, the allegations are a blow to the image of a club widely considered a model organization. The Cardinals have baseball's best record, 42-21, and have reached the National League Championship Series four consecutive years, with two pennants and a World Series title.
According to the Times, the Cardinals built a computer network called Redbird during the period Luhnow was with the club, and the netowrk housed much of their baseball operations information, including scouting reports and personnel information. Yet, Mozeliak currently keeps all of his trade information on written notes stashed in folders in his office.
Luhnow built a similar system called Ground Control, and according to the Times, Cardinals officials used those same passwords to gain access to the Astros' network. The FBI discovered that the Astros' network had been entered from a computer used in the home that some Cardinals' officials resided.
Contributing: Kevin JohnsonPresident Obama has called people who work on Wall Street “fat-cat bankers,” and his reelection campaign has sought to harness public frustration with Wall Street. Financial executives retort that the president’s pursuit of financial regulations is punitive and that new rules may be “holding us back.”
But both sides face an inconvenient fact: During Obama’s tenure, Wall Street has roared back, even as the broader economy has struggled.
The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.
Wall Street firms — independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They earned more in the first 21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.
(See data in an Excel file here.)
Behind this turnaround, in significant measure, are government policies that helped the financial sector avert collapse and then gave financial firms huge benefits on the path to recovery. For example, the federal government invested hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in banks — low-cost money that the firms used for high-yielding investments on which they made big profits.
Stabilizing the financial system was considered necessary to prevent an even deeper economic recession. But some critics say the Bush administration, which first moved to bail out Wall Street, and the Obama administration, which ultimately stabilized it, took a far less aggressive approach to helping the American people.
“There’s a very popular conception out there that the bailout was done with a tremendous amount of firepower and focus on saving the largest Wall Street institutions but with very little regard for Main Street,” said Neil Barofsky, the former federal watchdog for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, the $700 billion fund used to bail out banks. “That’s actually a very accurate description of what happened.”
Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration, for instance, compelled banks to increase lending to consumers, known as “prime borrowers.” Such a step might have spurred spending and growth, although generating demand for loans may have proved difficult in the downturn.
A recent study by two professors at the University of Michigan found that banks did not significantly increase lending after being bailed out. Rather, they used taxpayer money, in part, to invest in risky securities that profited from short-term price movements. The study found that bailed-out banks increased their investment returns by nearly 10 percent as a result.
“If the goal was to support lending, it would have been sensible to require a portion of the money to support credit origination,” said Ran Duchin, one of the finance professors who completed the study. “Lending to prime consumers was not the most profitable use of their capital.”
Some of Wall Street’s success has moderated in recent months, with bank stock prices down and layoffs on the rise. This mostly has reflected the renewed slowdown in the U.S. economy this year and the European debt crisis buffeting global markets.
Representatives of the financial industry say regulations in last year’s Dodd-Frank legislation, which Obama pushed for and signed, also have crimped bank profits. But many analysts think the law will make the financial system more stable. The legislation, for instance, requires banks to maintain a greater capital cushion to withstand losses during bad economic times. The measure also created a regulator whose sole purpose is to police lending to ordinary Americans.
But many of the legislation’s most significant measures have yet to be put into place, and their ultimate effect on the bottom line remains unclear.
Financial firms have raised major concerns about one of the largest structural changes made by the law, the “Volcker Rule.” This measure would bar banks from engaging in trading and other speculative activity on their own behalf rather than to profit customers. But the rule’s impact could prove limited because of loopholes and exceptions allowed by lawmakers and regulators working to implement it.
Federal assistance
One of the main reasons Wall Street rebounded so quickly from its lows is government support.
Even before Obama took office, the government pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into banks. The Federal Reserve, which is independent of the administration, lowered interest rates, allowing firms to borrow money cheaply and trade with it, booking huge profits. The Fed also introduced lending programs that bolstered stock and bond markets and allowed banks to earn a steady return on reserves they kept with the central bank.
“The too-big-to-fail banks got bigger profits and avoided failure because of trillions of dollars of loans directly from the Federal Reserve,” said Linus Wilson, assistant professor of finance at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “Today, their profits are boosted by lower borrowing costs because their managers and creditors expect a Fed lifeline when markets get jittery.”
Banks also have benefited from the large increase during the recession in unemployment insurance. Increasingly, banks offer debit cards to the unemployed to collect their government benefits. These debit cards carry a range of fees that bolster banks’ bottom lines.
What’s more, states — with their budgets shattered by the financial crisis and recession — have increasingly been moving to enroll new employees into Wall Street-run retirement accounts rather than government pension programs. That’s potentially more lucrative for Wall Street, which can charge fees for managing the savings of individual retirees.
Since Dec. 31, 2008, the largest banks — those with more than $100 billion in assets — have increased their total combined assets by about 10 percent.
As banks get larger, they can become more profitable. This is because investors tend to be more willing to lend them money at interest rates lower than those other banks are charged. There is a common perception that big banks are less risky because the government will still step in to save them if they get into financial trouble. On the flip side, under new financial regulations, the largest banks will have to hold more financial reserves than smaller banks — although precisely how much is still being discussed.
Banks’ profits up
Profits have also rebounded. The largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, earned $34 billion in profit in the first half of the year, nearly matching what they earned in the same period in 2007 and more than in the same period of any other year.
Securities firms — the trading arms of big banks and hundreds of other independent firms — have fared even better. They’ve generated at least $83 billion in profit during the past 21 / 2 years, compared with $77 billion during the entire Bush administration, according to data from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
Compensation at these firms also has bounced back. Financial firms paid about $20.8 billion in bonuses for work done in 2010, according to research by the New York state comptroller. In New York City, the average Wall Street salary last year grew 16.1 percent, to $361,330, which is more than five times the average salary of a private-sector worker in the city.
By contrast, millions of Americans continue to face economic difficulties. That is fueling broad public anger at Wall Street and has given rise to the “Occupy” protest movements nationwide.
Obama’s advisers say they plan to harness this frustration in the presidential campaign by drawing a contrast with Republican candidates who favor rolling back the Dodd-Frank legislation.
“People are going to make their own judgments based on the positions that candidates take and their track record,” said David Plouffe, a senior Obama adviser. “...You have to look at these as comparative exercises.
“Americans want leaders who will be fair and insist on accountability on Wall Street. But Republicans, including all of their presidential candidates, have essentially said, ‘Let’s give Wall Street a blank check.’ ”
The president, however, has not shunned Wall Street. He has courted financial executives for campaign donations, including inviting them to a campaign gathering at the White House. He has attracted more money for his campaign and for the Democratic National Committee from financial firm employees than all of the GOP candidates combined — a total of $15.6 million.This article originally appeared in The Red Pill Times
Europe really blew this one. In what is sure to be remembered as one of the biggest screw ups in EU policy history, Russia is withdrawing from South Stream and realigning with Turkey.
This is huge news!
First, Russia withdraws from South Stream as reported by RT:
Russia is forced to withdraw from the South Stream project due to the EU’s unwillingness to support the pipeline, and gas flows will be redirected to other customers, Vladimir Putin said after talks with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “We believe that the stance of the European Commission was counterproductive.
In fact, the European Commission not only provided no help in implementation of [the South Stream pipeline], but, as we see, obstacles were created to its implementation.
Well, if Europe doesn’t want it implemented, it won’t be implemented,” the Russian president said. “We’ll be promoting other markets and Europe won’t receive those volumes, at least not from Russia.
We believe that it doesn’t meet the economic interests of Europe and it harms our cooperation. But such is the choice of our European friends,” he said. The South Stream project is at the stage when “the construction of the pipeline system in the Black Sea must begin,” but Russia still hasn’t received an approval for the project from Bulgaria, the Russian president said. Investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the pipeline, which would have to stop when it reaches Bulgarian waters, is “just absurd, I hope everybody understands that,” he said. Putin believes that Bulgaria “isn’t acting like an independent state” by delaying the South Stream project, which would be profitable for the country. He advised the Bulgarian leadership “to demand loss of profit damages from the European Commission” as the country could have been receiving around 400 million euros annually through gas transit.
Europe just shot itself in the head in a very big way….and it gets better (or worse, for Europe that is).
Putin: Won't be happening now
Remember Turkey, that big Muslim country that has been teased with EU membership for the past 30 some years… well it looks like Turkey is not only realigning away from the EU, but sticking it to Europe while doing such realigning, because after today (and given Ukraine’s complete meltdown), a big part of South Europe’s energy will fully depend on Turkish transit lines.
RT reports the second big piece of news…
Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller said the energy giant will build a massive gas pipeline that will travel from Russia, transit through Turkey, and stop at the Greek border – giving Russia access to the Southern European market. The pipeline will have an annual capacity of 63 billion cubic meters. A total of 14 bcm will be delivered to Turkey, which is Gazprom’s second biggest customer in the region after Germany. The new project will include a special hub on the Turkish-Greek border for customers in southern Europe. While the pipeline will be registered as a Russian company, Miller said that Gazprom will “consider offers from Turkish partners if they express an interest in buying into the project.” For now, the supply of Russian gas to Turkey will be raised by 3 billion cubic meters via the already operating Blue Stream pipeline, Vladimir Putin earlier said during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Last year, 13.7 bcm of gas were supplied to Turkey via Blue Stream, according to Reuters. Moscow will also reduce the gas price for Turkish customers by 6 percent from January 1, 2015, Putin said.
Winners:
America: South Stream is gone. Europe will lose Russian gas over time, leaving the EU at America’s total energy mercy. European citizens will pay a much higher price for gas and oil…paid to American (and American supported) energy companies
Russia: They can now move on and they already have. China is sealed up, now Turkey. Energy will always have buyers and two big deals have been sealed. Added bonus, Russia can stop dealing with the losers that make up the EU.
Turkey: Disrespected and teased by the EU for decades, Turkey will now be a major energy transit hub to Europe, and beyond. Should South Europe need gas, then it has to deal with Turkey now. Suck on that Brussels!
Losers:Sellers of new-age water treatment products charge outrageous prices for a product with zero plausibility.
by Brian Dunning
Filed under Consumer Ripoffs, Fads
Skeptoid Podcast #139
February 3, 2009
Podcast transcript | Download | Subscribe
Listen:
http://skeptoid.com/audio/skeptoid-4139.mp3
Today we're going to take a scientific look at one of the latest multilevel marketing fads: healing water machines, devices costing thousands of dollars claiming to ionize or alkalize your tap water, and claiming a dazzling range of health and medical benefits. Sold under such names as Kangen, Jupiter Science, KYK, and literally hundreds of others, these machines do either nothing or almost nothing (beyond basic water filtration), and none of what they may actually do has any plausible beneficial purpose. They are built around the central notion that regular water is so harmful to the body that their price tags, as much as $6,000, are actually justified. They are essentially water filters with some additional electronics to perform electrolysis. They are sold with volumes of technical sounding babble that may impress a non-scientific layperson, but to any chemist or medical doctor, they are laughably meaningless (and in many cases, outright wrong).
Here's a really quick coverage of the basics of the real science. The pH scale goes from about 0 to 14. 7 is neutral pH. Lower numbers are acidic, and higher numbers are alkaline. All aqueous solutions contain some dissociated water molecules in the form of positive hydrogen ions (H+) and negative hydroxide ions (OH-). When there are more hydroxide ions, it's because the solution contains positively charged metal ions like sodium, calcium or magnesium for those hydroxide ions to bind to, thus making the solution alkaline. Conversely, when there are more positive hydrogen ions, there needs to be some other negatively charged ions, usually bicarbonate (HCO 3 -) and the solution is thus acidic. Pure water has neither such chemicals in it, and so it has neutral pH. To electrolyze or ionize water, you must add some chemicals of one type or the other. For a more complete discussion of this, I recommend a web page by Stephen Lower, a chemist from Simon Fraser University.
Make no mistake about it: Ionizing and alkalizing water machines are a textbook example of inventing an imaginary problem that needs to be solved with expensive pseudoscientific hardware. It should come as no surprise that the most expensive of these machines are usually sold through multilevel marketing: A one-two punch that first takes advantage of a layperson's lack of scientific expertise to interest them in the product, and then takes advantage of their lack of business or mathematical expertise to convince them that they're virtually guaranteed to become a millionaire through a pyramid model.
The company making the most noise right now is Kangen. They use the slogan "Change your water - change your life." Google that phrase; 49 million results currently. It's a brilliant slogan; everyone would like to change their life for the better, wouldn't it be great if all it took was changing your water? I glance over some of these URLs: MyMiracleWater.com, VeryHealthyWater.com, WaterMiracles.com, AlkalineWaterMiracle.info — people selling easy answers to imaginary problems.
Let's look at the claims these sellers make. The successful MLM companies generally dodge government regulators by making no illegal claims themselves; instead, they allow those claims to be made by their independent distributors: First charging them big dollars for the privilege, and then burdening them with the risk of needing to make untrue health claims in order to recoup their foolish investment. So I've looked over a lot of these independent websites and come up with what they generally say are the reasons you need to buy their supposedly special water.
Ionized water molecules form into hexagonal rings, which allow the water to be better absorbed by your body.
Water molecules in liquid water move about freely, there is no way that a hexagonal arrangement could be formed or made stable. Stephen Lower is one of many chemists who have debunked this completely made-up and chemically implausible claim. If you're interested in the details, read his excellent web page "Water Cluster Quackery". Hexagonal arrangements of liquid molecules are not a characteristic of ionization or of alkalinity. Such hexagonal arrangements in water have never been observed or plausibly theorized, and thus there is no way that it could have ever been established that such water is better absorbed by your body — since it doesn't exist. The human body has never had a problem being hydrated by water, so this particular claim is a perfect example of a pseudoscientific solution to an imaginary problem.
Kangen water is ionized, which makes it alkaline.
Pure water actually cannot be electrolyzed and dissociated into ions to any appreciable degree, it's not electrically conductive enough. You need to have a significant amount of minerals and impurities in order for it to be electrolyzed, which is why Kangen and its competitors also take your money for packets of mineral salt additives that you need to add to your water to make your machine do anything. Do this, and your water will become chemically alkaline with a cargo of dissolved metallic ions in solution. Basically, your $6,000 Kangen machine, when used with the provided chemicals, is a way to accomplish the same thing as making a weak Clorox bleach solution. To chemists, the term "ionized water" is meaningless.
Alkaline water promotes healthy weight loss, and boosts the immune system.
Two scientific-sounding medical claims, both too vague to be testable. "Immune system boosting" is medically meaningless, which is something we'll delve into in greater depth in a future episode. Basically, you can't be healthier than healthy; and a healthy immune system is a delicate balance between attacking foreign bodies and attacking your own healthy tissue. "Boosting" it, if such were possible, would cause your own healthy tissue to be attacked. This is called an autoimmune diease, such as lupus. It's not something you want. Alkaline water has never been shown to have any such effect.
Alkaline water is an antioxidant that neutralizes free radicals and slows the aging process.
We've discussed the whole phenomenon of antioxidants before too, in Skeptoid #86 about antioxidant fruit juices. Although oxidation does contribute to some age-related diseases, consuming antioxidants does not affect normal aging. Even if they did, you wouldn't get them from alkalized water: When water is alkalized, it contains hypochlorites, which are oxidizing agents. Basically, the opposite of what is claimed.
Drinking alkaline water reduces the acidity in your body and restores it to a healthy alkaline state. It is well known in the medical community that an overly acidic body is the root of many common diseases, such as obesity, osteoporosis, diabetes, high blood-pressure and more.
This is absolutely false. Your body's acidity is not, in any way, affected by the pH of what you eat or drink. Eating alkaline food stimulates production of acidic digestive enzymes, and eating acidic foods causes the stomach to produce fewer acids. Your body's primary mechanism for the control of pH is the exhalation of carbon dioxide, which governs the amount of carbonic acid in the blood. Nor has there ever been any plausible research that shows any connection between these diseases and body acidity, this also appears to be completely made up. This is a classic case of using simplistic terminology to sell a product to the scientifically illiterate.
Alkaline water detoxifies and cleanses your colon. Without it, mucoid plaque clogs your bowels and contributes to many diseases.
The dreaded mucoid plaque again! Mucoid plaque is an invention by the purveyors of colon cleansing products, it has never actually been observed in medical science. Since it doesn't exist, it's impossible to say whether it would be affected by an alkaline diet. Digestive enzymes neutralize the pH of whatever you eat by the time it gets to your bowels anyway, so it's hard to imagine what science might possibly support a claim such as this.
Kangen water is an anti-bacterial cleanser. Kills 99% of bacteria on contact. Spray it on your throat to prevent a cold.
Fascinating. They also promote Kangen water to aquarium owners because of its amazing power to support bacteria. The fact is that some bacteria are affected by pH, and some are not. Most thrive in a particular range, but relatively few bacteria are affected by the small 1 or 2 point difference between tap water and water that has been treated with Kangen mineral salt additives. It could be argued that sellers are simply saying whatever they think their target market wants to hear.
Acidic water, like that from your tap, is harmful.
The most common source of acidic water is the cleanest and most natural of all: normal rainwater, with a pH of about 5.6. Most tap water is within a point of 7, which is neutral, so your tap water is probably already more alkaline than clean rainwater. Are you still convinced that this is so dangerous that you need to drop two to six thousand dollars on a machine that any chemist or dietitian will tell you has no credible benefit?
There is one possible use for water if it could be made heavily alkaline, and that's to treat heartburn in the esophagus. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as effective as, for example, a single Tums tablet. However, water so treated would have to be so laden with salts that it would be virtually undrinkable. For more on this, see Skeptoid #128 for a discussion of treating gastric reflux.
Please, everyone: Before you invest money in a Kangen machine or any similar competitive machine, or in becoming a distributor for them, do two things. First, ask a chemist to review their scientific claims; and second, ask a doctor about the medical claims. Maybe you'll find that I'm wrong and the multilevel marketing people have discovered whole new branches of chemistry and medicine heretofore unknown to science. Or maybe you'll find that they're simply another spin-the-wheel-and-invent-a-new-age-pseudoscience trying to separate you from your money with fantastic technobabble and glamorous personal testimonials, and just maybe you'll save those thousands of dollars.
By Brian Dunning
Follow @BrianDunningThe United States is unlikely to experience another airline hijacking like those that occurred during 9/11, according to a secret government document mistakenly made public by a federal court.
The document, created by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), said terrorists are not focused on American commercial jets—an admission that could undermine the agency’s use of controversial body scanners at airport checkpoints.
The low-risk hijacking assessment was revealed after Jonathan Corbett sued (pdf) the TSA over its installing the Rapiscan “backscatter” body scanners. Corbett claimed the equipment’s use, as well as pat-downs by TSA agents, violated passengers’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches.
Once the case moved to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, a clerk inadvertently failed to place under seal the classified document that TSA provided as part of the discovery phase.
“As of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports; instead, their focus is on fundraising, recruiting, and propagandizing,” the TSA document reads, according to Courthouse News Service.
The brief also states that “the government concedes that it would be difficult to have a repeat of 9/11 due to hardened cockpit doors and the willingness of passengers to challenge hijackers rather than assume a hijacking merely means a diversion to Cuba. … Further, the government admits that there have been no attempted domestic hijackings of any kind in the 12 years since 9/11.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Defense of Airport Body Scanners Undermined (by Jack Bouboushian, Courthouses News Service)
Jonathan Corbett V. Transportation Security Administration (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit) (pdf)
TSA Runs Background Checks of U.S. Passengers before They Arrive at the Airport (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
TSA Ignores Year-Old Court Order to Regulate the Use of “Nude” Body Scanners (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Body and Vehicle Scanners Spreading and Using Higher Doses of Radiation (by Matt Bewig, AllGov)A- A+
Singer-songwriter Paul Simon, the man behind “Kodachrome,” “Graceland,” “The Obvious Child” and many other classic songs, will perform at Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend at 7:30 p.m. June 24 (doors open at 6 p.m.) as part of his national tour.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday and are $54.50 for general admission, $119.50 reserved at bit.ly/PSimonLSA17. Presale tickets will be available from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday (use password local). A presale for American Express card holders begins at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Low-slung chairs and small blankets will be allowed, but the first 10 rows in the reserved seating area of the concert will be will call-only tickets, and sold only online.
Simon, a 12-time Grammy winner, was of course one half of the beloved 1960s folk duo Simon and Garfunkel, and writer of many of the duo’s hits, including “Mrs. Robinson,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Cecilia.” His most recent album is “Stranger to Stranger,” released in 2016.
16713463The election results have left many people with the urge to stay politically engaged and keep fighting for change. Here are some ways to make a difference whether your chosen candidate won or lost:
Don’t just head to the polls in presidential election years. Vote in smaller, more regional junior high and high school class elections as well.
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Seek more of a leadership role within the comments section of your brother-in-law’s latest political rant.
Finally mailing in that ballot couldn’t hurt.
Counteract the environmental impact of America’s likely withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change by bringing your own bag to the grocery store.
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Consider signing a couple petitions that are unrelated to casting choices for film adaptations of comic books.
Support the freedom of the press by sending a big scoop their way whenever you can.
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The internet can often blur fact and speculation. Fight misinformation online with a polite dismantling of FaggotHunter1974’s argumentum ad baculum fallacy.
Volunteer your time at least an hour each week meeting up with like-minded people to concur that you are worried about the direction in which this country is headed.>after a while he stumbled upon an interesting study. it said something about schizophrenics and not getting cancer because of adrenochrome. adrenochrome or adrenolutin, one of the two, was supposed to be toxic to cancer cells. forgive me if i'm wrong here, i'm not sure if this is even true, i mean, it could be a cure for cancer if i'm/they're right (but i'm not sure of that either)..
>after a while he stumbled upon an interesting study. it said something about schizophrenics and not getting cancer because of adrenochrome. adrenochrome or adrenolutin, one of the two, was supposed to be toxic to cancer cells. forgive me if i'm wrong here, i'm not sure if this is even true, i mean, it could be a cure for cancer if i'm/they're right (but i'm not sure of that either)..What can a wealthy business man (himself a Christian) do to save the lives of a large number of Jews living under the oppressive state of Hitler’s regime? How about hire hundreds of Jews in his business and then send them on overseas assignments? This simple and brilliant plan was made a reality by Ernst Leitz II, and for his effort, countless Jews today have this courageous man to thank for life itself. The Leica Freedom Train was a rescue effort in which hundreds of Jews were smuggled out of Nazi Germany before the Holocaust by Ernst Leitz II of the Leica Camera company, and his daughter Elsie Kuehn-Leitz.
Incredibly, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for their heroic efforts. And, only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the “Leica Freedom Train” finally come to light.
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort. –Sydney Smith
Is there any regret worse than not acting on our core convictions? I believe that the first leap of courage in doing what seems impossible, may feel insurmountably difficult…but what follows soon after is pure liberation from fear and from living life as an imposter. …and speaking of courage (and inspired by Elsie)…a song I’ve added to my list.For almost two hundred years, Cerataspis monstrosa — the otherworldly looking "monster larva" pictured here — has been turning up in the guts of everything from dolphins to tuna. But for as widely known as this larval creature is, its adult counterpart has managed to remain a mystery.
Now, with the help of DNA analysis, bi |
copies were sold this in its first week.
For comparison, Nintendo revealed the Wii U sold 400,000 consoles during its first week on sale in 2012, while the Wii sold 600,000 units in its first eight days on sale. It's important to note both of those consoles were shipped in November of their respective launch years, while the Switch debuted in the spring. Nintendo launched the 3DS in March as well, and the handheld sold 440,000 units in its first week on sale in 2011.
Exit Theatre Mode
For comparison to Breath of the Wild, Nintendo said back in 2006 that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which launched alongside the Wii, sold 454,000 copies in its first week.
In other Nintendo hardware news, earlier today Nintendo revealed that it is discontinuing the NES Classic Edition.
And earlier this week, a new Nintendo Direct showed off 12 Switch games coming this year, including Payday 2 and Sonic Forces, as well as provided release dates for ARMS and Splatoon 2. Yellow Joy-Con controllers were also announced and Nintendo Switch docks will be available in stores.
For more on upcoming games for the system, check out IGN's Nintendo Switch wiki.
Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.The Eyes of My Mother. A young, lonely woman is consumed by her deepest and darkest desires after tragedy strikes her quiet country life. In their secluded farmhouse, a mother, formerly a surgeon in Portugal, teaches her daughter, Francisca, to understand anatomy and be unfazed by death. One afternoon, a mysterious visitor shatters the idyll of Francisca’s family life, deeply traumatizing the young girl, but also awakening unique curiosities. Though she clings to her increasingly reticent father, Francisca’s loneliness and scarred nature converge years later when her longing to connect with the world around her takes on a dark form.
Nonton The Eyes of My Mother
Anda sedang nonton film Horror online The Eyes of My Mother. Terima kasih atas kunjungan anda ke situs ini. Disini anda bisa nonton movie dan film terbaru gratis. Lengkap dengan subtitle Indonesia dan Inggris. Kami akan terus menerus menambah koleksi kami. Baik film layar kaca maupun TV Series. Mohon melaporkan kepada kami apabila anda menemukan film yang tidak bisa di putar. Dengan menekan tombol report yang terletak di sebelah bawah kanan dari player. Apabila ada pertanyaan anda bisa menghubungi kami melalui halaman kontak pada bagian atas. Akhir kata Selamat menonton. Pastikan anda follow twitter dan google plus nonton01.BJ, the dog thrown off the Blue Heron Bridge last month, is one step closer to finding a new home.
A Palm Beach County judge granted the county’s Animal Care and Control custody of the 8-year-old pup in a court ruling Wednesday, Animal Care and Control officials said.
See who was recently booked into the Palm Beach County Jail
BJ dislocated a leg in the 30-foot fall onto Phil Foster Park the afternoon of Jan. 18. He is, however, recovering well, Capt. David Walesky of Animal Care and Control said.
The black and white Jack Russell terrier mix has caught the eye of multiple potential families. "We don’t need more inquiries at this time," Walesky said about BJ’s adoption.
A female threw BJ on a mid-January afternoon off the Blue Heron bridge and into the park, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said. Before she did, she claimed dogs could fly, witnesses told the sheriff’s office.
The female was taken to a hospital for a mental-health evaluation. It is unclear whether she has been charged in the incident.CORONA >> The FBI served a search warrant Thursday at a home connected to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino.
FBI officials confirmed they served a search warrant at the Corona home in the 1700 block of Forum Way. A records check shows Syed Rizwan Farook’s brother Syed Raheel Farook living at the address.
“Federal agents executed a search warrant at a residence in Corona (Thursday) morning to seek evidence in an ongoing investigation,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said via email. “The affidavit in support of the warrant has been sealed by the court and we are, therefore, prohibited from commenting on the nature of the search.”
To serve a search warrant, authorities must have probable cause a crime was committed and items connected to the crime are likely to be found at the location.
• Photos: FBI search corona home of Syed Raheel Farook
No arrests were made at the time of the search, according to Eimiller.
Several government vehicles lined the narrow streets of the private community as agents and local law enforcement officials went in and out of the home of U.S. Navy veteran Syed Raheel Farook.
Neighbors said they began hearing movement in the neighborhood around 6 a.m. and saw agents carrying armloads of papers, manila envelopes and a computer tower from the home.
Residents also said they saw Syed Raheel Farook and his father, also named Syed Farook, outside the home speaking with agents soon after 6 a.m.
Initial media reports indicate that Farook’s father was being detained for safety concerns. Eimiller said via email that this was done to ensure the safety of the residents of the home.
“Residents are routinely removed for a brief period while a home is cleared as a safety precaution,” she wrote, adding that as soon as the investigation concluded, everyone was allowed back into the home or to leave.
The presence of law enforcement in the private community was disconcerting to some, but others saw it differently.
“In a way it’s kind of comforting to know the FBI is here,” said Jason Jones, who lives in the community. “To know that they are being diligent and making sure everything has been looked into.”
Jones said he’s seen the family before and after the Dec. 2 attack and said they seemed like nice people.
• Video: Federal agents serve a search warrant at the home of Syed Rizwan Farook’s brother
“The younger woman, the wife, she is a lovely person,” said Rachel Arajo of Tatiana Farook, wife of Syed Raheel Farook. “She visited and took care of my sister when she was sick.”
Arajo’s sister lives in the Corona community where the Farooks reside; Tatiana Farook was Arajo’s longtime hairdresser.
“When my sister was diagnosed with cancer last year, she and her husband were wonderful to her,” Arajo said. “They took her to the doctor and would bring her things. I don’t know about all the other things that happened, but I know they are very good people.”
Neighbor Stacy Mozer said Thursday that Syed Raheel Farook and his wife are ideal neighbors and very pleasant people.
Mozer says the family’s home was searched twice after the December terror attack and that authorities previously broke down the front door. Shards of wood and damage to the lock were still visible Thursday.
Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 22 more when they opened fire at the Inland Regional Center on Dec. 2. The two were killed later that day in a shootout with police.
The 14 people killed marked the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Syed Rizwan Farook’s family has said they had no inkling about the plot.
Syed Raheel Farook was in the Navy from 2003 to 2007, military records show. He was stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and received the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among other awards.
The search warrant came a day after Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company would fight federal government efforts to help the FBI hack into an iPhone used by shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.
A federal magistrate ordered Apple to help the FBI get into the phone but Cook said doing so would mean building a “backdoor” that would bypass digital locks protecting consumer information on iPhones. He says the software would be too dangerous to create.
So far, the only person charged in connection with the Dec. 2 attack is Enrique Marquez, a friend and former neighbor of Syed Rizwan Farook’s. Marquez is charged with providing the assault rifles used in the massacre, making false statements about when he bought the weapons and conspiring with Syed Rizwan Farook on a pair of previously planned attacks that were never carried out.
Marquez also faces charges of marriage fraud and lying on immigration paperwork. The FBI said he acknowledged that he was paid $200 a month to marry the sister of Syed Raheel Farook’s wife, and he lied on immigration papers that he lived with her so she could stay in the U.S.
Marquez and his wife listed their address at the same Corona home that was searched by the FBI on Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.The Bomb as illustrated in the report
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The Penney Report (1947), outlining the features of an atomic bomb based on the U.S. "Fat Man" pattern, and the tasks required to develop one for Britain, was declassified and made available to the the public under the Public Records Act. The report, appearing in the UK Public Record Office File AVIA 65/1163, "Implosion" (covering the years 1947-1953) was then withdrawn from public access during 2002 and will not be reconsidered until 2014.
The actual legal status of this file remains as a public record. Its access condition has been changed to "Retained by Department under Section 3.4" (of the PRA) which means that the file has been returned to the custody of the originating department (Ministry of Supply) or its successor. This limitation of access does not constitute reimposition of a secret security marking, and no attempt appears to have been made by the UK government to contact people who had previously obtained photocopies copies of this file, until the "Fat Man" diagram appeared on Wikileaks. The diagram and a HTML version of the text first appeared on http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/ in July 2007 but apparently remained unnoticed and unreported. The diagram was removed from the Nuclear Weapon Archive site, for political, but accordingly to the sites owner, not for proliferation reasons, in March 2008 following requests from the British Government set off by the Wikileaks exposure.
The Head of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Counter Proliferation Department, Regional Issues, requested Wikileaks remove the material, stating:
Wikileaks considered the requests but did not find them to be credible. A record of the correspondence can be found in the 'Note' section of this page.
Wikileaks received the following correspondence from the British Government over diagram appearing as the first page of the document, which was released prior to the rest of the material.
From: Isabella.McRae@fco.gov.uk To: wikileaks@sunshinepress.org, legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: Nuclear bomb design information Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:07:03 +0000 (GMT) Dear Wikileaks, We have recently been alerted to the fact that you have put censored nuclear bomb designs on your website. Grateful if you could remove these as soon as possible, as I hope you agree that some censorship at least is in the public good. These designs could aid countries wishing to develop nuclear weapons, hence the desire to keep them out of the public domain. The page I am specifically referring to is: <http://wikileaks.org/wiki/First_atomic_bomb_diagram> Please let me know if you agree with me, and if you have decided to remove them. Kind regards, Isabella Isabella McRae Head, Regional Issues Section Counter Proliferation Department Tel: 020 7008 2253 Fax: 020 7008 2860 Visit our blogs at http://blogs.fco.gov.uk > P Help save paper - do you need to print this email? > *********************************************************************************** Visit http://www.fco.gov.uk for British foreign policy news and travel advice; and http://www.i-uk.com - the essential guide to the UK. We keep and use information in line with the Data Protection Act 1998. We may release this personal information to other UK government departments and public authorities. Please note that all messages sent and received by members of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and its missions overseas may be monitored centrally. This is done to ensure the integrity of the system. ********************************************************************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay Lim <editor@sunshinepress.org> Sent: 19 March 2008 16:28 To: Isabella McRae Cc: wikileaks@sunshinepress.org; legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: Re: Nuclear bomb design information Dear Ms McRaw, We take your concerns seriously. However, the editors and a number of nuclear physicists are of the opinion, which is outlined in the article summary, that our release of the material will not contribute to the the proliferation of nuclear weapons. If our argument is in error we would be happy to be corrected by a detailed response. Kind Regards, Jay Lim -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Isabella.McRae@fco.gov.uk To: editor@sunshinepress.org Cc: wikileaks@sunshinepress.org, legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: RE: Nuclear bomb design information Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:50:09 +0000 (GMT) Dear Mr Lim, Thank you for your prompt response. I will talk to our experts here and do my best to work up a detailed explanation for you (though some of the explanation may be classified!). I am glad to read that you have at least checked this with a number of nuclear physicists before putting it on your website. I would just add that I don't see that the information furthers your aims - i.e. reduc ed corruption, better government and stronger democracies. Therefore, I would be very grateful if you could remove the information while I work up a detailed explanation fo r you. I will try to do this as quickly as possible - I am away over Easter but if you could give me until 2 April, I'll send you something then. Kind regards, Isabella McRae -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay Lim <editor@sunshinepress.org> Sent: 19 March 2008 17:11 To: Isabella McRae Cc: editor@sunshinepress.org; wikileaks@sunshinepress.org; legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: Re: Nuclear bomb design information Dear Isabella. We will look into this. The response does not have to be a thesis, but it should be of similar effort to the argument we gave. The documents are a substantial piece of world history and have been released, then censored. Implicit in our core mission is preventing censorship of such documents. That said I don't want this guide to blind us to doing what is right. From our research I believe we have done the right thing, but as I said, we are happy to shown otherwise on an issue of such importance. Kind regards, Jay Lim -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Isabella.McRae@fco.gov.uk To: editor@sunshinepress.org Cc: editor@sunshinepress.org, wikileaks@sunshinepress.org, legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: RE: Nuclear bomb design information Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:30:17 +0000 (GMT) Dear Jay, Thanks for your understanding. If there is no proliferation sensitivity with this info then I can't see any problem in having it in the open domain. I need to get an expert opinion first to be confident of that. So in the mean time, to avoid doing any dam age, please do remove the info. I'll email you with a full opinion (not a thesis though) on 2 April. Kind regards, Isabella -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Isabella.McRae@fco.gov.uk To: editor@sunshinepress.org Cc: editor@sunshinepress.org, wikileaks@sunshinepress.org, legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: RE: Nuclear bomb design information Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:56:04 +0000 (GMT) Jay, I have had an initial assessment from our experts. They are extremely concerned by the drawing you have posted on your website and assess it is of serious proliferation concern, and possibly terrorism concern. Please remove it as soon as possible - not to do so is deeply morally irresponsible. As requested, I will work up a longer and more detailed case by 2 April. Isabella -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay Lim [mailto:editor@wikileaks.org] Sent: 19 March 2008 21:19 To: Isabella McRae Cc: editor@sunshinepress.org; wikileaks@sunshinepress.org; legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: Re: Nuclear bomb design information Without wanting to be uncharitable, if FCO's experts believe this particular document to be of "terrorism concern", we do not find them to be credible and may I suggest, neither will anyone else. Similarly after consultations it strikes us as extraordinary that the FCO claims the Wikileaks documents are a proliferation issue worthy of censorship, but, apparently, not worthy of assigning a staff member to address the issue during its Easter break. May I suggest that the FCO is engaging in busy work, pending some hyperthetical White Hall telephone call in response to the press attention our analysis of the document has received? The document has been available in one form or another since 2002, and on the internet since 2007. What has the FCO being doing in the mean time? Or are we meant to believe that states seeking to become atomic powers only read the popular press? While we will always keep an open mind on such an important issue, until we see some clear indication that the FCO takes its request that Wikileaks engage in an unprecedented act of self-censorship seriously, by telling us why we should censor, this request will not be acted on by Wikileaks. Jay Lim -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Isabella.McRae@fco.gov.uk To: editor@wikileaks.org Cc: editor@sunshinepress.org, wikileaks@sunshinepress.org, legal@sunshinepress.org Subject: RE: Nuclear bomb design information Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:57:49 +0000 (GMT) Jay, I'm sorry this is your view. We will be in touch in due course. Isabella --------------------------------------------------------------------------
As of Tue April 8, 2008, no further response was received.It looks like it’s a good time to be a Red mage in Standard, Patrick Sullivan must have been jumping for joy. Not only did the winner of the Grand Prix in Moscow play a Red deck but also Tom ‘The Boss’ Ross piloted one for his Standard portion at the SCG Invitational. The most interesting about that is they all ran on similar but completely different lines and stretched the bounds of Red to the limit. This deck is one of the more creature heavy builds.
This deck exemplifies what it means to be The Beatdown. It looks like Aggro has positioned itself between Control and Midrange in the metagame right now to exploit it’s speed and destructive nature. Now has been a great time to blast your opponent to bits either using creature or burn based strategies. It’s not likely that this Red mage dominance will continue but shows that any given weekend you can not count out any deck that has power behind it. And counting from twenty to zero has been a fundamental aspect of this game of Magic.
Eric J SeltzerSouth Korean Farmer Gets Rich by Massaging Fish
In many respects, Han Sang Hun is a typical South Korean farmer. He works hard; he sows and he reaps. But he doesn’t raise crops.
Hun raises sturgeon, and has discovered a way to feel when the fish are ready to produce nature’s real-life ambrosia: caviar.
Some of Hun’s caviar commands extortionate auction bids of up to $40,000 per kilogram! Wait, these are only fish eggs, right?
While Russian (one of the world’s leading caviar producers) has a long, rich tradition of whacking fish with blunt objects and poking them with screwdrivers before scraping the roe out, Hun walks in “the gentle way.” Through sheer accident and dumb luck, Hun and his crew discovered a way to massage the abdomens of their sturgeons to determine when they’re ready to produce (i.e., spew out the goods into a bucket) and to further stimulate production of the dainty delight.
Hun’s sturgeon rubbing has earned him a hold on about 10% of the entire world’s caviar market, making him a very wealthy fellow.
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Reddit“This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities.”
A hacker group calling itself the Impact Team targeted extramarital affair website AshleyMadison.com on Tuesday, dumping the account details of an estimated 37 million users. searchable list, linked by web security and risk management website CSO Online, reveals several idaho.gov addresses, including two from the Idaho Department of Lands and one each from the Central District Health District, Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Health and Welfare, Idaho Department of Correction and Idaho Transportation Department.The site, a social network for users looking to cheat on their spouses, was threatened with a data breach last month unless owner Avid Life Media agreed to take down both AshleyMadison.com and related website EstablishedMen.com. When the demand went unmet, the Impact Team posted 35 gigabytes—9.7 GB compressed—to a dark web site.The release came with a caveat that many accounts listed in the breach were false or set up by users but never active. However, CSO Online reported more than 15,000 accounts were registered using a.mil or.gov email address."We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data," the group wrote under the heading "Time's Up!"Ashley Madison officials fired back, writing in a statement:With the authenticity of the leak confirmed by multiple independent sources, AshleyMadison.com users are scrambling to find out whether their data was compromised. International Business Times reports websites have already been established to search for specific email addresses or user names, including haveibeenpwned.com and ashleymadisonleakeddata.com. The website trustify.info also offers to comb through the data dump.Lewis Hamilton isn’t thinking of stopping after clinching his fourth world championship in the Mexican Grand Prix yesterday.
“Four is a great number,” he told journalists after yesterday’s race. “I want number five now.”
In a lengthy post-race discussion with the assembled media Hamilton described the changes he’d made in his approach to racing this year, such as working without a personal trainer.
“The way I’ve prepared this year, contrary to what people may think, training on your own, ‘no-one can train on their own’ that’s what people would say. Travelling around the world the way I do, all these different things.”
“But just doing it your own way and finding your own way I think, it’s a day like today, when you win a championship, in front of so many people, it just solidifies your belief in yourself and your families belief in you, and what they stand for.”
“I’m proud of all my family and it’s crazy to think that I’m continuing to stamp the Hamilton name in the history books. Beyond my time there will be kids that will know the name and that’s probably what I’m most proud of.”
“I can’t even tell you what my dad did to help me get where I am today. No matter how many wins I get, no matter how successful I am, I can never pay that back, but I just try and grab it with both hands. The opportunity that they’ve provided me and know also that there’s a lot of kids, a lot of people around the world, that are watching me, whether it’s for inspiration or for guidance, and so I’m trying to be the brightest light I can to shine that in their direction.”
Hamilton said he hopes his achievement inspires other young people to pursue their dreams.
“I hope my winning the fourth time, world champion from Stevenage, I hope that’s a testimony to show that you really can do something from nowhere,” he added. “I hope one day I’m able to help find the next me because he’s somewhere out there.”
“When I was growing up there was a couple of teachers that said ‘you’re never going to amount to anything’,” he added, “so I wonder what they’re thinking now when they watch me today?”
“For sure, they’re probably watching. Or at least they’ll read the news tomorrow. I wonder what they’re thinking? I wonder if they’re thinking ‘I helped that young lad,’ or are they thinking ‘you know what, I regret what I said and I’ve grown from it.’ I hope that’s really the case. I hope they’ve grown though it. I hope that whoever’s kids they are teaching today, they’re encouraging them, rather than pulling them down.”
Since he joined Mercedes in 2013 Hamilton was won the world championship three times. “I wonder how many people in here thought it was the worst move to Mercedes,” he said.
“Of course it’s been years already before you’ve changed your opinion – but isn’t it cool? Isn’t it cool to see someone take a risk like I did and it to come out the way it has? I’m really, really happy about it and proud of all the people that have helped me achieve it and looking forward to the future.”
Hamilton paid tribute to his championship rival Sebastian Vettel, saying that fighting against another driver of similar success is how the championship ‘should be’.
“To be able to battle someone else who is a four time world champion, a proven world champion, who’s got great skill and a team also that knows how to win championships, to extract the most from my guys, to compete with that, that’s how every championship needs to be,” he said. “I hope there’s more championships like this one where we have this tough battle.”
“I’ve enjoyed it this year more than ever”
Next year is Hamilton’s last on his current contract at Mercedes, but he indicated he isn’t ready to stop racing soon.
“I’ve enjoyed it this year more than ever,” he added. “I do think about [how] it would be so nice at some stage just to live in one place, a lot more socialising, walking your dogs every day or surfing, whatever it is, but staying in one place for a period of time.”
“But then I’m thinking there’s a lot of life to live beyond 40. There’s a lot to go and so the balance is: I can’t come back to Formula One, so there’s going to be a point in which OK, I’ve had enough.”
“I’ve already been blessed and had such a wonderful time here in these ten years. Hopefully I have my place here and I’m going to continue to – whilst I’m at my best – continue to try and… and I want to go out on top so that’s my goal.”
“Obviously each year, I could do the easy thing like obviously Nico [Rosberg] did which is just stop and retreat with these four titles, but I think there’s more in me, I think there’s more to come, more of a challenge, as there’s harder times ahead and I like that, I love that, that’s challenging.”
2017 Mexican Grand Prix1. Kristine Potter’s series of black and white photographs, The Grey Line, is a collection of portraits made at The United States Military Academy at West Point.
4. Kristine writes, “While traditional portraiture of soldiers serves to show their achievements, excellence and their sense of duty, these images seek to describe the complicated psychologies under their developing personas.”
7. The United States Military Academy at West Point was founded in 1802 by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and has produced a large number of high-ranking officers and U.S. politicians.
10. Kristine’s photos capture the cadets before they are fully formed soldiers and officers to explore ideas of masculinity, allegiance, sexuality, and vulnerability.
18. “The environments are not heroic nor do they represent the almost certain destination of most of the cadets upon graduation; blurring signs of their purpose or of the political.”
30. Kristine Potter is a photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. To view more of her work, visit her website at http://www.kristinepotter.com/.
Share your photo essays and ideas with our photo essay editor at Gabriel.Sanchez@ buzzfeed.com. We’re super interested in sharing your unique photo-vision with the world!
.Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant looks over at Oklahoma State quarterback J.W. Walsh (4) on the sideline during the Cowboys Classic NCAA football game between Florida State and Oklahoma State at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas Saturday August 30, 2014. (Andy Jacobsohn/The Dallas Morning News)
Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant went back to his alma mater Oklahoma State this week to help the "other" Cowboys unveil their new uniforms.
But while he was there, Bryant paid a visit to OSU's academic center to see Nikki Jones, a long-time Oklahoma State learning specialist who works with student-athletes on a daily basis to assist in the organization of their crazy lives.
Jones was heavily involved in Braynt's academic success at Oklahoma State, being named all-academics in the Big 12 before being drafted by the Dallas Cowboys with the 24th pick in the 2010 draft.
In a video posted to his Facebook, Bryant hugs Jones and thanks her while she whispers, "I'm so proud of you." Bryant also wrote a heart-felt note to Jones on the Facebook post, writing, "I put you through a lot and you never gave up on me."
You can see the video and the full note below.
Click here to enjoy the post on your mobile app.Media Bias: The Washington Post led its Monday paper with a story titled "How Clinton's Email Scandal Took Root." What it revealed was that, left to the mainstream press, the story might never have hit the ground.
No one reading the Post's 5,000-word account can come away thinking that the Clinton email scandal is unimportant.
The FBI now has 147 agents chasing down leads. A key person involved in the scandal has been granted immunity. Hillary Clinton -- who has already been caught in several lies -- might be questioned by federal agents. There are fairly obvious violations of the law, even if it's just those governing record-keeping. And there were, and continue to be, concerns that national security secrets were compromised, or at least casually disregarded.
The story details, for example, the many high-level security concerns that officials had about her use of a private BlackBerry to do her emailing, to say nothing of her homebrew email server.
Clinton got a warning from a State Department security official in March 2009 that "any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving emails, and exploiting calendars."
Clinton responded that she "gets it," but as the Post reports, she "kept using her private BlackBerry -- and the basement server."
The Post deserves credit for devoting so much space to summing the entire saga up. And for exposing something the reporter and his editors probably never intended: The media's negligence as the scandal unfolded.
While the New York Times was the first national media outlet to write about Clinton's use of a private email account last March, the Post summation makes clear that the mainstream press had almost nothing to do with uncovering the truth or advancing the story.
The Post notes that it was a nonprofit group called CREW that first cracked the story open, when the State Department responded to its FOIA request for Clinton’s State Department email addresses by saying “no records responsive to your request."
The much-ballyhooed House Select Committee on Benghazi discovered her use of a private email account after demanding copies of her email traffic around the time of the attack on the embassy.
Private cybersecurity firm Venafi discovered how Clinton's email server had been unencrypted for months. The company "took it upon itself," the Post notes, to publish its findings on its own website.
The public release of all Clinton's State Department emails resulted not from pressure from NBC News, CNN or the New York Times, but from a FOIA request by a startup online news site called Vice News.
Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, has been more aggressive than any media outlet in going after Clinton's records, and as a result uncovered several damning emails, including a chain of emails showing how her staff was "taking steps that would help her circumvent" Clinton’s own promise of openness and transparency.
And where has the “telling truth to power” press been during all this time? Sure, they’ve been passively sharing information when it came out -- although often grudgingly and dismissively. But there are few elements of it that reporters themselves were responsible for breaking.
Normally, with a scandal this juicy and involving a would-be president, reporters would be falling over themselves to “advance the story.” But “normal” never seems to apply when a scandal involves a Democrat.
The FBI has 147 investigators focused on the Clinton email case. One wonders how many investigative reporters the New York Times, the Post, and all the other big media outlets have.Something happened 100 years ago that changed forever the way we fly. And then the way we explore space. And then how we study our planet. That something was the establishment of what is now known as NASA Langley Research Center (LRC), which is commemorating its 100th anniversary in 2017.
Just three months after the United States entered into World War I, Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory was carved out of coastal farmland near Hampton, Virginia, as the nation’s first civilian facility focused on aeronautical research. The goal was, simply, to "solve the fundamental problems of flight." Under the direction of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), ground was broken for the center on July 17, 1917.
From the beginning, Langley engineers devised technologies for safer, higher, farther, and faster air travel. More than 40 state-of-the-art wind tunnels and supporting infrastructure have been built over the years, and researchers use those facilities to develop many of the wing shapes still used today in airplane design. Better propellers, engine cowlings, all-metal airplanes, new kinds of rotorcraft and helicopters, faster-than-sound flight—these were among Langley’s many groundbreaking aeronautical advances.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired these natural-color images of Langley Research Center and the surrounding Hampton Roads area on April 9, 2017.
During World War II, Langley tested planes like the P-51 Mustang in the nation’s first wind tunnel built for full-sized aircraft. Langley later partnered with the military on the Bell X-1, an experimental aircraft that would fly faster than the speed of sound. Follow-on research would extend the reach of American aeronautics into supersonics and hypersonics. By 1958, NACA would become NASA, and Langley’s accomplishments would soar from air into space.
Over the past half century, LRC has contributed significantly to the development of rockets and to the spacecraft testing and astronaut training of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. In particular, astronauts practiced Moon landings here with the lunar lander. Langley also led the unmanned Lunar Orbiter initiative, which not only mapped the Moon, but helped choose the spot for the first human landing. With the Viking 1 landing in 1976, Langley led the first successful U.S. mission to the surface of Mars. All along, the center and its researchers have contributed to the study of Earth via satellite and through instruments flown on the space shuttles, space station, and NASA aircraft.
Though NASA now has major centers and facilities around the country, Langley remains a world leader in aviation and aeronautics research, exploring ideas for new aircraft and looking for ways to make air travel less polluting, more fuel efficient, and quieter. Read more about the 100th anniversary of the Langley Research Center by visiting this site. You can also watch a documentary about Langley by clicking here.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Jim Schultz, NASA Langley Research Center, adapted by Mike Carlowicz.This article is about the political book by Muammar Gaddafi. For other uses, see Green Book
The Green Book (Arabic: الكتاب الأخضر al-Kitāb al-Aḫḍar) is a short book setting out the political philosophy of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The book was first published in 1975. It was "intended to be read for all people."[1] It is said to have been inspired in part by The Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao).[2][3] Both were widely distributed both inside and outside their country of origin, and "written in a simple, understandable style with many memorable slogans."[4] An English translation was issued by the Libyan People's Committee,[5] and a bilingual English/Arabic edition was issued in London by Martin, Brian & O'Keeffe in 1976. During the Libyan Civil War, copies of the book were burned by anti-Gaddafi demonstrators.[6]
Influence [ edit ]
In Libya [ edit ]
According to British author and former Greater London Council member George Tremlett, Libyan children spent two hours a week studying the book as part of their curriculum.[7] Extracts were broadcast every day on television and radio.[7] Its slogans were also found on billboards and painted on buildings in Libya.[7]
International [ edit ]
By 1993 lectures and seminars on The Green Book had been held at universities and colleges in France, Eastern Europe, Colombia, and Venezuela.[7]
Contents [ edit ]
The Green Book consists of three parts and has 110 pages.[7]
The Solution of the Problem of Democracy: The |
, with the goal being to make amends and take a personal inventory, using introspection to admit and recognize racist behavior they have exhibited in the past.
At the meetings, people share their experiences and feelings regarding race. The pastor confronts members with scenarios from their own lives, in which they could have acted differently, and challenges them to explore their attitudes and actions towards people of color.
“We have all got some residual racism in us no matter how good we think we are at it,” said Stephen Mosier, a 74-year-old retired college administrator who attends RA meetings.
Reverend Nathan King of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Concord, North Carolina, introduced the meetings to a mostly white congregation. “People are in different places," he said. "Some say, ‘I’m a racist.’ Or they say, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’m not sure.'”
But not many people are willing to go before a group of strangers and admit that they are racist. Buford says this is a significant obstacle to the movement's growth. Just like with drugs and alcohol, getting over that major detail is the first step.HFM vegan bodybuilding diary: first entry
June 27, 2017 by Tom Rowley
HFM journalist and dedicated vegan, Andy Greening, has taken on the HFM bodybuilding challenge on a strictly animal-free diet. With help from vegan foods supplier, Pulsin, and personal trainer Rich Allsop, Andy will take on a protein heavy plant-based diet and be taken beyond his limits in the gym.
I’ve always been battling with my weight as far back as I can remember. At the age of around 16 I managed to hit 16 stone. So when I was 17 years old, I thought enough is enough. I managed to get down to 11 stone by the time I was 17 and almost to the point I could consider myself an average weight for a 5’11 young male.
Then there was university, the calorific, booze led downfall in many young Brits lives. Luckily I went to university in Scarborough, which is essentially a town in the hills by the sea – so I was no stranger to some intense walking. Also, tried to keep my interest in running and going to the gym. Luckily I’ve always had an interest in food and cooking, so I’d use any given moment to cook something hearty rather than resort to the Rustler burger.
Fast track 3 years later and I started working full time. I managed to keep up my running, even entering the Bournemouth Bay 10km. However, as the years passed, and the more hours I spent behind a desk, all my hard work from my teenage years was being undone by lunchtime baguettes, office doughnuts and weekend binge drinking.
Fast track another few years and I’m now living in London and decided to turn vegetarian around the age of 28. If you were to ask my friends if the BBQ loving, food fanatic glutton grazer decided to call it a day on meat, they wouldn’t believe you were talking about the same person.
What started this change? At first I had no ‘beef’ with vegetarian alternatives – it wasn’t uncommon to find me making a veggie chili out of Quorn mince or a Thai green out of Quorn chicken. But the emotional reasoning happened when I started to read about the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China. As someone who loves dogs and growing up with them all my life, I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to torment and eat these beautiful animals. Then I started to think about farming and why that was any different, and then before you know it, I stopped eating meat.
One year later, I submerged myself into a vegan social media echo chamber which got me thinking not just ethically, but nutritionally too.
I am no stranger to exercise, or eating a balanced diet. My biggest problem is that I’m pretty lazy. I don’t lay around in my bed all day on my days off, I’m happy to walk rather than drive, I will always try and take the stairs but like a lot of people I struggle to keep an exercise routine in my life I can stick too.
I’ve owned a FitBit for around 2 years and I’m usually smashing my 10,000 steps goal daily. The problem is making the most of my time. My evenings, like most people, are sacred and to give up precious hours relaxing on the sofa with the fiancée watching Netflix is a tough choice.
Efficiently working a routine around fitness has always come second in my life. This is something that I plan to change for good. In 8 weeks’ time I’ll be getting married so this is my one chance to make sure I can look back on my wedding photos and be proud of the effort I put in.
So how do I plan to achieve my body goals ready for my wedding?
Working alongside the Flo team at the YMCA Club in Tottenham Court Road, they will put me on a program of:
Personal Training (Rich Allsop)
Beauty Treatment (Lyn Montaque)
Sports Massage (David Matthews)
Nutrition Workshop (Nick Owen)
The Flo team offer a balanced, unified approach to fitness and wellbeing along with a open view to veganism within training making these the perfect team for the job.
So, 2 months of selling my soul to gym, am I ready? In short, yes. Alongside the help of the Flo team and having a date to hit, it will give me light at the end of the tunnel.
Be sure to keep your eyes open for my next post on how week one went. Also, you can read more about my 8-week fitness journey on my blog at Greening’s Grains & Gains.UPDATE: Former NFL safety Darren Sharper was indicted in New Orleans on two counts of aggravated rape and a count of simple rape, a spokesman for the district attorney's office announced Friday, Dec. 12.
****
This story appeared in the June 30, 2014 issue of Sports Illustrated. To read a digital version of the magazine, go here. Special reporting by Emily Kaplan.
How much evidence do you need to believe the worst about a man? Is one serious accusation enough? How about two? Three? Four? Most of us agree: If a man has been accused of raping nine women, in six separate incidents, the public can reach a verdict before a jury.
As one friend of Darren Sharper’s says, if he is being framed, this is “one hell of a conspiracy.” Since January, the former NFL star has been charged with drugging and raping two women in separate incidents in Los Angeles, and drugging and raping two more in Arizona. Two women have accused him of sexually assaulting them in New Orleans; police there have a warrant for his arrest but haven’t charged him. Las Vegas police are investigating him for drugging and raping two women in his hotel suite there. (Lawyers for Sharper in these four states either maintain his innocence or declined comment.) After these incidents came to light, a woman told Miami Beach police that Sharper raped her; they investigated but did not pursue charges.
Rapists come in every color, from every tax bracket, out of every neighborhood. We know this. But the allegations are still stunning, especially if you knew the handsome, bright and genial Sharper, a five-time Pro Bowl safety and member of the NFL’s All-Decade team for the 2000s. He dated actress Gabrielle Union, asked team executives for business advice and gracefully transitioned into an on-air job at the NFL Network after he retired in 2011.
On the field, Sharper was the epitome of reliability, starting 182 of a possible 205 games over his 14-year career with the Packers, Vikings and Saints. He seemed responsible in his personal life as well. Sharper had one child, Amara, and he once wrote in NFL Dads Dedicated to Daughters, a book produced by the NFLPA, that she “makes [me] mindful of how women are treated.” In 2009 he denied rumors that he had a second child, telling the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “The next time I have a baby will be after I put a ring on [a woman’s finger].” He also mentored young players. Vikings teammate Dontarrious Thomas says Sharper told him, “People you may think are your friends aren’t, in certain situations. You’ve got to protect yourself.”
Many friends and former teammates now wonder if they knew Sharper at all, but at least one is certain that he does. Interior designer David Arcadian caters to the rich and famous -- his company is called Rockstar Interiors -- and since working on Sharper’s Miami Beach condo, Arcadian says the two have been tight. He dismisses the accusations. “This is impossible,” he says. “Darren just glides through life. I have yet to see him do anything remotely hostile.... Millionaires don’t rob banks. People like Darren don’t need to do anything but smile to get their way.”
*****
Sometimes Sharper did not even have to smile. Former linebacker Jude Waddy understands. Waddy roomed with Sharper at William & Mary and played with him on the Packers. “My female friends are very intelligent, articulate and successful, but when he was coming [to] town, they were like, Let him know I don’t have any panties on,” Waddy says. “They wanted to meet him, at least to make an offer or to present themselves. Whatever they get from it, he had it.”
But Sharper played it cool. Says Jammal Brown, a teammate on the Saints, “He acted like it was old news. He already had a plan with somebody.”
In crude athletic terms: Sharper let the game come to him. But the casual approach belied an active bedroom life, even by pro-athlete standards, former teammates say. One says Sharper seemed to sleep with a different woman every night -- “almost like it was a sex addiction.” Sharper’s sexual partners were often in their late teens or early 20s.
How did that Darren Sharper end up accused of such heinous crimes? An SI investigation reveals a man that his friends never knew, surrounded by questionable characters, in a descent that landed him in a Los Angeles jail.
In the days leading up to Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, Sharper grew close to St. Bernard Parish police sergeant Brandon Licciardi, according to a friend of Licciardi’s. Sharper made well-promoted appearances at The Daq Shaq, a bar owned by Licciardi, and introduced him to other Saints. Licciardi, now 29, basked in the relationships, says a source close to Licciardi, collecting autographs and showing off memorabilia.
After Sharper retired, he and Licciardi would frequent New Orleans bars and clubs. A source tells SI that New Orleans police have asked at least one Licciardi associate about Licciardi’s allegedly improper use of a powerful medication and his relationship with Sharper. (Licciardi’s attorney, Pat Fanning, tells SI he was unaware of that, but said Licciardi doesn’t use drugs. A spokesman for the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office said Licciardi was recently removed from the traffic division but declined to specify why.)
Friends may have thought Sharper was still gliding through life. But to some observers his behavior had become increasingly strange, and one woman described him as “desperate.” She told SI she was 22 when Sharper and another man hit on her and her 22-year-old friend in August 2012 at Republic, a trendy New Orleans club. Sharper went on a couple of dates with her friend and then asked to meet the friend’s parents, according to the friend. He also asked his date to drive him to a hotel, then said he didn’t have his wallet and wanted her to pay for the room. She left without paying, and they never went out again.
At a Mardi Gras event in 2011, Sharper met three college-age women, took them to his condominium and served them alcoholic drinks, according to a parent of one of the women. Another parent says the women left because Sharper was “acting like, who was going to sleep with him?”
Darren Sharper was an All-Pro safety with the New Orleans Saints in 2009. Simon Bruty/SI
Another woman told SI that she was 19 when Sharper -- then in his late 30s -- bought her a drink at Republic; she left 10 minutes later, characterizing his behavior as “creepy.” A Republic employee says Sharper was the “old guy in the club” and didn’t seem to realize it.
Sharper also frequented Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar & Restaurant, a favorite spot of young locals; he lived in an apartment above the bar while with the Saints. A photo of Sharper hangs on the wall, alongside those of other Saints, but in recent years he seemed out of place there, often standing behind the deejay. One employee tells SI, “He lurked. He didn’t talk to anyone. It was weird.”
After retiring, Sharper met Erik Nunez, now 27, who described himself on Facebook as an “NFL events coordinator.” He has actually been a server at Morton’s Steakhouse in New Orleans for the past three years. His attorney, Jeffrey Smith, says Nunez met Sharper in 2012 when he helped Sharper with some charity work. Nunez had tried out for his high school football team in Metairie, La., but failed a drug test, according to former Grace King High coach Mike Virgets, who describes Nunez as “kind of a loner... the type that was searching for identity.”
According to the warrant for Sharper’s arrest and a police report, in September 2013, Sharper and Nunez took two women to Sharper’s apartment above Lucy’s and then raped them. Smith says that Nunez “committed no crimes.” Police say Sharper and Nunez admitted to acquaintances that they had each engaged in oral and vaginal sex with the women without their knowledge or permission. That sounds like a simple confession, but rape cases are rarely simple. Even Sharper’s.
*****
One of Sharper’s attorneys in California, Leonard Levine, says he is “hopeful” that Sharper will be exonerated. This may not be far-fetched. Cumulatively, the accusations are overwhelming. But individually, each may be difficult to prove. If the accusers voluntarily joined Sharper in his hotel room or apartment after a night of drinking and don’t remember the assault, can a jury eliminate reasonable doubt?
Cases like this have always vexed prosecutors. The Rape Abuse & Incest National Network estimates that of every 100 rapes, only 40 are reported to police, just 10 result in an arrest and a mere four lead to a felony conviction. If Sharper is convicted of a felony, the verdict may be traced to another rape case a generation ago.
In 1991, as Sharper, a lightly recruited player at Hermitage (Va.) High, waited for offers from big-time schools such as Maryland and Virginia that never came, the country was transfixed by the trial of William Kennedy Smith. The nephew of John F. Kennedy, Smith had been drinking with his cousin Patrick and Patrick’s dad, Senator Ted Kennedy, in Palm Beach, Fla., when Smith met Patricia Bowman. The two went back to the Kennedy compound and walked along the beach.
Bowman said Smith tackled her and raped her. The Palm Beach police chief said he was “99 percent sure” a sexual assault had occurred.
In the wake of Bowman’s allegation, three other women—a doctor, a medical student and a law student—came forward and said Smith had sexually assaulted them between 1983 and ’88. But on the first day of the Smith trial in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, Judge Mary Lupo barred those three from testifying.
Activists were outraged, but Lupo had sound legal reasons. Under Rule 404 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, “Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait.” Put simply: Testimony must be directly related to the accusation at hand.
Smith was acquitted in 77 minutes. Would the verdict have been different if the jurors had known he had been accused of sexually assaulting three other women? Many activists believed so, and Lupo’s decision echoed three years later. As part of a crime bill, Congress added Rule 413 to the Federal Rules of Evidence: “In a criminal case in which the defendant is accused of an offense of sexual assault, evidence of the defendant’s commission of another offense or offenses of sexual assault is admissible, and may be considered for its bearing on any matter to which it is relevant.” Put simply: The rules are different for sexual assault than for other crimes.
Rule 413, which is often followed in state courts, is controversial. Why is the standard for rape different than for murder? Some attorneys argue it is solely because of the low conviction rate in sexual-assault cases, and that it is unfair.
In Sharper’s case, it is possible -- perhaps even likely -- that a judge will allow a prosecutor in, say, California to introduce the rape allegations from cases in Arizona, Louisiana and Nevada. How much evidence do you need to believe the worst about a man? For some jurors that may be enough.
*****
Of course some millionaires do rob banks -- if not with a mask and a gun. And some handsome, successful men commit rape. Rapists are not just motivated by sex but by “power over someone else, control over someone else,” says clinical psychologist David Lisak, a leading researcher on acquaintance rape. “It can be a validation for them.” Sometimes human desire comes to rest in dark places, for reasons that are hard to understand, and even harder to foresee. Last November, Sharper drank with several people at American Junkie, a bar in Scottsdale. The bar, and the Arizona State students inside it, attract many pro athletes. A former employee working that night says Sharper was “very nice to the staff” as he ordered bottles of vodka for his table -- until he left without paying his $700 bill.
One woman at American Junkie that night told police that she “did not feel Sharper had come on to her in any way.” Another woman who was there that night -- she had known Sharper before and picked him up at the airport -- said she had had consensual sex with him in the past. These two women told police that Sharper went back with them to one of their apartments, then drugged and raped them both.
In the fall of 2012, three woman were having drinks in Mokai, a South Beach club, with Sharper, a local real estate agent, and a mutual acquaintance named Wascar Payano, an Iraq War veteran.
Payano’s name had come up in a police investigation a year earlier. Sharper and his older brother, Jamie -- an NFL linebacker from 1997 to 2005 -- were investigated for an incident that began at Mansion, a club just a mile away from Mokai. Two women were on spring break and ended up asleep on a couch in Darren’s condo. One woman told police she woke to find “[either Darren or Jamie] behaving inappropriately by exposing his penis and attempting to bring it close to her face.” (Attempts to reach Jamie Sharper were unsuccessful.) The two women discovered their underwear had been removed while they were asleep; they went to a rape treatment center, but a doctor found no evidence of sexual battery. The police report is redacted, but it mentions that one woman had “made arrangements to meet at the incident location with Payano.”
Payano told police that he was Sharper’s cousin, but Nyack, N.Y., gym owner Teddy Guerzon, a childhood friend of Payano’s, says Payano and Sharper met when Payano was promoting parties at Mansion. Payano has been accused of assault before. In December 2008, his ex-girlfriend told police that Payano went into her room at the University of Miami and tried to kiss her. She said that when she resisted, he smacked her, spat in her face and threatened to kill her. A few weeks later, another Miami student told police that Payano held her down and forced his tongue into her ear and began to simulate intercourse while lying on top of her. She said that he forced his knee between her legs and slapped her 20 times. Payano was arrested. The police dropped both cases when the women were reluctant to continue with them, though one did get a restraining order against him. (Repeated attempts to reach Payano were unsuccessful.)
The women at Mokai told police they ended up at Sharper’s condo, where he poured them drinks. One told police she woke at 9 a.m. with Sharper’s penis inside her. (She did not report the incident until she saw a story about the other charges on TV this winter. Police have declined to pursue charges.)
And last October, Sharper was at Bootsy Bellows, a West Hollywood club co-owned by actor David Arquette. Two weeks earlier, Usher had celebrated his 35th birthday there with Justin Bieber and Diddy. Sharper’s five Pro Bowl appearances didn’t hold much social currency there; says one employee, “[Sharper] was not significant. He was way off the radar.”
Sharper met two women through a mutual friend at Bootsy Bellows on Oct. 30, according to a police report. In his hotel suite, the report says, he poured them coffee-flavored Patron, and both women blacked out. One woman told police she woke up with Sharper sexually assaulting her in his bedroom. The other said she woke up on a sofa, walked into the bedroom and stopped the assault.
According to police, on Jan. 14, Sharper met two other women at Bootsy Bellows, took them to one party and invited them to a second. He told them he wanted to stop in his hotel room so he could pick up some narcotics, according to the police report. He poured them drinks, and they too blacked out. One woke at 8:30 a.m. and, the report says, “felt as though she had been sexually assaulted.”
The very next night, the city is Las Vegas: two women in Sharper’s hotel room, as he poured shots. This time, according to police, a man was with them. The man told police his next memory, after drinking a shot, was sitting alone in the hotel bar. One woman said the next thing she remembered was Sharper sexually assaulting her. The other said that when she woke, she felt she had been raped.
*****
We tend to see what people want us to see. Sharper sounded convincing as he denied rumors in 2009 of a second child, but his lawyers recently acknowledged that he does have another child. (The child’s mother, Patricia Hall, declined to talk to SI.)
Before his retirement, Sharper seemed to be in good health; afterward, he was a public face on the league’s network. (He was fired after the allegations surfaced.) But in 2012, he filed a worker’s compensation claim against the NFL in California, citing injuries to his head, hips, shoulders, knee and kidneys. His lawyer for that claim, Mark Slipock, declined to detail Sharper’s specific injuries.
If Sharper committed these sexual assaults, he did it without threatening anyone or acting with aggression. Maybe you can understand why women trusted him. He was a handsome, single celebrity, athletic and charismatic -- friendly enough to spend a few hours with them at a club, generous enough to invite them to a party, polite enough to fix them a drink.In spite of signs that say ''Always Open,'' 1,221 Denny's restaurants around the United States will close their doors on Christmas so employees can have the day off.
But some of the restaurants have not had locks for decades because of the always-open policy.
At others the locks were never used and the keys were lost. New locks are being installed at about 700 restaurants, said Joe Herrera, director of marketing at TW Services, the Denny's parent company, which has its headquarters here.
Mr. Herrera said the closing ''will cost us about $5 million in sales'' but added that many of the 60,000 employees were so grateful that they sent cards and letters to their employer.
They will not lose a day's pay. Mr. Herrera said, ''We just feel we spend 364 days a year taking care of other people's families and for one day a year we want to take care of our own.''
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
In Hollywood, the closing order solved a problem for Almaz Legesse, manager of the Denny's on Sunset Boulevard. She was trying to decide which of her employees should get Christmas off.
''I had a big list,'' she said. ''I was having a hard time.''
Lee Sevene, manager at a Denny's in Portland, Me., said, ''After so many years of working Christmas every year it's real nice.''Sanders has vowed to “do everything in my power to block President Obama’s proposal to cut benefits for Social Security recipients through a chained consumer price index.” And he's got allies. Joining the senator and the House members at the White House were representatives ofSocial Security Works, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the National Organization for Women, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, the Campaign for America’s Future and MoveOn.org. They were joined by Damon Silvers, the director of policy for the AFL-CIO, who announced that if the president goes forward with a budget that proposes Social Security cuts he will do so "without cover" from the labor movement.
Leading progressive organizations and groups representing retired Americans, Sen. Bernie Sanders and several other members of Congress—including Daily Kos endorsees Mark Takano and Rick Nolan—delivered petitions with signatures of over 2.3 million Americans in opposition to the chained CPI to the White House Tuesday.This is just the beginning of what promises to be a mass revolt from organized groups on the left and from individual seniors as word spreads. The AARP is fully engaged in informing its members about the policy, and will likely kick into high gear on lobbying when the budget is released and full-on negotiations begin. They've got polling data to back them up, both a national poll and from 14 key 2014 states.
The proposal is also getting a lukewarm response from Congress, with Republicans rejecting it before it's even official, and Democratic leadership relatively mum or, at best, dismissive. Sen. Sanders, for one, is more than dismissive. He's angry.
"Paul Ryan, in the worst budget ever presented in the history of the United States, did not mention Social Security, so of course [Obama] owns it," Sanders said as he left a rally outside the White House, where he and a handful of congressional Democrats, Social Security advocates, and labor leaders denounced Social Security cuts on Tuesday. "And I suspect that our Republican friends will make sure the American people understand that he owns it, and make sure the American people understand that any Democrat who supports cuts in Social Security and benefits for disabled vets will also be forced to own that," Sanders said. "From a political point of view it is to my mind just a really dumb tactic. I don't understand it."
Most Democrats, particularly those who weathered the 2010 election in which they were slammed with attacks from Republicans over Medicare cuts, probably realize that, too, and have to resent the hell out of being put into this position by their president. Couple that resentment with the phone calls and emails and potential for irate crowds at town meetings and there probably won't be Democratic support to pass this cut. But we can't take that for granted, and need to keep up the fight. While we're at it, we can work on changing the debate. Send an email to President Obama and congressional leadership telling them to strengthen Social Security instead of cutting it.
Lady Libertine liveblogged the petition delivery here.Would You Want LeBron James To Sign With Your Favorite Team?
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Here on Tru School Sports we have some of the best NBA minds in the world and with many different people come a bevy of different perspectives. This certainly applies in the case of LeBron James who many writers on the site like and some can’t stand. We also brought in some of our friends from The League News, Sack The Point Guard, The Big House Report, Route 4 Sports, Bleacher Report and Hoops Habit to help us out with today’s question. The question to our panel of NBA writers is would you want LeBron James to sign with your favorite team this off-season? We have a lot of different opinions so be respectful and enjoy all of them!
Brian Rzeppa (TSS Staff Writer/Life Long Detroit Pistons fan)
Twitter: @brianrzeppa
I would love to have LeBron James play for the Pistons, you’d be crazy not to want him on your team. He’s the best player in the league and the way that he plays makes him a good fit for any team. Need a scorer? Check. Need a distributor? Check. Need a lockdown defender? Check. He does it all, and for that reason any team would be lucky to have him on their side. The pick-and-roll game that he could run with Andre Drummond would be phenomenal, and given that he’s added a three-point stroke in recent years, that duo could be deadly for years to come.
Paul Martinez (TSS Staff Writer/Life Long Chicago Bulls)
Twitter: @Paulwrites23
I don’t want LeBron James to sign with the Chicago Bulls because I don’t like how the media “tries” to elevate a 27 points per game, 7 rebounds per game, 7 assists per game player with 3 Finals losses to Michael Jordan status. I don’t like how he left Cleveland and made it appear that he wasn’t good enough to attract other superstars to a city. I don’t like how he flops, whines and calls basketball…well…just basketball. I’m not a fan…it’s that simple. I want players who are the highest level of passionate on my team. The Bulls roster consists of the guy with the most heart (Joakim Noah), the kid from Englewood doing something positive and gearing up for a historic return from injury (Derrick Rose), dunk in your face Taj Gibson, the LeBron stopper Jimmy Butler and the hard-nosed coaching of Tom Thibs. The Hollywood ways of LeBron doesn’t fit into the feel of the Chicago Bulls locker room. We want to beat LeBron. I rather we go for the pure shooting of Carmelo Anthony so we can have a second offensive threat that will set us up to crush whatever team LeBron signs with. LeBron is great but I would like to pass on him. If he comes to Chicago and helps us win more rings I’ll support it (I’ll always be a fan of the Bulls) but I rather we win rings without him (Because I know we can). He is a great player but his style is not my style and not Chicago style at the moment. LeBron’s heart is thin slice…your passion has to run deep to rock in the Chi.
Clevis Murrary (TSS Staff Writer/ Celtics Fan)
Twitter: @NBAFlashNews
King James might leave the throne he created in South Beach with the Miami Heat as he opted-out of his contract to become a free agent. Now all 29 other NBA teams would like to see James on their team but realistically speaking most don’t have a chance. Now the Boston Celtics are unlikely to sign James, but hypothetically speaking and for the sake of conversation, let’s just talk about why he should be in green.
James should come to Boston because the team holds the league record for championships with 17 alone one of the more respected general managers in the league with Danny Ainge and a team involved owner in Wyc Grousbeck. Now for the players, Boston has a true point guard in Rajon Rondo and James hasn’t played with a pass first guard in his entire pro career. Rondo can be seen as the guard version of James. Boston also has young stars in Jared Sullinger, Avery Bradley and Kelly Olynyk. Boston is somewhat similar to Cleveland, and he would feel right at home here and grow a relationship with the city. Plus, Boston is one of the reasons why he went to Miami, so he kinda owes us one.
James also is an avid reader, so why not come to the smartest state in Massachusetts? Bean town is also filled with business people and James could achieve his goal of becoming a billionaire by creating the right relationships in the city.
Anthony Broome (Writer At The Big House Report & Life Long Pistons Fan)
Twitter: @AnthonyBroome
I don’t see how anyone could dislike the idea of LeBron James signing with their team, especially mine: The Detroit Pistons.
Regardless of what just happened to the Heat in the NBA Finals, James is still to me the most talented player in the world and still has a few titles in him. The City of Detroit is hungry for a pro sports title, and with LeBron in the fold alongside of Andre Drummond, (hopefully) Greg Monroe and Stan Van Gundy now calling the shots, there is no doubt in my mind that could culminate into a legitimate threat in the Eastern Conference.
James won’t be coming to my team. The Pistons are still years away from being a power in the East, but one can dream. He’s better than the headcase that is now donning the number-six jersey in Detroit.
We’ll see what happens.
Jonathan Mathis (TSS Staff Writer/Life Long Lakers Fan)
Twitter: @sportsjudge85
Since LeBron James opted out of his contract and will become an unrestricted free agent, LA fans are optimistic that he’ll leave Miami and sign with one of the Los Angeles franchises, either the Clippers or the Lakers. He can choose the easy way out, leave the Heat organization and sign with the Clippers. Unlike in Cleveland, where few believe he will return after spending seven with the Cavaliers before his abrupt departure to Miami, he can join a team that’s exceptionally well coached by Doc Rivers instead of returning home to a franchise that just hired an unproven coach. He knows he can team up with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. As a die-hard Lakers fan, I wouldn’t mind LeBron venturing to the first-rate basketball team in Los Angeles, where he’ll have a chance to take over the reigns with Kobe Bryant fading out gracefully. But I’m concerned with LeBron, mainly because when the going gets tough, he may choose to walk out on the Lakers.
Jake Sloan (TSS Staff Writer/Life Long Mavericks fan)
Twitter: @JakeSloan15
LeBron to Dallas would make sense. The Mavericks took the team James and the Heat only lasted five games against (Spurs) to seven in the first-round of the playoffs. With Dirk Nowitzki being the veteran that he is and Monta Ellis in his prime, why wouldn’t he want to come to Dallas? Not to mention he’s a huge Cowboys fan. With the likely departure of small forward Shawn Marion, LeBron would fill right in.
Randy Ulatowski (The League News Writer/Portland Trailblazers Fan)
Four years after LeBron James’ first free agency experience in 2010, the NBA world is about to witness “The Decision 2.0” and the league’s best player will be pursued by many teams. One team in the LeBron Sweepstakes may be the Portland Trail Blazers. With a young core of Damian Lillard, LaMarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum, and Nike Headquarters located in the area, Portland seems like a very attractive option for James. Although the city isn’t as large of a market as Los Angeles or Houston, Cleveland and Miami weren’t big free agent destinations either, and at this point in his career, LeBron would rather chase rings than live it up.
For a Portland and LeBron dream to come true however, the Blazers would have to clear some cap space. With already $63 million and 13 guaranteed contracts for the 2014-15 season, Portland doesn’t have much to work with. They have a BAE worth about $2.8 million, and an MLE for $5.3. Neither of those would be even close enough to get LeBron’s attention, but that doesn’t mean he still couldn’t sign with the Blazers. Portland GM Neil Olshey has made some magical moves in the past, such as trading a second round pick for Robin Lopez. Nicolas Batum and Wesley Matthews are set to make a combined $18.7 million next season, so moving those two would likely clear enough space to sign James. Batum and Matthews could likely be traded for a first round pick this draft, as well as a solid role player or two, giving the Blazers what would likely be the best starting lineup in the league. With a back court of Lillard and the Blazers’ 2014 Draft pick, and a front court consisting of LeBron, LaMarcus and Robin Lopez, Rip City would be favorites to win the 2015 Finals. The team would have three perennial All-Stars, much like the 2010-11 Miami Heat. If James wants more rings to solidify his legendary status, Portland is the obvious choice.
Xavier Jackson (TSS Staff Writer/Life Long Knicks Fan)
Twitter: @TSS_Jackson
I do not want to see LeBron James playing for the New York Knicks. Yes, LeBron is great. In fact, he is the best player in the NBA today. I respect him and his game. With that said, I hate him. I’m a New York Knicks fan and want to see the Knicks destroy LeBron, not sign him. I believe that the New York Knicks can and will win without LeBron James. Thankfully, the chances of LeBron signing with the Knicks are under one percent. New York has no cap space, even if Carmelo Anthony decides to leave, which I don’t see happening.
Michael Natelli (Bleacher Report Writer/ Life Long Wizards fan)
Twitter: @MichaelNatelli
While it probably doesn’t need explaining why any team would want LeBron James, here’s some reasons for the few skeptics out there.
The Wizards enter the off season with roughly $20-million in cap space, giving them enough room to handle a LeBron-sized contract without too much maneuvering. Having James on the court would also open things up offensively for John Wall and Bradley Beal, who are two of the league’s top up-and-coming stars. With Wall, Beal and Nene already on the roster, adding James and a serviceable center would arguably make the Wizards the best team in the Eastern Conference if not all of basketball.
And from a legacy perspective, James would be joining a team whose core has already been established (unlike his decision to join forces with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in 2010). His star power is so much higher than that of Wall or Beal that if he was to win a title (or multiple titles) in Washington, he would get far more credit for it from a legacy standpoint than he did during his time in Miami.
While LeBron probably won’t strongly consider |
bones and skeletons of at least 26, mainly male, adults and children – most of them exhibiting severe injuries.
Torture and mutilation
Besides various types of (bone) injuries caused by arrows, they also found many cases of massive damage to the head, face and teeth, some inflicted on the victims shorty before or after their death. In addition, the attackers systematically broke their victims’ legs, pointing to torture and deliberate mutilation. Only few female remains were found, which further indicates that women were not actively involved in the fighting and that they were possibly abducted by the attackers.
The authors of the study thus presume that such massacres were not isolated occurrences but represented frequent features of the early Central European Neolithic period. The fact that the Neolithic massacre sites examined so far are all located in some distance to each other further underlines this conclusion. The researchers thus suggest that the goal of this massive and systematic violence may have been the annihilation of entire communities. The research team was led by Prof. Kurt W. Alt, former Head of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Mainz and guest lecturer at the University of Basel since 2014.How It Works: Nick, a top crystal-meth dealer for a decade before getting arrested in 2004, explains the system. Every other month, he’d purchase a pound of meth ($32,000 to $36,000) from producers in the Midwest or the Filipino mob in California, and have it shipped via regular mail or FedEx inside teddy bears, candles, or coffee. In the next 36 hours, he’d sell it in bulk to three or four associates, pocketing a 500 percent profit. The associates in turn would sell to dozens of small-time dealers who’d take to the streets, clubs, and doorsteps of addicts. If you stay small, there’s not room for profit, says Nick. But at the top, I would buy a quarter gram for $5 and sell it for $50. It’s around $65 today. There are 1,792 quarter-grams in a pound of powder (that’s $89,600 for Nick).
Nick ascended to the top organically. He began dealing just enough to cover his own addiction. You outgrow the little guys you buy from, says Nick. You want more than they have. So you go to their supplier. Then their supplier.
Annual Revenue: $1.02 million ($813,600 is profit) with fifteen-hour workweeks and no taxes.
Annual Overhead Costs: Six pounds crystal meth: $192,000 to $216,000; Cell phone: $2,400.
Best Way to Make Money: Sell to many users in small quantities. It’s like taking a pound of coffee and selling one grain at a time, says Nick. If you sell by scoops, you’ll make a couple thousand dollars, but if you break it down into quarter grams and work for a few days, you’ll make tens of thousands. Most top dealers don’t actually do this, and lazily sell in bulk, as Nick did.
Most-Profitable Customers: Wealthy professionals who are hard-core addicts. They’re discreet and always pay.
Least-Profitable Customers: Friends. Nightmare customers are your closest friends. They don’t have a problem calling at 6 a.m., and they expect low prices.
Profit Catastrophes: Prison. One day you open your door and there are five cops, and they take you to prison for two and a half years, where you spend all your money on lawyers and make 10 cents an hour in the prison shop, like I did. It’s almost inevitable, which is the downside of the business. Dealers avoid police by using only a small, trusted group of associates, which eliminates selling to undercover cops. Nick went to jail when an associate ratted on him.
New Yorkonomics: With data on petty drug dealers, the economist Steven Levitt has taught us that there is an abundant supply of people willing to work in the drug industry at near the minimum wage, so why does this guy make so much? His high earnings flow from a type of social capital that is in short supply on the streets of Harlem: This dealer has the connections to cater to a well-heeled clientele that is willing to pay extra for a discreet and reliable dealer. Of course, since someone with his social skills could also earn a living without breaking the law, his high earnings from meth dealing also provide compensation for the risks of going to jail.The National Academies released a report today that advocates for improvements in training and salary for postdoctoral fellows in academia. Although postdoctoral training is necessary to pursue careers in academia, it now frequently is associated with poor pay, indefinite terms and uncertain prospects for career advancement.
“The demand for junior research workers has boomed in recent decades, but the number of research faculty positions into which the junior researchers might hope to move has not kept pace,” Gregory Petsko, chairman of the Committee to Review the State of Postdoctoral Experience in Scientists and Engineers that wrote the report, said in a statement. “The result is a system that has created expectations for academic career advancement that in many — perhaps most — cases cannot be met.”
The report urges action in six areas: compensation, term length, position title and role definition, career development, mentoring and data collection.
The report specifically recommends:
1) Postdoctoral salaries should be increased to at least $50,000 and adjusted annually for inflation. The starting salary at most institutions for many disciplines is $42,000. Furthermore, federal agencies should require institutions to provide documentation in grant proposals about the salaries the postdoctoral researchers will receive.
2) Postdoctoral appointments should be for a maximum of five years. Funding agencies should assign each postdoctoral fellow an identifier to track them better.
3) The title “postdoctoral researcher” should be used by institutions only for positions in which the individual receives significant advanced training in research. “Postdoctoral researcher” should not be used for people in positions that are more suitable for permanent staff scientists, such as lab managers, technicians, research assistant professors. The report also urges funding agencies to use “postdoctoral researcher” consistently and “require evidence that advanced research training is part of the postdoctoral experience.”
4) Postdoctoral training should be viewed by graduate students and principal investigators as only a stage in which to gain advanced research training. It should not be considered the default step after Ph.D. training.
Institutions should make first-year graduate students aware about careers outside of academia. Mentors should become familiar with career-development opportunities at their institutions and through professional societies so that they can better advise mentees. Professional societies should gather information about the range of careers within their disciplines.
Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows should make use of the resources available to them.
5) Training postdoctoral fellows entails more than just supervision. Mentoring should be emphasized. Postdoctoral fellows should be encouraged to seek guidance from multiple advisers besides their principal investigators, and they should seek out mentoring and resources from professional societies. (Related: See this recent Nature Careers article about career-development opportunities, including ones at ASBMB.)
The report also calls for better data keeping on postdoctoral fellows. The committee found current data on postdoc demographics, career goals and career outcomes inadequate and out of date. “Only rough estimates of the total number of postdoctoral researchers, and no good information about what becomes of postdoctoral researchers who earned their Ph.D.s outside the United States, exist,” says the report.
The report recommends that that National Science Foundation establish a central database to track postdocs, including nonacademic and foreign-trained fellows. Moreover, funding agencies should “look favorably on grant proposals that include outcome data for an institution’s postdoctoral researchers.”
The last time the National Academies examined postdoctoral training was in 2000. A number of improvements have occurred since then, including the creation of offices of postdoctoral affairs at universities, requirements for mentoring plans in grant proposals to the NSF and some resources for postdocs to explore their career options and make more informed decisions.
However, other aspects have not improved. Data on the number of postdoctoral fellows and how postdoctoral fellows turn out are still inadequate. Moreover, the committee found “no convincing evidence that most postdoctoral researchers are receiving adequate mentoring.” The committee also said that “there is little evidence that universities and mentors are providing adequate information about and preparation for other types of careers.”
The committee appears to want to change the nature of postdoctoral research from a vague transition time back to an active career-development stage. As the committee writes in the preface of the report, “The postdoctoral period should be a defined period of advanced training and mentoring in research and that it should also be, as the majority of the committee members remembered from their own experience, among the most enjoyable times of the postdoctoral researcher’s professional life.”
Three ASBMB members were on the report committee: Petsko of Weill Cornell Medical College; Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and 2009 Nobel laureate; and Nancy Schwartz of the University of Chicago.Written by hannes
How to deploy unikernels?
MirageOS has a pretty good story on how to compose your OCaml libraries into a virtual machine image. The mirage command line utility contains all the knowledge about which backend requires which library. This enables it to write a unikernel using abstract interfaces (such as a network device). Additionally the mirage utility can compile for any backend. (It is still unclear whether this is a sustainable idea, since the mirage tool needs to be adjusted for every new backend, but also for additional implementations of an interface.)
Once a virtual machine image has been created, it needs to be deployed. I run my own physical hardware, with all the associated upsides and downsides. Specifically I run several physical FreeBSD machines on the Internet, and use the bhyve hypervisor with MirageOS as described earlier. Recently, Martin Lucina developed a vmm backend for Solo5. This means there is no need to use virtio anymore, or grub2-bhyve, or the bhyve binary (which links libvmmapi that already had a security advisory). Instead of the bhyve binary, a ~70kB small ukvm-bin binary (dynamically linking libc) can be used which is the solo5 virtual machine monitor on the host side.
Until now, I manually created and deployed virtual machines using shell scripts, ssh logins, and a network file system shared with the FreeBSD virtual machine which builds my MirageOS unikernels.
But there are several drawbacks with this approach, the biggest is that sharing resources is hard - to enable a friend to run their unikernel on my server, they'll need to have a user account, and even privileged permissions to create virtual network interfaces and execute virtual machines.
To get rid of these ad-hoc shell scripts and copying of virtual machine images, I developed an UNIX daemon which accomplishes the required work. This daemon waits for (mutually!) authenticated network connections, and provides the desired commands; to create a new virtual machine, to acquire a block device of a given size, to destroy a virtual machine, to stream the console output of a virtual machine.
System design
The system bears minimalistic characteristics. The single interface to the outside world is a TLS stream over TCP. Internally, there is a family of processes, one of which has superuser privileges, communicating via unix domain sockets. The processes do not need any persistent storage (apart from the revocation lists). A brief enumeration of the processes is provided below:
vmmd (superuser privileges), which terminates TLS sessions, proxies messages, and creates and destroys virtual machines (including setup and teardown of network interfaces and virtual block devices)
(superuser privileges), which terminates TLS sessions, proxies messages, and creates and destroys virtual machines (including setup and teardown of network interfaces and virtual block devices) vmm_stats periodically gathers resource usage and network interface statistics
periodically gathers resource usage and network interface statistics vmm_console reads console output of every provided fifo, and stores this in a ringbuffer, replaying to a client on demand
reads console output of every provided fifo, and stores this in a ringbuffer, replaying to a client on demand vmm_log consumes the event log (login, starting, and stopping of virtual machines)
The system uses X.509 certificates as tokens. These are authenticated key value stores. There are four shapes of certificates: a virtual machine certificate which embeds the entire virtual machine image, together with configuration information (resource usage, how many and which network interfaces, block device access); a command certificate (for interactive use, allowing (a subset of) commands such as attaching to console output); a revocation certificate which contains a list of revoked certificates; and a delegation certificate to distribute resources to someone else (an intermediate CA certificate).
The resources which can be controlled are CPUs, memory consumption, block storage, and access to bridge interfaces (virtual switches) - encoded in the virtual machine and delegation certificates. Additionally, delegation certificates can limit the number of virtual machines.
Leveraging the X.509 system ensures that the client always has to present a certificate chain from the root certificate. Each intermediate certificate is a delegation certificate, which may further restrict resources. The serial numbers of the chain is used as unique identifier for each virtual machine and other certificates. The chain restricts access of the leaf certificate as well: only the subtree of the chain can be viewed. E.g. if there are delegations to both Alice and Bob from the root certificate, they can not see each other virtual machines.
Connecting to the vmmd requires a TLS client, a CA certificate, a leaf certificate (and the delegation chain) and its private key. In the background, it is a multi-step process using TLS: first, the client establishes a TLS connection where it authenticates the server using the CA certificate, then the server demands a TLS renegotiation where it requires the client to authenticate with its leaf certificate and private key. Using renegotiation over the encrypted channel prevents passive observers to see the client certificate in clear.
Depending on the leaf certificate, the server logic is slightly different. A command certificate opens an interactive session where - depending on permissions encoded in the certificate - different commands can be issued: the console output can be streamed, the event log can be viewed, virtual machines can be destroyed, statistics can be collected, and block devices can be managed.
When a virtual machine certificate is presented, the desired resource usage is checked against the resource policies in the delegation certificate chain and the currently running virtual machines. If sufficient resources are free, the embedded virtual machine is started. In addition to other resource information, a delegation certificate may embed IP usage, listing the network configuration (gateway and netmask), and which addresses you're supposed to use. Boot arguments can be encoded in the certificate as well, they are just passed to the virtual machine (for easy deployment of off-the-shelf systems).
If a revocation certificate is presented, the embodied revocation list is verified, and stored on the host system. Revocation is enforced by destroying any revoked virtual machines and terminating any revoked interactive sessions. If a delegation certificate is revoked, additionally the connected block devices are destroyed.
The maximum size of a virtual machine image embedded into a X.509 certificate transferred over TLS is 2 ^ 24 - 1 bytes, roughly 16 MB. If this turns out to be not sufficient, compression may help. Or staging of deployment.
An example
Instructions on how to setup vmmd and the certificate authority are in the README file of the albatross git repository. Here is some (stripped) terminal output:
> openssl x509 -text -noout -in admin.pem Certificate: Data: Serial Number: b7:aa:77:f6:ca:08:ee:6a Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption Issuer: CN=dev Subject: CN=admin X509v3 extensions: 1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.42:.... 1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.0:... > openssl asn1parse -in admin.pem 403:d=4 hl=2 l= 18 cons: SEQUENCE 405:d=5 hl=2 l= 10 prim: OBJECT :1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.42 417:d=5 hl=2 l= 4 prim: OCTET STRING [HEX DUMP]:03020780 423:d=4 hl=2 l= 17 cons: SEQUENCE 425:d=5 hl=2 l= 10 prim: OBJECT :1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.0 437:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OCTET STRING [HEX DUMP]:020100 > openssl asn1parse -in hello.pem 410:d=4 hl=2 l= 18 cons: SEQUENCE 412:d=5 hl=2 l= 10 prim: OBJECT :1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.42 424:d=5 hl=2 l= 4 prim: OCTET STRING [HEX DUMP]:03020520 430:d=4 hl=2 l= 18 cons: SEQUENCE 432:d=5 hl=2 l= 10 prim: OBJECT :1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.5 444:d=5 hl=2 l= 4 prim: OCTET STRING [HEX DUMP]:02020200 450:d=4 hl=2 l= 17 cons: SEQUENCE 452:d=5 hl=2 l= 10 prim: OBJECT :1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.6 464:d=5 hl=2 l= 3 prim: OCTET STRING [HEX DUMP]:020101 469:d=4 hl=5 l=3054024 cons: SEQUENCE 474:d=5 hl=2 l= 10 prim: OBJECT :1.3.6.1.4.1.49836.42.9 486:d=5 hl=5 l=3054007 prim: OCTET STRING [HEX DUMP]:A0832E99B204832E99AD7F454C46
The MirageOS private enterprise number is 1.3.6.1.4.1.49836, I use the arc 42 here. I use 0 as version (an integer), where 0 is the current version.
42 is a bit string representing the permissions. 5 the amount of memory, 6 the CPU id, and 9 finally the virtual machine image (as ELF binary). If you're eager to see more, look into the Vmm_asn module.
Using a command certificate establishes an interactive session where you can review the event log, see all currently running virtual machines, or attach to the console (which is then streamed, if new console output appears while the interactive session is active, you'll be notified). The db file is used to translate between the internal names (mentioned above, hashed serial numbers) to common names of the certificates - both on command input ( attach hello ) and output.
> vmm_client cacert.pem admin.bundle admin.key localhost:1025 --db dev.db $ info info sn.nqsb.io: 'cpuset' '-l' '7' '/tmp/vmm/ukvm-bin.net' '--net=tap27' '--' '/tmp/81363f.0237f3.img' 91540 taps tap27 info nqsbio: 'cpuset' '-l' '5' '/tmp/vmm/ukvm-bin.net' '--net=tap26' '--' '/tmp/81363f.43a0ff.img' 91448 taps tap26 info marrakesh: 'cpuset' '-l' '4' '/tmp/vmm/ukvm-bin.net' '--net=tap25' '--' '/tmp/81363f.cb53e2.img' 91368 taps tap25 info tls.nqsb.io: 'cpuset' '-l' '9' '/tmp/vmm/ukvm-bin.net' '--net=tap28' '--' '/tmp/81363f.ec692e.img' 91618 taps tap28 $ log log: 2017-07-10 09:43:39 +00:00: marrakesh LOGIN 128.232.110.109:43142 log: 2017-07-10 09:43:39 +00:00: marrakesh STARTED 91368 (tap tap25, block no) log: 2017-07-10 09:43:51 +00:00: nqsbio LOGIN 128.232.110.109:44663 log: 2017-07-10 09:43:51 +00:00: nqsbio STARTED 91448 (tap tap26, block no) log: 2017-07-10 09:44:07 +00:00: sn.nqsb.io LOGIN 128.232.110.109:38182 log: 2017-07-10 09:44:07 +00:00: sn.nqsb.io STARTED 91540 (tap tap27, block no) log: 2017-07-10 09:44:21 +00:00: tls.nqsb.io LOGIN 128.232.110.109:11178 log: 2017-07-10 09:44:21 +00:00: tls.nqsb.io STARTED 91618 (tap tap28, block no) log: 2017-07-10 09:44:25 +00:00: hannes LOGIN 128.232.110.109:24207 success $ attach hello console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 | ___| console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 __| _ \ | _ \ __ \ console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 \__ \ ( | | ( | ) | console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 ____/\___/ _|\___/____/ console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 Solo5: Memory map: 512 MB addressable: console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 Solo5: unused @ (0x0 - 0xfffff) console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 Solo5: text @ (0x100000 - 0x1e4fff) console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 Solo5: rodata @ (0x1e5000 - 0x217fff) console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 Solo5: data @ (0x218000 - 0x2cffff) console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 Solo5: heap >= 0x2d0000 < stack < 0x20000000 console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 STUB: getenv() called console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:52 +00:00 2017-07-09 18:44:52 -00:00: INF [application] hello console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:53 +00:00 2017-07-09 18:44:53 -00:00: INF [application] hello console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:54 +00:00 2017-07-09 18:44:54 -00:00: INF [application] hello console hello: 2017-07-09 18:44:55 +00:00 2017-07-09 18:44:55 -00:00: INF [application] hello
If you use a virtual machine certificate, depending on allowed resource the virtual machine is started or not:
> vmm_client cacert.pem hello.bundle hello.key localhost:1025 success VM started
Sharing is caring
Deploying unikernels is now easier for myself on my physical machine. That's fine. Another aspect comes for free by reusing X.509: further delegation (and limiting thereof). Within a delegation certificate, the basic constraints extension must be present which marks this certificate as a CA certificate. This may as well contain a path length - how many other delegations may follow - or whether the resources may be shared further.
If I delegate 2 virtual machines and 2GB of memory to Alice, and allow an arbitrary path length, she can issue tokens to her friend Carol and Dan, each up to 2 virtual machines and 2 GB memory (but also less -- within the X.509 system even more, but vmmd will reject any resource increase in the chain) - who can further delegate to Eve,.... Carol and Dan won't know of each other, and vmmd will only start up to 2 virtual machines using 2GB of memory in total (sum of Alice, Carol, and Dan deployed virtual machines). Alice may revoke any issued delegation (using a revocation certificate described above) to free up some resources for herself. I don't need to interact when Alice or Dan share their delegated resources further.
Security
There are several security properties preserved by vmmd, such as the virtual machine image is never transmitted in clear. Only properly authenticated clients can create, destroy, gather statistics of their virtual machines.
Two disjoint paths in the delegation tree are not able to discover anything about each other (apart from caches, which depend on how CPUs are delegated and their concrete physical layout). Only smaller amounts of resources can be delegated further down. Each running virtual machine image is strongly isolated from all other virtual machines.
As mentioned in the last section, delegations of delegations may end up in the hands of malicious people. Vmmd limits delegations to allocate resources on the host system, namely bridges and file systems. Only top delegations - directly signed by the certificate authority - create bridge interfaces (which are explicitly named in the certificate) and file systems (one zfs for each top delegation (to allow easy snapshots and backups)).
The threat model is that clients have layer 2 access to the hosts network interface card, and all guests share a single bridge (if this turns out to be a problem, there are ways to restrict to a point-to-point interface with routed IP addresses). A malicious virtual machine can try to hijack ethernet and IP addresses.
Possible DoS scenarios include also to spawn VMs very fast (which immediately crash) or generating a lot of console output. Both is indirectly handled by the control channel: to create a virtual machine image, you need to setup a TLS connection (with two handshakes) and transfer the virtual machine image (there is intentionally no "respawn on quit" option). The console output is read by a single process with user privileges (in the future there may be one console reading process for each top delegation). It may further be rate limited as well. The console stream is only ever sent to a single session, as soon as someone attaches to the console in one session, all other sessions have this console detached (and are notified about that).
The control channel itself can be rate limited using the host system firewall.
The only information persistently stored on a block device are the certificate revocation lists - virtual machine images, FIFOs, unix domain sockets are all stored in a memory-backed file system. A virtual machine with a lots of disk operation may only delay or starve revocation list updates - if this turns out to be a problem, the solution may be to use separate physical block devices for the revocation lists and virtual block devices for clients.
Conclusion
I showed a minimalistic system to provision, deploy, and manage virtual machine images. It also allows to delegate resources (CPU, disk,..) further. I'm pretty satisfied with the security properties of the system.
The system embeds all data (configuration, resource policies, virtual machine images) into X.509 certificates, and does not rely on an external file transfer protocol. An advantage thereof is that all deployed images have been signed with a private key.
All communication between the processes and between the client and the server use a wire protocol, with structured input and output - this enables more advanced algorithms (e.g. automated scaling) and fancier user interfaces than the currently provided terminal based one.
The delegation mechanism allows to actually share computing resources in a decentralised way - without knowing the final recipient. Revocation is builtin, which can at any point delete access of a subtree or individual virtual machine to the system. Instead of requesting revocation lists during the handshake, they are pushed explicitly by the (sub)CA revoking a certificate.
While this system was designed for a physical server, it should be straightforward to develop a Google compute engine / EC2 backend which extracts the virtual machine image, commands, etc. from the certificate and deploys it to your favourite cloud provider. A virtual machine image itself is only processor-specific, and should be portable between different hypervisors - being it FreeBSD and VMM, Linux and KVM, or MacOSX and Hypervisor.Framework.
The code is available on GitHub. If you want to deploy your unikernel on my hardware, please send me a certificate signing request. I'm interested in feedback, either via twitter or open issues in the repository. This article itself is stored in a different repository (in case you have typo or grammatical corrections).
I'm very thankful to people who gave feedback on earlier versions of this article, and who discussed the system design with me. These are Addie, Chris, Christiano, Joe, mato, Mindy, Mort, and sg.It’s the newest old spirit. Absinthe, the opalescent, anise-flavoured elixir, intemperate muse of 19th century writers like Oscar Wilde and Paul Verlaine, was banned nearly 100 years ago over its alleged hallucinogenic properties.
According to the Combier distillery's website, where this picture is posted, the metal structure in one of its still rooms is the work of Gustav Eiffel, of tower fame. Some of the equipment now used to make Ameican chemist Ted Breaux's absinthe spirits, at a distillery in the Loire Valley in France, is the same was was used during the drink's heyday in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Legal once again, and available at the LCBO, the “green fairy” of the Belle Époque still struggles to define itself. It was never dangerous, says Ted Breaux, a New Orleans-based chemist and absinthe historian now invested in making the drink at an old distillery in France. In 2000, he examined sealed, vintage bottles to determine the levels of thujone, the so-called psycho-active compound found in wormwood. His analysis debunked many long-standing myths.
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“None of the bottles contained thujone in any significant concentration. These vintage bottles would pass modern regulations.” Thujone is also found in sage and mint. A century ago, many bars in Europe offered this artisanal herbal drink. It was a category onto itself, a cousin to gin because of its similar re-distillation process. Kate Simon, editor-in-chief of Imbibe magazine and author of Absinthe Cocktails: 50 Ways to Mix the Green Fairy, calls absinthe “a complex, nuanced spirit, on par with the top-shelf cognacs and fine whiskeys.” Before the ban, which occurred in various countries between 1909 and 1914, it was popular in North American port cities like New Orleans, home of the Sazerac cocktail, which calls for a wash of absinthe, 2 ounces of rye, sugar and several dashes of Peychaud’s bitters. “The French drank absinthe with ice water and an optional piece of sugar. In America, we were all about fancy cocktails,” says Breaux. A dash of absinthe was a common ingredient, called for in 104 recipes in the 1930 edition of the Savoy Cocktail Book, from the Savoy Hotel in London, England, where it remained legal. Why did this popular drink vanish? The supposed harmful effects of thujone sparked the ban. Meanwhile the European wine industry, recovering from a 19th century phylloxera outbreak which destroyed many vineyards in France, seized on the negative press the high-proof spirit sometimes received and aligned itself with the temperance movement. Breaux says “those leagues wanted to ban all alcoholic beverages, but the wine lobby successfully painted absinthe as the true villain.” By 1915, anti-absinthe sentiment was rampant, even in Toronto. In the Daily Star, O’Keefe Breweries announced that unlike “poisonous” absinthe, its beer was a “pure beverage.”
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Barriers began to be removed in the late 20th century, and Eastern European companies released absinthe-like spirits — now trading on its past reputation as a hallucinogen. But Breaux felt the public was being misinformed. What was being sold, he says, “had no connection to the genuine spirit of the 19th century.” Breaux and his colleagues produce absinthe in a 19th century French distillery whose still room, according to the company’s website, has an iron interior designed by Gustav Eiffel. (Eiffel must have had absinthe — a sorbet made from it was served at a dinner honouring him when the Eiffel Tower opened in 1889, says the Virtual Absinthe Museum). Breaux says the Combier distillery, located in the Loire Valley south of Paris, uses natural ingredients and no colour additives. He and others would like governments to adopt an official legal definition for absinthe similar to Canada’s for whisky, to set quality standards. The European Commission recently proposed amending a law on spirit drinks to create standards for absinthe. “We’re making some headway in the EU, but it’ll be a multi-structured thing, because when you’re battling some big liquor conglomerates who put up a lot of opposition, it’s a bit of a challenge,” says Breaux. “Negotiations on spirits regulations tend to take a long time,” adds Simon in an email. “The battles are always hard-fought. And perhaps even more so with absinthe because there’s still so much myth and mystique surrounding it, even as more and more people become educated about it.” Simon’s first encounter with the spirit involved a bottle of “fake, mouthwash-green” absinthe. “It was the early days of the Web, and I actually paid $100 for it on a shady foreign website. What a disappointment! It was essentially coloured vodka.” In 2007, she finally tried the real deal. “One sip and I was hooked.” Imbibing absinthe Traditionally, ice water is poured onto a sugar cube resting on a perforated spoon. After the water dilutes the spirit, the translucent green liquid becomes cloudy, known as the louche effect.
Optimum water ratio is attained with the louche, which Breaux says is 3 to 1. “You can always add a little more, but not a little less, and too much water makes it flat.”
The sugar adds to the theatricality of the experience, but is optional, says Simon. “I prefer my absinthe with only water, no sugar. I find that the natural sweetness of the anise and fennel is plenty.”
The LCBO offers four types of absinthe: Hill’s Genuine Absinthe ($43.35, 375mL, 70 per cent abv), from the Czech Republic (which does not louche), Breaux’s Lucid ($64.35, 750mL, 62 per cent abv), and in Vintages, Vieux Pontarlier 65 ($90.00, 700mL, 65.2 per cent abv), a 19th century brand. On February 7, La Clandestine ($99.00, 700mL, 53 per cent abv), a Swiss absinthe, white in colour, was introduced. Overall annual sales hover around $550,000, roughly 0.24 per cent of liqueur sales.
Many bars will soak the sugar cube in absinthe and then light it on fire. Avoid, says Breaux. “That started in the 1990s when someone realized that when you add ice water to Czech absinthe, nothing happened, no louche, so they had to come up with some theatrical way to present it.”What potentially dangerous chemicals can be found in the typical home?
Potentially dangerous chemicals can be found in every room in your home. If not properly stored or used, these products could cause minor to serious and even life-threatening health problems for you or your children.
What are these every day household chemicals? Let’s take a tour of the rooms of your home and discover what some of these chemicals are and what health harms they may cause.
Keep in mind that most household cleaning products and pesticides are reasonably safe when used as directed, and that the level of toxicity of a product is dependent on the dose of the product used (never use more than the amount listed on the label) and the length of exposure to the product.
In the garage
Antifreeze. Ethylene glycol, the main hazardous ingredient of antifreeze, is extremely poisonous. Though inhalation of the fumes can causes dizziness, swallowing antifreeze will cause severe damage to the heart, kidneys and brain. Antifreeze can be fatal if swallowed.
Safety tips: If you need to clean up antifreeze – the bright green or yellow liquid you find in your garage or driveway – make sure you wear gloves because ethylene glycol is absorbed through the skin. Also, keep your pets away from spilled antifreeze. Pets are attracted to antifreeze because of its sweet smell, but licking or drinking the fluid can kill your pet. A much safer alternative to ethylene glycol is propylene glycol. Before purchasing antifreeze, look at the label to identify products containing the less toxic chemical, propylene glycol.
Motor oil. Used oil or waste motor oil may be contaminated with magnesium, copper, zinc and other heavy metals deposited from your vehicle’s |
693.
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RedditPC gaming is amazing. It's a place where technology, passion, art and competition intersect. The business that underpins what we play is fuelled by the internet. The internet is open and free. Therefore anyone can create, share and play together. The internet's openness means that PC gaming is a level playing field. Massive entertainment conglomerates can invest millions into producing vast online experiences, but the same tools to share, promote and play are available to anyone who wants to make a game. Even our Tom.
In the past couple of years, PC gaming has changed even further, become even more amazing. Thanks to high-speed broadband, PC gamers have become as entertaining as the games themselves, and the amount of media created and shared around games has exploded. YouTube and streaming services like Twitch.TV have made stars of players, created a new breed of pro-gamers. It's also changed how game creators interact with their community. Gamers have power now. Their power is reshaping PC gaming for the better.
Here's the problem: the sharing of game footage and screenshots probably counts as copyright infringement.
That's just the first of many problems we have with the pair of bills passing through the US Congress and the Senate right now. SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (The Protect IP Act) aim to legislate against websites facilitating piracy outside the US. But the language within them is so clumsily worded, the measures so absurdly positioned that they make victims of customers, gamers, the media, game developers and publishers and the technical fabric of the internet, without offering much hope of tackling piracy.
PC Gamer has some experience of this. Legal teams working for game publishers and developers have issued takedown notices to us for hosting trailers and footage of their games, as we attempt to promote their work. Under the current terms of SOPA, their infringement notices would probably have resulted in PC Gamer being delisted from search engines and advertising network and payment providers being forced to sever business relationships.
PC Gamer objects to SOPA and PIPA in the strongest possible terms, and we're terrified of the effect of what the legislation could have on our business and the wider PC gaming community.
Under SOPA, Macho Man Randy Savage may never invade Tamriel again. We must not let this legislation pass.The Ubisoft press release that announced this morning's Ghost Recon Future Soldier delay also nonchalantly mentioned that the a Windows version of the game will be arriving "at a later date." Nothing to see here, right? PC ports get delayed past their console counterparts all the time.
That would be perfectly true, if Ubisoft hadn't been incredibly vocal about their decision to skip the PC version of Future Soldier entirely.
Back in November, Ubisoft's Sébastien Arnoult told PC Gamer that Future Soldier wouldn't be heading to the PC over piracy concerns. Instead, the company was planning to release Ghost Recon Online, a free-to-play, multiplayer-only title with
"When we started Ghost Recon Online we were thinking about Ghost Recon: Future Solider; having something ported in the classical way without any deep development, because we know that 95% of our consumers will pirate the game. So we said okay, we have to change our mind."
Arnoult's comments were met with much consternation from the PC gaming community, who resented the (relatively absurd) claim that most of the intended audience would choose to pirate the game instead.
Now, it appears that Ubisoft has quietly reversed this stance and will be bringing Future Soldier to the PC after all.
While I'm thrilled to see that they've changed their mind, it's a bit puzzling that they've buried the announcement like this. The company has had something of an uncomfortable history with the PC community — I Am Alive producer Stanislas Mettra famously chastized PC gamers for "bitching" — and now that they're finally doing something right, they almost seem ashamed to admit it.Camelot Unchained® Goes to MAGFest
Folks,
It’s Convention Time for us at City State Entertainment, as we head to our first convention in the D.C. area with Camelot Unchained® in tow. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area this weekend and want to attend a fun convention (and see us too!), we’ll be at MAGFest (http://magfest.org/) from Thursday February 18th to Sunday, February 21st! We’ll have a booth in the Indie Videogame Showcase here (http://magfest.org/mivs/) and Jenesee, Max, Andrew, Tyler, Michelle, myself, and other folks will be around at various times during the con. So, if you want to see/hang with us, watch Michelle and Jon make beautiful things, or see and do all the other fun things at MAGFest, just come on by! The current schedule for who will be showing off the game is:
Thursday, February 18th – Mark, Tyler, Jenesee, Max, and Michelle
Friday, February 19th – Andrew, Jenesee, Jon, Ben, and Michelle
Saturday, February 20th – Andrew, Jenesee, Max, Michelle, and JB
Sunday, February 21st – Mark, Tyler, and Ben.
I’ll also be dropping in and out Friday/Saturday depending on interviews, people getting sick, getting Friday’s update out, etc.
So, if you are in the D.C. area and want to meet up with your favorite game developers from beautiful, downtown, Fairfax, Va., join us at the convention. We’ll be there all weekend!
The schedule above is subject to change (of course), and for the latest news, join us on this Forum thread here (https://forums.camelotunchained.com/topic/13275-magfest-2016-218-21/#entry370006).
CU soon!
-MarkWho would have thought Canadian values could be so controversial?
Plenty of ink has been spilt in the past few weeks over the suddenly taboo topic of promoting Canadian values.
The consensus from Canada’s elites has been to condemn the very idea of listing our values, let alone asking newcomers to respect and adhere to them.
But a far more controversial idea about Canadian values and identity was recently proposed by our very own prime minister. And the media barely batted an eyelash.
Late last year, Justin Trudeau told the New York Times that Canada is becoming a new kind of country, not defined by our history or European national origins, but by a “pan-cultural heritage”.
“There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” Trudeau said, concluding that he sees Canada as “the first post-national state.”
Even the New York Times called the suggestion “radical.”
Despite Trudeau’s bizarre musings, Canada has a proud history and strong traditions.
Canada has never been a homogeneous society — defined by a single race or ethnicity — but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a distinct culture and identity.
Our identity is rooted in our history, and it’s impossible to divorce the two.
Canada’s democratic values and traditions date back over 800 years, to the signing of the Magna Carta by our political ancestors.
That document helped enshrine our natural rights and freedoms, and limited the government’s ability to impose its powers.
Canada, perhaps more than any other Western country, is a living manifestation of that great document.
We live in the greatest country in the world. My biased opinion aside, the Reputation Institute ranked Canada as the most admired country in the world.
Our peaceful, free, fair and just society is the envy of the world. That is why so many people around the world want to come to Canada. They want to adopt our values.
But Trudeau takes this all for granted.
He doesn’t think there is anything special about Canadian history or traditions.
Instead, he suggests Canada is nothing but an intellectual construct and a hodgepodge of various people, from various backgrounds, who just happen to live side by side in the territory known as Canada.
Trudeau seems embarrassed, even ashamed of our Western culture and values.
Far from standing up for Canada and promoting our core principles at home and abroad, Trudeau frequently apologizes for Canada.
That’s why he feels no shame in speaking at a segregated mosque, where women and girls are forbidden from entering through the front door, or sitting in the main hall.
He can call himself a “feminist” while also tolerating the subjugation and segregation of women, when it suits his political interests.
That is also why, while in China, Trudeau told the one-party authoritarian state that Canada, too, is imperfect when it comes to human rights.
Trudeau blurred the distinction between Canada’s peaceful, free society and that of a communist dictatorship.
He equated Canada — a democratic country that always strives for peace, justice, liberty and equality — to a closed regime with a sordid history.
Trudeau is wrong when it comes to our values and our identity. And his ideas are far more controversial than the proposed vetting of newcomers.
– Malcolm is the author of Losing True North: Justin Trudeau’s Assault on Canadian Citizenship. Readers are invited to attend her Toronto book signing event, at 5:30, Friday, Sept 16. Please register at: www.LosingTrueNorth.caST. LOUIS — For most teams, losing a star such as Allen Craig on the cusp of the postseason would be devastating.
Craig hit.315 with 97 RBI this season and is one of the best clutch hitters in the game. He will miss the NL Division Series with a left foot injury.
But the Cardinals aren’t like many organizations.
They have sustained winning over decades because of drafting and development.
To replace Craig in the lineup, they inserted Matt Adams — a 2009 23rd-round draft pick out of Slippery Rock — who could be a starting first baseman on many NL teams.
Adams has hit 17 home runs with an.838 OPS in 319 plate appearances this season.
The Cardinals are familiar with baseball’s postseason, making nine playoff appearances and winning two World Series since 2000. The Pirates are new to baseball’s second season, and they would like nothing more than to mirror the Cardinals’ sustained success.
Pirates manager Clint Hurdle, who spent a year with St. Louis as a player in 1986, knows replicating the Cardinals begins with the draft. Hurdle believes the Pirates have more impact players coming through the pipeline such as rookie Gerrit Cole, who will start Friday’s Game 2.
“The thing that impresses me is sustainability,” Hurdle said. “So obviously, the scouting program is in a very good place. Their player development program is in a very good place. They’ve had very good leadership in the general manager seat and obviously the manager’s seat.”
To understand how well the Cardinals have drafted, examine their 2009 class:
• First-round pick Shelby Miller has developed into one of the best young starters in the NL.
• Third-round pick Joe Kelly has had success as a starter and reliever and features a mid-90s fastball.
• Matt Carpenter wasn’t selected until the 13th round. He has produced the second-best WAR among major league second baseman (6.6), trailing only the Yankees’ Robinson Cano.
• Cardinals scout Aaron Looper saw Trevor Rosenthal pitch one inning in a community college tournament in Wichita, Kan. Later that spring, the Cardinals drafted Rosenthal in the 21st round. He is viewed as the club’s future closer.
• Adams was unearthed from a Division II college.
“We’re very, very proud of our development system,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said. “Our scouts have chosen the right kind of guys that can handle coming up here at a young age without a lot of experience.”
Travis Sawchik is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at tsawchik@tribweb.com or via Twitter @Sawchik_Trib.Zikerria Bellamy was born male but changed her gender A Florida teenager who changed her gender from male to female six years ago is taking legal action against McDonald's for alleged discrimination. Zikerria Bellamy, 17, alleges managers at the Orlando branch twice refused to hire her because she is transgender. She also claims an obscene message stating she would never be hired by the company was left on her voicemail. The branch concerned has said it has a zero tolerance policy towards any form of discrimination. 'Gay slur' The complaint, filed by the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF) before the Florida Commission on Human Relations, alleges that Zikerria Bellamy applied for a job at a McDonald's restaurant in Orlando. It is alleged that two managers at the branch refused to give Miss Bellamy an interview and an one occasion a manager saw the teenager, who arrived wearing a suit, and laughed at her. She alleges the message, on 28 July, was left by a McDonald's manager. In the voicemail message, which has been published on YouTube by her lawyers, an unidentified man uses a gay slur to describe why the fast-food chain restaurant would not hire her. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the restaurant said the employee who had left the message "acted outside the scope of his authority", the Associated Press news agency reported. Allison Garret said he was not responsible for hiring people and no longer worked there. The New York-based TLDEF says that nearly 50% of transgender people in the US have been fired or not given a job because of their transgender status. Most US states do not have laws that specifically protect transgender people in the workplace.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThe quiet summer campus of UCLA found itself suddenly steeped in water and chaos after a major water pipe burst and spewed some 30 million litres, stranding people in parking garages and flooding the school's storied basketball court less than two years after a major renovation.
The 76-centimetre, nearly century old pipe burst under nearby Sunset Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon, sending water nine metres into the air, opening a nearly 5-metre wide hole in the street and inundating part of the campus that was soon swarmed with police and firefighters.
"Unfortunately UCLA was the sink for this water source," UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said.
The break came amid a historic drought when residents are now being threatened with $500 fines for overuse.
"We lost a lot of water, around 35,000 gallons (about 132,000 litres) a minute, which is not ideal in the worst drought in the city's history," City Councilman Paul Koretz said.
The flooding hit the part of campus that is home to its athletic facilities, with the greatest danger coming in a pair of parking structures that quickly began filling with water.
Firefighters, some using inflatable boats, saved at least five people who were stranded in the structures where more than 100 cars were stuck, city fire officials said. No injuries were reported.
Historic basketball court flooded
Water cascaded to the entrance of Pauley Pavilion, considered one of college basketball's shrines since it was built in 1965, then poured on to the court named for legendary coach John Wooden and his wife Nell.
The arena — where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Reggie Miller and Kevin Love starred — underwent a $132 million renovation that was completed in October 2012. At least an inch of water covered the floor Tuesday night, and its locker rooms were also flooded.
"It's painful. It's painful," Block said. "We just refurbished Pauley just a few years ago. And it's a beautiful structure. It's of course, a symbolic structure for this entire campus."
Athletic Director Dan Guerrero said the floor would be cleared of water overnight and the damage assessed Wednesday.
The school may need to make contingency plans, but "luckily we're not in the middle of basketball season," Administrative Vice Chancellor Jack Powazek said.
The other two campus buildings damaged were the Wooden Center, which has training facilities for students, and the J.D. Morgan Center, which houses the school's sports trophies, hall of fame and athletics offices.
'A good day for a little dip'
Many students took the flooding in stride, walking calmly across campus with their backpacks in ankle deep water.
Paul Phootrakul of the UCLA Alumni Association, who was in business attire for an evening event, took off his dress shoes and dress socks, and rolled up his slacks in an attempt to wade to his car that was on the bottom floor of one of the flooded structures. Firefighters stopped him, saying the structure was not steady because of the weight of all the water.
"I don't have much hope for my car," Phootrakul said.
Some saw a chance for fun, pulling out body boards and attempting to ride down the flowing water.
Patrick Huggins and Matthew Bamberger, two 18-year-olds who live in nearby Westwood, said they were having a dull summer day until Huggins' mother told them about the water.
"It was about up to my thigh, and I thought this is a good day for a little dip," Huggins said.
The two shot video of themselves diving and splashing in the badly flooded practice putting green used by the golf team.
Geyser spewed for 3 hours
The 93-year-old high-pressure line of riveted steel pipe spewed a geyser of water for over three hours before it could be safely shut down without causing more damage, said Jim McDaniel of the Department of Water and Power.
Crews struggled to get to the area at rush hour, and they had to research which valves to shut off without affecting service, McDaniel said. Some water service was briefly interrupted but quickly restored.
There was no immediate word on the cause.
McDaniel said there was no "magic technology" to determine when a new line is needed, and the city is on a replacement cycle of over 300 years for main lines.
"Every city that has aging infrastructure has issues like this and we're no exception."
Repairs to the pipe and to Sunset Boulevard were expected to last well into Wednesday, McDaniel said.Summer is in full dress here; her bounty is as far as the eye can see. Aiden is relishing his playtime outside and the treats that the season brings – like cherries and popsicles! But one day this weekend, he wakes up from his afternoon nap and the first thing he tells me is, “Mama I want cookies please.” Cookies? Well, we don’t have any packaged cookies in the house Honey, and it’s 85 F so there’s no way we’re turning on that oven right now. Oh, but he’s much too sweet to dismiss, so what’s a Mom to do?
Shuffle into the kitchen and rummage through our supplies. Slim pickings since I haven’t quite been in the baking mood these days. However, with a little creativity, we came up with something I think you’ll like (we did!). There’s not many ingredients to worry about and the result is tasty and satisfies that sweet craving that kids and adults alike seem to generate in the afternoon.
Of course, I snuck in some chia seeds for good measure and for the right to refer to these as healthy bites, rather than just bites 😉 Mothers’ rights!
They have this delicious complexity that makes it difficult to only eat a couple! So may I suggest, serve the healthy peanut butter coconut bites in portion controlled servings and stick the rest in the fridge or freezer for later.
How was your weekend? Were there treats involved?
Hope you enjoy these! xoMental Organs and the Breadth and Depth of Consciousness
The Next Steps
Tom Ray builds on the work of the Shulgins, taking the next steps they envisioned:
“The most compelling insight of that day [mescaline] was that this awesome recall had been brought about by a fraction of a gram of a white solid, but that in no way whatsoever could it be argued that these memories had been contained within the white solid. Everything I had recognized came from the depths of my memory and my psyche... there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.” – Sasha (Shulgin & Shulgin 1991) p. 16-17
“I realized that mescaline no more produced beauty than TMA produced anger. Just as the beauty was always within me, so was the anger. Different drugs may sometimes open different doors in a person, but all of those doors lead out of the same unconscious.” – Sasha (Shulgin & Shulgin 1991), p. 24
“I’m looking for tools that can be used for studying the mind, and other people then will use the tools in finding out the aspects of the mental process and how it ties to the brain.” – Sasha 1996
Tom Ray had twenty-five psychedelic drugs from Shulgin’s toolkit broadly assayed by the National Institute of Mental Health – Psychoactive Drug Screening Program. By synthesizing the subjective experience and molecular affinity data, he has been able to realize the Shulgin’s vision of using their toolkit of drugs to advance our understanding of the relationships between the brain, the drugs, and the mind; and most importantly, our understanding of ourselves.
We invite readers to view the video before reading this manuscriptContents show]
Avatar: The Last Airbender credits
Fong
Character information: Fong
The Legend of Korra credits
Hiroshi Sato
Character information: Hiroshi Sato
Selected other credits
Television work
Filmography
Other credits
Biographical information
Personal life
(born Kim Daehyeon; Hangul: 김대현; Hanja: 金大賢) is a South Korean actor and voice actor. He voiced General Fong in one episode ofand Hiroshi Sato in seven episodes of
Kim was born in Busan, South Korea, and moved to the United States with his family when he was two, growing up in the city of Easton in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley. Kim is a graduate of Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Haverford College in Haverford Township, Pennsylvania. His theater major was completed at the neighboring Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He graduated from NYU's Graduate Acting Program in 1996.
Career
Daniel Dae Kim's film career began with roles in The Jackal, For Love of the Game, The Hulk, Spider-Man 2, The Cave, and Crash, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. Kim is best known to audiences for his portrayal of Jin on the critically-acclaimed television series Lost.
On television, Kim's credits include Hawaii Five-0, CSI, ER, 24, and the animated series Justice League Unlimited. In 2008, he starred in the Emmy Award-nominated miniseries The Andromeda Strain. Kim has also lent his voice talents to video games, including Saints Row, Saints Row 2, Scarface: The World Is Yours, Tenchu, and 24.
Kim played the King of Siam in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I from June 12–28, 2009, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England.
In February 2010, it was announced that Kim was cast as Chin Ho Kelly in the CBS reboot of Hawaii Five-0, which premiered on September 20, 2010. He was the first actor cast for the series.
AwardsKaspersky Lab last week detailed why the increasing market share of the Apple Mac means more malware on the platform. Eugene (Yevgeny) Kaspersky, co-founder and CEO of the security firm, has now gone further in statement made at the Infosecurity Europe 2012 conference.
"I think [Apple] are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security," Kaspersky told CBR. "For many years I've been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It's always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms."
Kaspersky is of course referring to the Flashback malware that has infected hundreds of thousands of Macs (see links below). He then reiterated what his employees and many security researchers have been saying for years: Apple needs to step up its game.
"Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on," Kaspersky said. "We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success and this was the first successful one. They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software. That's what Microsoft did in the past after so many incidents like Blaster and the more complicated worms that infected millions of computers in a short time. They had to do a lot of work to check the code to find mistakes and vulnerabilities. Now it's time for Apple [to do that]."
Kaspersky, the privately-held company, produces antivirus and other computer security products. Excluding the energy sector, Kaspersky Lab is considered one of Russia's few international business success stories. The company makes excellent security software and I have personally recommended some of its products a few times.
That being said, Kaspersky, both the man and his company, of course would benefit from a malware epidemic on the Mac. That's important to keep in mind, while acknowledging that the numbers are indeed growing and the Mac security situation is getting worse. Just how bad it's getting, and will get, is a matter of perspective.
See also:In his latest episode of The Trews, comedian Russell Brand offered up another typical dose of leftist insanity as he weighed in on the aftermath taking place in Ferguson, Missouri after a grand jury refused to indict white officer Darren Wilson for shooting unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
“The grand jury found that that white man, Darren Wilson — who’s a policeman, coincidentally — didn’t do anything wrong when he killed that young lad, Michael Brown — who’s a black man, coincidentally,” he began.
“It’s this series of coincidences that’s leading to protests. Does that mean we have no power? Does that mean that the laws that have been set up don’t give us any access to power? Are we living in a corrupt world with no possibility for change?” Brand asked.
Brand then spent the next seven minutes answering his series of "deep" questions by essentially doing a low-rent rendition of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show on speed.
He first set his sights on Fox News, interspersing several news clips between his rants about Michael Brown's innocence and racial injustice. When Fox News host Megyn Kelly referred to the rioting in Ferguson as "looting" and "violence," Brand scoffed at the camera, saying that Fox should be reporting "every 28 hours an unarmed black man is killed by a law enforcement officer somewhere in America." He also didn't like Megyn Kelly saying that Officer Darren Wilson "suffered injuries" during his altercation with Michael Brown.
None of the actual facts in the Michael Brown case actually matter to Russell Brand as he sees the situation in Ferguson as testimony to a supposedly larger truth: that Ferguson represents a "microcosmic cauldron of centuries of racial oppression."
“The attempt to reframe it as, ‘this is unruly unrest and looting,’ is absolutely irrelevant," said Brand. "What is relevant is that a young boy has been murdered and there are no legal consequences to it.”
The episode concluded with Brand going into full-blown conspiracy theory mode, highlighting the heavy amounts of military equipment law enforcement has been acquiring since 2006, saying it indicates that "they're anticipating aggravation" because "they know the laws are unjust and that people will eventually rise up and protest."
"They know that change is coming," Brand continued. "They know that people are unifying, and they're not going to yield to it. Power never yields."
In order to get this "power" to yield, Brand gave his viewers two options: "shut up or protest." Russell Brand won't do either one.SAN FRANCISCO — For over a year and a half, Yahoo has been tormented by a prominent activist investor who has criticized virtually everything about the company, from its business strategy to its efforts to sell major assets.
Now that hedge fund, Starboard Value, is finally getting a seat at the embattled Internet company’s table, heading off a potentially distracting fight and perhaps easing the way for a potential sale of its core business.
Yahoo said on Wednesday that it had given four director seats to Starboard, ending the activist investor’s campaign to unseat the company’s entire board. One of those seats will go to Starboard’s chief executive, Jeffrey C. Smith, who will also join a special board committee overseeing the company’s sale process.
“We look forward to getting started right away and working closely with management and our fellow board members with the common goal of maximizing value for all shareholders,” Mr. Smith said in a statement.Mexican immigrant Roberto Garcia, center, and son Alan, left, look at wrist watches while shopping in Los Angeles, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
If you’re worried about the economy, you should also be worried about the fate of immigration reform. According to this 2010 analysis by The Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, the idea that immigrants are a drag on the economy — a belief shared by many Americans — is simply incorrect.
Immigrants coming to America are split between those who are highly educated and those who arrive without a high school diploma. On one end of the spectrum, immigrants are nearly twice as likely as U.S.-born citizens to have a PhD; at the other end, immigrants are four times more likely than U.S. citizens to have not graduated from high school.
There’s a widely-held belief that the group on the right side of this chart — the 11 percent of foreign-born workers with advanced degrees — are the important group of immigrants the U.S. needs to attract : The Immigration Innovation Act of 2013, introduced this week by a bipartisan group of senators, focuses only on immigration reform for skilled immigrants.
But regardless of education level, immigrants have a positive effect on the American economy. Research shows that immigrants increase the standard for all U.S.-born workers by increasing wages and lowering prices. The wage increase for unskilled American workers may seem counter-intuitive, but immigrants often do not seek jobs already held by U.S.-born workers; they instead go into fields that help U.S. workers. Brookings Institution Senior Fellows Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney give one scenario illustrating how this works:
…many immigrants complement the work of U.S. employees and increase their productivity. For example, low-skill immigrant laborers allow U.S.-born farmers, contractors, or craftsmen to expand agricultural production or to build more homes — thereby expanding employment possibilities and incomes for U.S. workers.
Immigrants also aren’t a drain on the government budget. The taxes paid by immigrants and their children — including the children of undocumented immigrants — cover the costs of the services they use. Many of the government-funded services provided to immigrants are related to raising children — but as the chart below shows, over a lifetime, immigrant children pay back the cost of the services they use, and are no more expensive to taxpayers than the children of U.S.-born parents.
Additionally, immigrants spur the economy by starting more businesses and contributing more to U.S. innovation than native-born workers. New businesses and research end up helping all Americans by creating new jobs and opening new doors to more innovation.
Currently, about 13 percent of the population is age 65 or older. Over the next 20 years, we’re going to have 14 million whites, primarily native-born whites, leaving the labor force. Almost all the gains will be among Hispanics and other minority groups, and descendants of immigrants. For the nation’s economy and workforce to be strong, we must address how people will fill some of those jobs. The dynamic productivity of our country is going to be a result of past, current, and future immigration, of people in their productive years. Otherwise we’re going to be extremely top-heavy.
By reforming immigration policy through legislation recently proposed by the president and a bipartisan group of senators, the U.S. also could counter its slowing birth rate, putting America in a stronger demographic position than Europe, Japan and China. This could be particularly beneficial in many of America’s post-industrial cities, where the average age of the population is drifting upward as younger workers leave in search of jobs. William H. Fey, a demographer and senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, told the National Journal
In short, immigrants of all sorts — from different countries, of various education levels — could be extremely helpful in urging our country toward financial recovery and sustaining our economy into the future. As Congress gains momentum on immigration reform — as it has this week — politicians should remember that rethinking our current policies may not only benefit foreign-born immigrants within our borders looking for citizenship, or the world’s best and brightest beyond our borders who hope to study and do research here. As the economy continues to slog slowly forward, reform also could turn out to be a favor to U.S.-born workers and businesspeople.LOS ANGELES -- With 2:31 seconds left in the fourth quarter Tuesday at Staples Center, Los Angeles Lakers coach Byron Scott benched his rookie point guard D'Angelo Russell.
At that point, the Lakers trailed the Dallas Mavericks by two points. On the Lakers' possession prior to making the substitution, Russell had missed a 3-point shot that would have given his team the lead.
Russell, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2015 draft, watched the rest of the game from the bench as the Mavericks went on to win 92-90, dropping the Lakers to 9-38.
After the loss, Scott explained why he benched the team's promising 19-year-old -- and the answer seemed a bit harsher than usual, which is saying something considering the harsh criticism Scott has given Russell all season.
"I saw the last couple minutes that he was in that he was really trying to take over the game, and that's not him yet," Scott said. "I want the ball to move a little bit. I thought it stuck with him. He tried to make the big shots and things like that. I understand that, but to me, that's not him right now."
In general, Scott said of Russell, "He's been more aggressive to score. I think sometimes he's taking what they're giving him, and I think there's other times where I think he's kind of forcing the issue. He has to find a happy medium. He's learning."
Russell finished with 12 points on 4-of-12 shooting to go along with two rebounds and no assists in nearly 25 minutes. Russell scored five points on 2-of-5 shooting in the fourth quarter before being benched, and he defended his play late in the game.
"We had four, five playmaking players out there," Russell said. "I feel like everybody was trying to [take over]. They're a veteran team. They rarely mess up. So when you catch them slipping a little bit, you've got to take advantage of it."
As Russell added, "I feel like I was taking advantage of what they were giving me. It was a small split window of taking a shot or passing it up with a shot-clock violation on the line. It was always in my hands and I had to take a shot. I missed it. I don't know if [Scott] would've said that if I was making those shots."
Russell is nothing if not confident, as evidenced by his fact that after he scored a career-high 27 points in a Jan. 7 road loss to the Sacramento Kings, he proclaimed, "Y'all ain't seen nothing yet. The world hasn't seen anything yet."
"I love the fact that he has confidence," Scott said. "When it gets to the point where it's cockiness, then we've got a problem."
Is he close to that point of cockiness where it becomes a problem?
"I think he's pretty close," Scott said. "I don't think he's there. I just think he feels right now that he's got a lot of confidence in himself. Like I said, that's a good thing. You don't get this far without having that. And sometimes you don't get this far without having a little cockiness, as well. But you don't want that to overshadow the confidence that he has.
"I think when you get cocky, you're thinking that there's nothing that you can't do. And if you think that, then you stop working."4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, Canadian Forces Europe 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, Canada's NATO Brigade in Europe Data current to 24 Jan 2019. Leopard, Fallex 84, 4 Sep 1984, Germany. (Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4868476) 4 CMBG, RCD Leopard tanks and 3rd Bn RCR M113 APCs and jeep, Fallex 80, Germany, Sep 1980. (Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4922171) Canadian Forces Europe Canadian Forces Europe (CFE) was the Canadian Forces military formation in Europe during the Cold War. The CF assisted other NATO allies in being prepared to counter the military activities of Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. CFE consisted of two formations in West Germany, Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Lahr with 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (1957-1993), and No. 1 Air Division (1 CAD), RCAF, at CFB Base Baden-Soellingen and CFB Base Lahr, which later became No. 1 Canadian Air Group (1 CAG). Both formations were closed in 1993 with the end of the Cold War. Canadian Army elements in CFE Canada had maintained a presence in Europe as part of the NATO forces since 1951, when 27 Canadian Infantry Brigade was initially deployed to Hannover, Germany, attached to the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). This formation, which was formed primarily with Militia units, eventually moved to a permanent base at Soest, Germany, in 1953. Initially, it was intended to rotate brigades to Germany - 27 CIB was replaced by 1 Canadian Infantry Brigade Group in October 1953, which in turn was replaced by 2 Canadian Infantry Brigade Group in 1955, and then 4 Canadian Infantry Brigade Group in 1957. The arrival of 4 CIBG saw a significant reinforcement of the formation's capabilities; prior to this each brigade had only been equipped with a squadron of main battle tanks. The arrival of 4 CIBG saw a full armoured |
charges (up from 8). Kinetic Bulwark: This new skill builds stacks of Kinetic Bulwark every time you lose a charge of Kinetic Ward. Each stack of Kinetic Bulwark increases shield absorption by 1% (with max points). Stacks up to 8 times. Lasts for 20 seconds or until Kinetic Ward is reactivated.
This new skill builds stacks of Kinetic Bulwark every time you lose a charge of Kinetic Ward. Each stack of Kinetic Bulwark increases shield absorption by 1% (with max points). Stacks up to 8 times. Lasts for 20 seconds or until Kinetic Ward is reactivated. Impact Control: This skill no longer causes Battle Readiness to heal you (that is now a baseline effect of Battle Readiness). Now this skill grants 25% damage reduction while Battle Readiness is active.
This skill no longer causes Battle Readiness to heal you (that is now a baseline effect of Battle Readiness). Now this skill grants 25% damage reduction while Battle Readiness is active. Particle Acceleration: This skill can now trigger its effect from Double Strike, Shadow Strike, Whirling Blow, and Spinning Strike and only works while Combat Technique is active.
This skill can now trigger its effect from Double Strike, Shadow Strike, Whirling Blow, and Spinning Strike and only works while Combat Technique is active. Bombardment: Now while Combat Technique is active, Project generates 30% more threat and costs 30% less Force (with max points).
Now while Combat Technique is active, Project generates 30% more threat and costs 30% less Force (with max points). Shadow Wrap: This new skill gives Double Strike and Spinning Strike a chance to proc Shadow Wrap, which makes your next Shadow Strike cost 50% less Force and usable when face-to-face with your target.
This new skill gives Double Strike and Spinning Strike a chance to proc Shadow Wrap, which makes your next Shadow Strike cost 50% less Force and usable when face-to-face with your target. Shadow’s Shelter: With this new skill, your Phase Walk deploys a Shadow’s Shelter around the placed mark. Those standing within the Shadow’s Shelter deal 5% additional healing.
With this new skill, your Phase Walk deploys a Shadow’s Shelter around the placed mark. Those standing within the Shadow’s Shelter deal 5% additional healing. Slow Time: Now has a 9-second cooldown (up from 7.5), costs 20 Force (down from 30), and deals slightly more damage.
Infiltration
Our goals with Infiltration for 2.0 are to improve upon their single target damage and sustained damage without adversely affecting their burst damage.
Shadow Technique and Force Breach: Prior to 2.0, Shadow Technique, Exit Strategy, Force Breach, and Security Breach had some conflicting goals. On the one hand, Security Breach let you use Force Breach faster, but you usually couldn’t build up 5 Exit Strategies in that amount of time. In 2.0, these skills have been redesigned to work more gracefully and intuitively. Now Shadow Technique has a longer rate limit and deals significantly more damage. When it deals damage, it builds a Breaching Shadow (stacks up to 3 times). Breaching Shadows enable the use of and increase the damage dealt by Force Breach. As previously mentioned, Force Breach now has no cooldown; its use is limited only by how quickly you can generate Breaching Shadows. At 3 Breaching Shadows, Force Breach should hit for as hard or harder than ever before.
Prior to 2.0, Shadow Technique, Exit Strategy, Force Breach, and Security Breach had some conflicting goals. On the one hand, Security Breach let you use Force Breach faster, but you usually couldn’t build up 5 Exit Strategies in that amount of time. In 2.0, these skills have been redesigned to work more gracefully and intuitively. Now Shadow Technique has a longer rate limit and deals significantly more damage. When it deals damage, it builds a Breaching Shadow (stacks up to 3 times). Breaching Shadows enable the use of and increase the damage dealt by Force Breach. As previously mentioned, Force Breach now has no cooldown; its use is limited only by how quickly you can generate Breaching Shadows. At 3 Breaching Shadows, Force Breach should hit for as hard or harder than ever before. Circling Shadows: This skill now requires Shadow Technique to be active and triggers from activating Double Strike, Shadow Strike, Whirling Blow, Spinning Strike, and Clairvoyant Strike.
This skill now requires Shadow Technique to be active and triggers from activating Double Strike, Shadow Strike, Whirling Blow, Spinning Strike, and Clairvoyant Strike. Upheaval: This skill is now found in the first tier of the Infiltration skill tree.
This skill is now found in the first tier of the Infiltration skill tree. Nerve Wracking: This skill has been moved from the Kinetic Combat tree into the Infiltration tree.
This skill has been moved from the Kinetic Combat tree into the Infiltration tree. Impose Weakness: This new skill forces your Spinning Kick and Low Slash to proc Infiltration Tactics on a separate rate limit. Now after you Spinning Kick a target, you are guaranteed to be able to follow up with a powerful Shadow Strike.
This new skill forces your Spinning Kick and Low Slash to proc Infiltration Tactics on a separate rate limit. Now after you Spinning Kick a target, you are guaranteed to be able to follow up with a powerful Shadow Strike. Potent Shadows: With this new skill, while Shadow Technique is active, Force Potency immediately builds 3 Breaching Shadows to provide on demand burst. Additionally, exiting combat greatly reduces the active cooldown of Force Potency (60 seconds with max points) to make Force Potency available for almost every fight you engage in.
With this new skill, while Shadow Technique is active, Force Potency immediately builds 3 Breaching Shadows to provide on demand burst. Additionally, exiting combat greatly reduces the active cooldown of Force Potency (60 seconds with max points) to make Force Potency available for almost every fight you engage in. Judgement: This new skill reduces the cost of Spinning Strike and increases all damage dealt to targets below 30% of max health.
This new skill reduces the cost of Spinning Strike and increases all damage dealt to targets below 30% of max health. Clairvoyant Strike: This ability has been slightly redesigned. Clairvoyant Strike still builds Clairvoyance with each use, but Clairvoyance no longer increases the damage dealt by Project. Instead, Clairvoyance now gives Project a 50% chance per stack to automatically trigger your Shadow Technique on a separate rate limit. Stacks up to 2 times. With this change, the damage boost to Project has been effectively replaced by damage caused from triggering your Shadow Technique, except that Shadow Technique additionally builds 1 Breaching Shadow every time it triggers. Therefore, Clairvoyant Strike and Project will together help you quickly build 3 Breaching Shadows to rapidly issue powerful Force Breaches.
Balance (Shadow)
Prior to 2.0, Balance Shadows had a laundry list of ability priorities. For better or worse, playing Balance correctly as a Shadow was pretty daunting and exhausting. We wanted to take 2.0 as an opportunity to reevaluate Balance’s priorities one ability at a time. We are aware that some players will be disappointed to learn that Balance’s “rotation” has been simplified as a result, but their existing gameplay left little room for growth (on our side) and little room for error (on your side).
Now in 2.0, Balance Shadows can get the same results with a smoother, less complex list of abilities and ability priorities. We like that we can make these kinds of gameplay adjustments with the time we have, but we’re also sensitive to what can be perceived as “fundamentally” changing a spec. We don’t believe we’ve fundamentally changed Balance Shadows as they are still very much drain skirmishers, but we will be keeping an eye on how Balance Shadows get played and on player feedback. We’re confident that the changes we’ve made will actually make Balance Shadows a more attractive option to players that were previously turned off by their complexity.
Project, Upheaval, and Twin Disciplines: Prior to 2.0, Project served as little more than a way to apply Twin Disciplines. Worse, Upheaval was actually in the Balance skill tree, which reinforced the idea that Project was a good Balance ability. In 2.0, we’ve removed Twin Disciplines and moved Upheaval into the Infiltration skill tree to try and paint a clearer picture. Balance Shadows no longer rely on Project for sustained damage, but it’s still a perfectly viable ability for bursting a target down.
Prior to 2.0, Project served as little more than a way to apply Twin Disciplines. Worse, Upheaval was actually in the Balance skill tree, which reinforced the idea that Project was a good Balance ability. In 2.0, we’ve removed Twin Disciplines and moved Upheaval into the Infiltration skill tree to try and paint a clearer picture. Balance Shadows no longer rely on Project for sustained damage, but it’s still a perfectly viable ability for bursting a target down. Sharpened Mind and Mind Warp: With the removal of Project from a sustained damage priority list, Balance Shadows have a lot more Force available. With this in mind, Sharpened Mind has been replaced with Mind Warp, which increases the duration of Mind Crush.
With the removal of Project from a sustained damage priority list, Balance Shadows have a lot more Force available. With this in mind, Sharpened Mind has been replaced with Mind Warp, which increases the duration of Mind Crush. Infiltration Tactics: Infiltration Tactics is now located further up the Infiltration skill tree. Previously, Infiltration Tactics was available to a fully Balance-specialized Shadow, which is something we should have never done. In general, we don’t like making gameplay-altering skills available as “low hanging fruit” in other skill trees because they alter your established gameplay after-the-fact. This isn’t so much a balance concern as it is a usability and complexity concern. In this specific case, adding Infiltration Tactics on top of a full Balance spec felt clunky. Worse, it wasn’t necessary. We’re fully capable of providing the same damage boost to players without requiring them to master additional gameplay. This change aims to do exactly that.
Infiltration Tactics is now located further up the Infiltration skill tree. Previously, Infiltration Tactics was available to a fully Balance-specialized Shadow, which is something we should have never done. In general, we don’t like making gameplay-altering skills available as “low hanging fruit” in other skill trees because they alter your established gameplay after-the-fact. This isn’t so much a balance concern as it is a usability and complexity concern. In this specific case, adding Infiltration Tactics on top of a full Balance spec felt clunky. Worse, it wasn’t necessary. We’re fully capable of providing the same damage boost to players without requiring them to master additional gameplay. This change aims to do exactly that. Drain Thoughts: Increases all periodic damage dealt by 9% (with max points). Now affects all periodic damage dealt so that Sever Force better synergizes with the skill tree.
Increases all periodic damage dealt by 9% (with max points). Now affects all periodic damage dealt so that Sever Force better synergizes with the skill tree. Force Suppression: Now applies 15 charges instead of 10.
Now applies 15 charges instead of 10. Force In Balance: Now affects up to 5 targets instead of 3.
Now affects up to 5 targets instead of 3. Containment: The activation time reduction on Force Lift has been reduced in effectiveness. Previously, this skill gave Balance a lot of extra lockdown that we weren’t too pleased with, and after the introduction of Phase Walk, Balance’s ability to flee and avoid conflict exceeded acceptable levels. Now this skill reduces the activation time of Force Lift to 1.5 seconds. The stun effect when Force Lift ends prematurely due to damage has not been altered.
The activation time reduction on Force Lift has been reduced in effectiveness. Previously, this skill gave Balance a lot of extra lockdown that we weren’t too pleased with, and after the introduction of Phase Walk, Balance’s ability to flee and avoid conflict exceeded acceptable levels. Now this skill reduces the activation time of Force Lift to 1.5 seconds. The stun effect when Force Lift ends prematurely due to damage has not been altered. Rippling Force: With this new skill, when your Force Technique is triggered, it deals additional kinetic damage after 1 second. Damage dealt by these Force Ripples restores 2 Force (with max points).
With this new skill, when your Force Technique is triggered, it deals additional kinetic damage after 1 second. Damage dealt by these Force Ripples restores 2 Force (with max points). Crush Spirit: This new skill increases the damage dealt by Force In Balance and all periodic damaging effects by 15% (with max points) on targets below 30% of max health.
This new skill increases the damage dealt by Force In Balance and all periodic damaging effects by 15% (with max points) on targets below 30% of max health. Mental Defense: This new utility skill reduces all damage taken by 30% while stunned. Balance has a good deal of self healing through effects like Focused Insight and Force In Balance, but this healing isn’t on-demand and can’t counter burst at key moments. As a result, Balance is especially vulnerable to being bursted down while controlled, so we added Mental Defense to help Balance’s survivability in that department.
Game Update 2.0: Scum and Villainy and the Digital Expansion: Rise of the Hutt Cartel are now live with the changes above. Please keep in mind that we are always looking at class balance so let us know how you like the changes we have made. I hope the information I could share with you today has helped shed some light on what’s changed and why we changed it. Thanks for reading!OpenTTD is one of the most popular business simulation games out there. In this game, you need to create a wonderful transportation business. However, you will start in the beginning at around 1900 or even earlier, and you have to try and find the right way to get new items and grow your business as much as you can. OpenTTD isn’t a simple game.
But it’s the way that plays which makes it so fun and interesting. Each time you play, you will get access to some new features and gameplay ideas. The maps are randomized, so you never know what cities you have on the map and what resources you can harness.
How to play OpenTTD?
The idea here is to start connecting cities to one another at first. Then you have to connect businesses to cities, in order to offer those cities the desired items that they are in dire need of. You will be able to use regular buses for transportation, trucks, airplanes and naval transport as well. Of course, the trick is to expand only when needed and to avoid unnecessary costs.
In the beginning, you need to work only with one or two routes at most. Make sure that you optimize those to make more money, and only then should you expand to getting even more and better results.
Some of the best tips and tricks to play OpenTTD and succeed
Despite the fact that it may look simple, OpenTTD is not a simple game at all. It’s a title full of challenges and it does tend to bring in front a lot of exciting and unique solutions.
Start by building 2 or 3 airports. This is a very good idea if you want to have thriving cities right from the start. The idea here is to focus on finding the best places where you can put these airports, usually the 1500+ cities will be perfect for that. Once you have the airports, a good idea is to buy one or two airplanes and let them fly between the airports. You can get lots of income from the start, and that can come in handy. You will have to fast forward to earn the income you need, and then you can repay the loan. Usually, these planes need to be replaced after a while, so check them out.
Create a two way track across a couple of cities. This will allow these cities to grow pretty fast and then you will get to have a nice income as well. Adding more stations and letting some industry products coming in can be a very good idea here. It’s a slower way to make money, but it delivers a more satisfying way to play the game.
Build up lots of routes that help you connect coal mines to a power station. When you have a lot of money, you can start a new network and then expand it from there. It’s a rather slow way to make money in the game, but it can be worth it and a whole lot of fun to pursue.
Favor longer routes instead of shorter ones. Longer routes may cost more to create, but they always end up giving you more money in the end. So, the option is you avoid spending on smaller routes and instead focus on the longer ones. It’s a lot better, more fulfilling and results can be more than ok in the end.In a Scandinavian hotel a few years ago, I came across a documentary I didn’t expect to watch for more than a minute or two, but at least it was in English. It was past time to go to bed, but I ended up watching the whole thing. Aftermath: Population Zero imagines that overnight humanity vanishes from the planet.
The 13 impossible crises that humanity now faces | George Monbiot Read more
You may have seen it. The immediate effects of human departure are sentimentally saddening: pets die, no longer competent to fend for themselves. Some livestock fares poorly, though other domesticated animals romp happily into the wild. Water cooling fuel rods of nuclear power plants evaporate, and you’d think that would be the end of everything – but it isn’t.
Radioactivity subsides. Mankind’s monuments to itself decay, until every last skyscraper has rusted and returned to dirt. Animals proliferate, flora thrive, forests rise. Bounty, abundance and beauty abound. Antelopes leap from wafting golden grasses. It was all very exhilarating, really. I went to sleep that night with a lightened heart.
Ever since, that wafting grasses image has been a comforting touchstone. We speak often of “destroying the planet” when what we mean is destroying its habitability for humans. The humblingly immense else-ness of what is, in which our species is collectively a speck, extant for an eye blink, lets us off the hook. Global warming, Syrian civil war, domestic violence, Donald Trump? This too shall pass.
What is giving you hope for 2017? | Sarah Marsh Read more
I’m not a religious person. Chances are that the universe neither treasures nor regrets us. It permits us, with a marvellous neutrality, and later it may permit artificial intelligence, humanity 2.0, or a lot more bugs instead. We can’t comprehend all that phantasmagorical stuff out there, but we also can’t kill it. That gives me hope. Although we’re a remarkably successful biological manifestation – and so is mould – our aptitude for annihilation is largely limited to wiping ourselves out. The gift of self-destruction is a minor, not to mention stupid, power, and apparently humanity’s suicide would be relatively safe, like a controlled explosion. The universe would get on perfectly well without us once we’d gone.
I strongly associate the notion of aftermath with TC Boyle’s short story Chicxulub. While relating the intimate, personal account of learning that his teenage daughter has been hit, perhaps fatally, by a car, the narrator digresses to explain the shockingly high likelihood that our planet will be hit by an asteroid large enough to extinguish our species. For the narrator, his daughter’s death and the end of the world are indistinguishable. The text is shot through with a piercing sorrow, over all our pending losses – of children, of the world we’ve made together as a race. This, too, gives me hope – that I’m not a misanthrope after all. I would miss my brother, my husband; with all our shortcomings, I would also miss the family of man. The capacity for grief, the flipside of love, consoles me as much as the detached long view of aftermath.Over the last few years, Oklahoma has experienced a stunning increase in the number of earthquakes. Since 2008, quakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater have hit that state 600 times more frequently than the historic average. Despite peer-reviewed studies to the contrary, Oklahoma’s state government had continued to express skepticism about the link between this seismic boom and the increase in the amount of wastewater from oil and gas operations being injected underground.
Todd Halihan
That official skepticism ended this week with the announcement by the Oklahoma Geological Survey that wastewater injection wells were, indeed, the “likely” cause of “the majority” of that state’s earthquakes.
Geologist Todd Halihan, a professor at Oklahoma State University, welcomed that announcement. Halihan, who sits on the Oklahoma Governor’s Coordinating Council on Seismic Activity, has examined the impact of injection wells on seismic activity and compared the state’s reluctance to accept the prevailing science to the Dust Bowl era, when warnings of that disaster went unheeded.
In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Halihan outlines some possible ways that the abnormal seismic activity in Oklahoma might be tamped down. But he also explains why he believes the problem has no quick or easy fixes.
Yale Environment 360: For a number of years, Oklahoma’s state government expressed official skepticism regarding the link between injection wells and induced seismicity. So what’s your reaction to the Oklahoma Geological Survey’s announcement that the rise in the number of earthquakes there is very likely attributable to injection wells?
Todd Halihan: It’s nice that the state is aligned with the peer-reviewed research. In terms of my discussion on the problem, I talk about peer-reviewed research and I try to provide the facts from a neutral perspective. As I’ve given those talks, it’s been very funny when people try to figure out which side of the issue I’m on. I’ve been very confounding to people because I’m actually neutral — or I try my best to be. I just present the facts and what the options are. So I’m relieved that there’s now an alignment between the peer-reviewed literature and the state’s official statement.
e360: You said that, in your efforts to get the state to align with that peer-reviewed work, you sometimes felt you were talking about climate change and not earthquakes. How so?
Halihan: One thing is the belief that until we are 100 percent certain we shouldn’t take any action that would affect the economy. If you’ve got a plane with smoke coming out of it, you’re probably going to take some action. You’re not 100 percent certain it’s going to crash, but you probably want to step back and look at it. So it’s the same thing for the energy industry and the folks here. Yes, we’re not 100 percent sure that you’re causing earthquakes. But the problem for me that I saw was that even while we had a lot of seismic activity, people were applying to drill right in the center of it. You can understand from an economic perspective they’ve got an investment. But for folks to then say, “I realize there’s a problem going on, there’s uncertainty going on, but I would like to just keep going as fast as I can. I want to keep adding to the problem because I’ve got a business plan.” And that’s the limit that I reached — plowing forward in the face of uncertainty when there’s a pretty negative side effect. I don’t think that’s necessarily an appropriate way to have the industry move forward.
The other thing is people saying that I’m obviously looking to do fundraising for my research. I’ve purposely not written a grant to ask for money to look at earthquake issues, so that I have not been a funded researcher. It’s a common accusation against climate scientists, and we giggle because none of us know a rich climate scientist. We also don’t know any rich seismologists that are working on earthquake issues.
e360: That limit you say you reached may have been the point when you started making analogies to the Dust Bowl era and the unheeded warnings about that disaster.
Halihan: When I was a kid learning about the Dust Bowl there was a sense, “Wow, they didn’t know anything back then, I pity those poor people they didn’t have science.” And then when I moved to Oklahoma I learned that actually there were people from the [agricultural] extension offices speaking with farmers, saying “You guys can’t do this, this is a really bad idea.” And the science was ignored.
There’s a built-in uncertainty because we’re basically running an industrial-scale wastewater facility.’
e360: Wastewater that’s injected underground can rupture or loosen existing faults, resulting in seismic activity. That’s something that was established decades ago. What research in Oklahoma is still needed to adequately characterize the seismic risk these wells might pose? Do we need to know more about the faults in Oklahoma?
Halihan: There’s a built-in uncertainty because we’re basically running an industrial-scale wastewater disposal facility that we didn’t characterize in terms of how it was functioning as a whole originally. This happened in freshwater issues back in 1980s when we were doing most of that regulation on a per-well basis. We’d look at a farmer who wanted to pump 400 gallons for his irrigation well, and we did lots of regulations based on that and then each guy applied for a different permit. But then you started realizing if you had 1,000 wells, that it didn’t really work. You had to look at how the whole thing is interacting and understand the whole system to be able to regulate it. And so now if you look at the various states that manage their groundwater systems, I don’t know of any of them that are managing on a per-well basis. But on the oil and gas side, we’re still doing that. It’s a per-well basis, it’s not a system basis.
And so when you have 1,000 disposal wells operating at the same time, you start asking questions like, “At this point right here I’d like to know what happens when we have monthly averages of what they injected.” You actually don’t have the data to solve the problem. You either would have to increase the data density tremendously for each location, or you’d have to start managing in an alternate way.
e360: The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in the state, reviews injection well permits for, amongst other things, proximity to faults. It also monitors pressure and volume data for wells in areas of concern. And it recently required some well operators in an area with the deepest injection formation to prove they’re not injecting into the granite so-called basement level, which is prone to faults. So what’s your take on how adequate or not those protocols are?
Halihan: There’s a bit of history there because the protocols were developed to keep the very salty water from getting into the freshwater aquifers and contaminating them. The original methodology for getting rid of the water was to put it in the stream and we just sent it on its way. So an injection well became a much better option because we didn’t put all that salt into the streams and destroy the surface water. The primary concern was whether the material we’re injecting will come back up to the surface. All the protocols were built for that. Very commonly, when those wells were built, they would drill through the thick rock at the basement level. What you would typically do is drill all the way through it. The easiest way to know you’d made it through was that you would start to see granite come up. Then you’d stop.
Where you’re trying to protect freshwater, that protocol works great. In the event of seismicity, attaching it to the rocks below it — in the basement rocks in that granite — that’s a really bad idea. When those fluids try to go into the basement [level], there’s basically nowhere to go, and it changes the pressure along those faults. But we didn’t have seismicity when we first developed all these protocols. So what the Oklahoma Corporation Commission has said is we have to match both objectives now. If you’ve gone down into those rocks, you’re going to have to plug back, which means I’m going to go put in concrete or other material to seal that bottom portion of that well off so the water can no longer directly feed into the basement rocks.
e360: But since the Oklahoma Corporation Commission instituted this monitoring system, most of which started in December 2013, it’s my understanding that seismicity has only increased in the state. So where do we go from here? What does the science tell us about some things that can be done at this point to mitigate induced seismicity?
‘Whatever the state government has asked for, the industry has said, ‘Ok, we’ll do that.’
Halihan: You can lower injection rates. There’s some evidence suggesting you don’t just want to turn off all of them. That might be a riskier thing to do. So you want to lower them down and slow the whole process down. I’ve looked at whether you can go into a seismically active fault and drain off some of the pressure and try to lock it back up again. That experiment’s never been done. But that’s a potential. We could go in and remediate them by draining excess fluid out of that particular location we’re really concerned about.
e360: And there are areas of higher risk, depending on which way the fault is oriented. In addition to pressure and volume, that could be another factor that a regulatory agency could look at, right?
Halihan: From a regulatory perspective, you could say we know this fault has the correct orientation to be more likely to slip. So therefore you can’t do this or that around there. The other scenario is a company says, “Ok, we looked around. We did not detect any faults. We put in our well and now a new fault has been detected that didn’t show up until it started moving.” And so what do you do from a regulatory perspective? You’ve already allowed the well to be there and they’ve already spent the money.
But whatever the state government has asked for, the industry has said, “Ok, we’ll do that.” I don’t know of any case where any company ever said, “We’re not doing that.” People talk as if the industry’s out to get somebody. If the state says. “We think it’s a good idea that you guys spend X amount of dollars and do that to this well,” the industry has done those things.
e360: So maybe the state’s not asking enough of the industry?
Halihan: Right. The question is how do they ask it, and in which way do they ask it, and which is the most useful thing to ask, in the context of the uncertainty of the problem.
e360: An Oklahoma state representative, among others, has called for a moratorium on disposal wells in the most problematic parts of the state. Are there areas that are simply too risky to operate a well in?
Halihan: There are several levels of what you define as risk. There’s the risk that you cause a major earthquake and you have a lot of liability and damage things and potentially have done harm to folks. There are companies operating on a very high technical level, and then you have the backyard oil barons. And having those two guys being tagged together as “that industry” makes it really difficult when you say we’d like to move forward in sensible ways. There are companies that are moving forward with an entire tribe of technical folks behind them looking at everything they do, and then folks that are saying, “I want to put a well here because I’ve got a drill rig and I’ve filled out my forms right.” That setup is probably the riskiest.
e360: You sit on the governor’s Coordinating Council on Seismic Activity, which is charged with organizing state resources related to Oklahoma’s increase in seismic activity. What are some priorities for you as a member of that council?
Halihan: The council’s charge is to coordinate. And one of the things that was missing was communication. So the council set up a website that recently launched. That way there’s an easier, centralized way to get stuff out to the public to say, “Here’s what’s going on, here’s what people are doing.”
e360: If you were going to apply for funding for a study on this issue, what would you want to look at?
ALSO FROM YALE e360As Fracking Booms, Growing Concerns About Wastewater With fracking for oil and gas continuing to proliferate across the U.S., scientists and activists are raising questions about whether millions of gallons of contaminated drilling fluids could be threatening water supplies and human health. READ MORE
Halihan: The Arbuckle Formation is a really thick carbonate rock that is really good at absorbing water. It’s distributed over a huge portion of the state. So when we then look at a way to make water go away from a particular point, it’s really good at it. … We need to understand how those fluids are moving. And we don’t have a good handle on that.
So there are two things to study. One is, how does that piece of rock actually function on a system basis down there? They operated it for a long time, and it didn’t have earthquakes. But now it’s seismically active. We don’t have a good handle on where those fluids are going and how fast and in which directions do they head away from those wells. And if you had X number of wells in the same location, how do they interact? We don’t really have a lot of data on that because we’ve been managing on a per-well basis. It would be great to know that information, and the companies would love to know that information.
e360: In the last few years, the amount of wastewater injected underground in Oklahoma has shot up about 35 percent. Is anyone talking about alternatives to well injection, such as treating the water?
Halihan: When you’re treating things that are 150,000 parts per million, you still end up with fluids that you have to dispose of. You’re getting some clean water out of it but you start getting to where it’s financially unviable to do other things. So there’s the question of whether we’re going to have to ask if that formation is too wet to produce. And we can think about how to deal with the water that’s already there. All those questions are happening at the same time someone’s got a big loan for the things they’re doing to produce that oil. So it’s not a purely academic pursuit.
e360: What keeps you up at night with regards to this issue?
Halihan: My house is sitting on faults, and I sit up at night because my bed is shaking.
e360: So you have a dog in this fight.
Halihan: I have a very scared dog in the fight. He jumps up in my bed and decides I’m going to save him.DALLAS – Move the ball sounds like such a simple concept.
For much of the season, it’s been a complicated process for the Mavericks. A roster loaded with newcomers needed time to learn Rick Carlisle’s flow system and the tendencies of new teammates. And then that process pretty much started all over again when go-to guy Dirk Nowitzki made his season debut after missing 27 games.
The Mavs have moved past the getting-to-know-you stage with the big German. While Nowitzki is still working toward regaining his All-Star form, the Mavs’ offense has made major progress over the last two weeks.
“Guys see that he’s a very unselfish player for the amount of points he’s scored in his career,” Vince Carter said. “Now the adjustment has been made and we’re really starting to jell together. That’s the biggest thing, more than anything. I think when you see how he moves the ball and he’s very unselfish, everyone else catches on and understands that’s the way the offense is played and the way the best player on the team plays.
“So why not everyone else buy into it?
The buy-in is there. So is the payoff over the last six games.
It’s a small sample size with some favorable circumstances, but the Mavs’ offensive statistics from their 5-1 run are spectacular. They’re averaging 110.7 points, 25.7 assists and only 10.9 turnovers during that span.
To put those numbers in perspective, the Thunder lead the NBA in scoring with 106.1 points per game, the Spurs average the most assists with 25.2 and the Knicks commit the fewest turnovers (11.1).
There are a lot of factors to the Mavs’ recent offensive explosion. That includes facing a few teams on the butt end of a back-to-back, but most are extremely encouraging signs for the Mavs.
Young guards Darren Collison and O.J. Mayo, who benefit from the heavy attention defenses pay to Dirk, have drastically improved their decision-making and reduced their turnovers. Off-the-bench big man Elton Brand has been hot, scoring efficiently after an early-season shooting slump. Carter has had a couple of big games. So has Shawn Marion.
The Mavs are getting great balance. They’ve had six players score in double figures the last five games, including a season-high seven in Sunday’s win in Orlando. That’s what happens when the Mavs move the ball with precision and purpose.
“It’s a fun way to play when nobody really has to pound the ball five, six, seven times to get a shot up,” Nowitzki said. “We’re moving and we’re playing together and hopefully we’ll keep it up.”Story highlights Flynn's ties to Russia have been scrutinized since Trump tapped him to be national security adviser
His call with the Russian ambassador came the same day the White House ordered sanctions on Russia
Washington (CNN) Retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for national security advisor, has been in contact with Russia's ambassador to Washington, Trump's team told CNN Friday.
Sean Spicer, Trump's spokesman, said Flynn and the Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, aren't in frequent contact but they have been in touch recently on a number of issues.
Some instances included when the two had a conversation in the wake of the shooting of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, in which Flynn expressed his condolences, according to a transition official. The two men also exchanged holiday pleasantries via text message on Christmas, according to multiple transition officials.
The Russian ambassador texted Flynn on December 28 but the two did not connect by phone until December 29, according to a transition official.
A centuries-old law, the Logan Act, forbids any US citizen acting without official |
baug died at 08:30am on Monday. She was admitted to the intensive care unit and put on ventilator support," a spokesman at Mumbai's KEM hospital said.
The nurse was 25 years old when she was sodomised by a KEM hospital cleaner who strangled her with metal chains and left her to die on 27 November 1973.
She survived, but spent the rest of her life in hospital, force fed twice a day.
"My broken, battered baby bird finally flew away. And she gave India a passive euthanasia law before doing so," journalist and author Pinki Virani, who wrote Aruna's Story, a book on the nurse's plight, told the BBC.
Image copyright Press trust of India Image caption In her book, Ms Virani described how Ms Shanbaug's condition deteriorated over the years
Twitter reaction: 'Her pain will always shame us'
There is an outpouring of sympathy for Aruna Shanbaug on Twitter. Many feel that she "should have been allowed to go much earlier". Most Twitter users also agree that the absence of the "right to die" in India's legal system compounded her misery.
One Twitter user says Shanbaug's case "represents everything that is wrong with India's society".
Others highlight that she was brutally raped and then had to live in a vegetative state for 42 years because several campaigns in support of euthanasia "just fell on deaf ears".
Some say that her ordeal "will always shame India", while others are hopeful that her story will once again reignite the debate on euthanasia.
"Have mostly been ambivalent about euthanasia. But Aruna Shanbaug's case makes me want to take a stand. Misery should not last four decades," this tweet very much sums up the impact her story is likely to have on India's thinking on "right to die".
Ms Virani filed the case which was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2011. She had argued that Ms Shanbaug was "virtually a dead person" and should be allowed to die.
Ms Shanbaug's parents died many years ago and other relatives had not maintained contact with her, Ms Virani said.
She wanted the court to issue instructions to the hospital to stop feeding Ms Shanbaug.
But hospital authorities told the court that Ms Shanbaug "accepts food... and responds by facial expressions" and responds to "commands intermittently by making sounds".
Although the Supreme Court rejected Ms Virani's plea, the case resulted in India easing some restrictions on euthanasia after the court's landmark ruling that life support could be legally removed for some terminally ill patients in exceptional circumstances, providing the request was from family and supervised by doctors and the courts.
Doctors say patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.
Lawyer Shekhar Nafade, who represented Ms Virani in the Supreme Court, told the BBC that he felt "relieved for Aruna".
Ms Shanbaug's attacker, Sohanlal Bharta Walmiki, was not even charged for raping her since sodomy was not considered rape under Indian laws at the time.
He was freed after serving a seven-year-sentence for robbery and attempted murder.
Ms Virani told the BBC in 2013 that she had tried hard to track him down, but with no success.
"I was told that he had changed his name and was working as a ward boy in a Delhi hospital. The hospital where he had sodomised Aruna and left her in this permanent vegetative condition had never kept a photo of him on file. Neither did the court papers," she said.Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A revolutionary pacemaker the size of a grain of rice is keeping a British grandmother alive.
Doctors say Joan Smith, 71, is the first patient outside of clinical trials to be fitted with the ingenious device.
The former council receptionist had the operation at Middlesbrough's James Cook University Hospital in February.
She lived life to the full with husband Alan, 75, and five grandchildren.
But after two attempts to have a conventional pacemaker failed, her entire life had been transformed by the new wireless device.
Read more: Loneliness increases heart disease and stroke risk
Joan, diagnosed with cardiomyopathy 21 years ago, struggled to walk far, and suffered constant breathlessness.
She said: "I feel as if I'm a new woman.
"I didn't feel any fatigue at all and it had been fatigue that I had been feeling previously - not breathlessness like some people experience.
Doctors stabilised her with medication for 20 years, but last year she was told she needed surgery.
(Image: PA Wire)
She was fitted with a new type called a WiSE pacemaker, which is implanted directly into tissue that lines the left chamber of the heart.
Like a conventional unit, it controls abnormal heart rhythms using low-energy electrical pulses - but without the need for wires.
Simon James, consultant cardiologist, said: "For Joan, as soon as the device was switched on there was a huge change in the pumping of the heart.
"Her blood pressure went up from the moment it was switched on so we felt confident she would begin to feel better quickly.
Read more: Why a brisk walk beats other exercise to keep your body healthy
"The technology enables us to fit the device exactly where an individual patient needs it, which could increase the number of patients who respond to this therapy, helping them to live a longer, more active life."
A spokesman for South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said James Cook was one of the first hospitals with the new type of treatment outside of a research study.
(Image: Getty)
“I feel very privileged, very lucky,” added Joan, of Middlesbrough, who will continue to be monitored regularly by the team.
“I knew it was a new type of pacemaker and a new procedure, but I trusted the doctors implicitly and knew they wouldn’t have sent me down that road if they didn’t think it was going to be beneficial."
Surgeons and cardiologists conventionally treat heart failure with a Cardiac Resynchronisation Therapy (CRT) device, known as a bi-ventricular pacemaker. But up to 30 per cent of patients fail to respond to that treatment - with lead or wire failures being the main complication.
Andrew Shute, Vice President Europe for EBR Systems, said because WiSE Technology delivers stimulation directly to the left ventricle, it is seen as being “more consistent with the functioning of a healthy heart”.
Around 900,000 suffer from heart failure in the UK, and many are expected to benefit from the new device.If Apple were a country, it would be the 55th richest country in the world. This fact means that any feud between President Trump and Apple would rival a major international clash. As a presidential candidate and now as president, Trump has pitted himself against the tech giant on several issues: user privacy, overseas manufacturing, and hiring of foreign workers. Trump even called for a boycott of Apple in early 2016. Conversely, Tim Cook threatened a lawsuit against Trump’s travel ban at the beginning of February.
If Trump continues to prod companies like Apple (and the rest of silicon valley, for that matter), it’s a safe bet that he loses those battles. Here’s why:
Trump Needs Apple To Succeed, And Apple Needs Foreign labor
The cornerstone of Trump’s campaign was his pledge to bring jobs back to the US. As a result, the Trump administration is considering changing the H-1B visa laws to make it tougher for companies like Apple to hire foreign workers. Basically, some of the proposed legislation would raise the salary requirement of H-1B visa holders in the hopes that businesses find it cheaper to hire American workers instead of foreign workers.
From the point of view of Americans who can’t find high-paying work today, this idea makes sense. From their perspective, they’re thinking “Why should immigrants get all these high-paying job opportunities at places like Apple and Google, instead of me, an American citizen?” Their frustration is real, but their logic is misplaced.
Here’s the problem: H-1B visa holders are typically very high-skilled employees. They’re often people with specialized degrees. And the American labor market simply cannot meet the demand for these kinds of jobs. If the H-1B visa program disappeared completely, for example, Apple would not find enough high-skilled engineers to fill its vacancies.
The bottom line is that our educational system just does not supply enough high-caliber engineers to meet the demand of silicon valley. These jobs aren’t being “stolen by immigrants,” because they were never available to Americans, to begin with. Like someone on Twitter sarcastically put it, “Yes, Johnny with a high school diploma, Amit, the neurosurgeon stole the job you could’ve had.”
So this puts Trump’s administration in an awkward position: forcing legislation that “encourages” more US jobs, might instead hurt the profitability of American companies, creating even fewer job opportunities for Americans. To fulfill his campaign promises, Trump needs companies like Apple to continue to succeed. Even Trump supporters will walk away if iPhone prices start going up as a result of new legislation.
Don’t Blame Immigrants! US Manufacturing Is Not Coming Back
I hate to be the one to break it to ya, but these blue-collar jobs aren’t coming back. No amount of executive orders or new legislation by Trump and his gang changes this. Only wishful thinking keeps this idea alive. Between automation and artificial intelligence, why in the world would tech companies or ANY COMPANY go back to old manufacturing processes that require thousands of workers?
Even if Apple suppliers like Foxconn decide to bring iPhone manufacturing to US soil, the manufacturing processes are only going to become more automated, so there won’t be a major increase in job opportunities for unskilled laborers in the long run.
The average Trump supporter (and probably even Trump himself) believes that cheap labor overseas is to blame for the lack of jobs at home. The much bigger culprit is automation, and there’s nothing Trump can do to stop it. In fact, it would be a terrible waste of time and energy to try to stop it, which seems to be, unsurprisingly, what he’s trying to do.
With Trump’s rhetoric about China stealing our jobs and Mexico having an “unfair” trade deficit, the general theme is one of anti-globalization and isolationism. This kind of talk is a mistake and makes the United States less competitive in the global market. Trying to cling to the past is always a losing battle. It would be like trying to the “good ‘ol days” of high horse sales when people are driving cars. Innovation will always win in the end, and innovation is on Apple’s (and the tech sector’s) side.
Trump Needs China More Than Apple Needs China
In line with his rhetoric, Trump talks about adding ridiculously high import tariffs to Chinese goods and essentially starting a trade war with China. If Trump picks this battle, he will lose. And not just because the cost of Chinese goods will rise substantially or because American’s buying power will shrink. No, the real losing battle is that Trump would be taking on a heck of a lot more US-based corporations (in addition to Apple), and those companies have more government sway than Trump.
Let’s not forget that senators and congresspeople are often more responsive to the needs of their donors and major interest groups (i.e. corporations) than to the people they represent. The tech sector AND bread and butter companies like Walmart will feel significant pain if Trump rocks the boat with China. Collectively, these companies are way bigger that the entire US government (in terms of revenue). A tariff on China and the subsequent high prices for cheaply made goods would unite consumers and corporations against Trump, and he will have no chance of winning that battle.
Apple is More Influential Than Trump Will Ever Be
Apple is the most admired brand in the world, and Trump’s approval ratings are in the single digits internationally. So based purely on likability, Apple beats Donald Trump globally by a “YUUGE” margin. In any head-to-head confrontation between Trump and Apple, Americans and people around the globe are more likely to take Apple’s side.
Not surprisingly, Trump is looking for ways to please Apple through favorable legislation. Last November, Trump told the New York Times that he had spoken with Apple CEO Tim Cook about bringing back manufacturing jobs to the US, and offered him “…a very large tax cut for corporations, which you’ll be happy about.”
This tone is a far cry from the boycott he called for earlier that year and a clear sign that he knows that Apple is not a company to pick battles with.A New York state judge has dismissed a petition filed by a group of New York City parents seeking to halt the state education department's controversial relationship with inBloom, a nonprofit seeking to warehouse sensitive student information.
The New York State Department of Education, Commissioner John B. King, and the Board of Regents of the State University of New York "have met their burden to show there was a reasonable basis for the decision to enter into the agreement with inBloom and that the disclosure and transfer of data will be for a legitimate purpose," wrote Justice Thomas A. Breslin in a decision dated Feb. 5.
The lawsuit was just one in a series of recent blows to inBloom, founded in 2013 with $100 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The Atlanta-based nonprofit seeks to partner with states and districts to collect and synthesize reams of student data, store the information in cloud-based servers, and make the information available to educators and others via easy-to-use data dashboards and other tools, some of which would be developed by third-party vendors approved by participating districts.
Six of the nine states initially listed as partners with inBloom have since dissolved their relationships with the group, and pressure for New York to follow suit has come from parents and some school leaders. The state department of education has partnered with inBloom as part of its EngageNY Data Portal, which seeks to provide real-time data and personalized content for educators and parents. All New York schools receiving federal Race to the Top funding must participate in the portal, although a number have dropped out over privacy and other concerns.
The group of 12 New York City parents, who filed their suit in November, have called the inBloom partnership a massive and unwarranted invasion of student privacy. They sought the nullification of a service agreement between the New York education department and inBloom; the destruction of any data that had already been transferred to the nonprofit; a prohibition on the disclosure of any personally identifiable student information without parental consent; and injunctions preventing the uploading of any personal student data to third-party vendors.
Parent activist Leonie Haimson, who was not a party to the lawsuit but whose organization, Class Size Matters, helped support the plaintiffs and has been a vocal opponent of the partnership with inBloom, called the decision "nonsensical in many ways" and full of "slipshod and circular reasoning" in a post on her blog.
A spokesman for inBloom did not immediately return a request for comment.
In his decision, Breslin determined that the education department's agreement with inBloom was not in violation of the Personal Privacy Protection Law and that disclosure of personal information by a public agency is allowable "if it is necessary to the performance of the duties and purpose of the agency."
Breslin also wrote that the department's decision "to utilize a third party vendor to design and effectuate the portal and the dashboard systems was not unlawful" because it "was made to carry out the duties of the agency which is promote and further the educational process and supervise all public schools."
And while "concerns about hacking and unauthorized access are significant," he wrote, "respondents, consistent with statutory requirements, have shown that steps have been taken to protect this information...It is helpful to know that respondents have indicated, in an affidavit submitted by a person with knowledge, that the new system can support more security features than that which is currently available in the systems which are being used by local school districts."
In an email, Haimson wrote that the plaintiffs have not yet decided whether to appeal the decision, but "will continue fighting through the legislature to stop the state from going forward" with inBloom.
Follow @BenjaminBHerold and @EdWeekEdTech for the latest news on ed-tech policies, practices, and trends.New study shows no correlation between happiness and mortality
Research has shown that unhappiness is associated with poor health, and poor health is associated with mortality. But does unhappiness itself directly influence mortality?
The answer is no, according to a study published in The Lancet in December 2015.
“Illness makes you unhappy, but unhappiness itself doesn’t make you ill. We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality, even in a ten-year study of a million women,” said Bette Liu, principal investigator and corresponding author of the study.
Scientists compiled pre-existing data from the Million Women Study, which recruited women from 1996 to 2001 and follows them electronically to track health data and causes of death.
In the current study, which contained data from 719,671 women, the research team sorted mortality into three categories: death from all causes, death from heart disease, and death from cancer.
“Our…study shows no robust evidence that happiness itself reduces cardiac, cancer or overall mortality,” said Liu.
Because so many factors have been proven to affect—or at least occur alongside—happiness, scientists adjusted for each variable. Some of these factors included physical activity, having a partner, being a nonsmoker, involvement with religious or other group activities, and adequate sleep (around 8 hours; much more or less sleep produced the opposite effect).
Conversely, data was also adjusted for factors that contribute to unhappiness, such as clinical depression, anxiety and poor physical health.
After taking these variables into account, scientists found that happiness alone does not seem to affect mortality.
“[The data] showed some excess mortality to be associated with unhappiness, but this was completely eliminated after additional adjustment for personal characteristics and for poor health,” reported Liu.
“By far the most important adjustment factor was self-rated health. A…review of previous studies has confirmed that self-rated health predicts an increased risk of death,” she added.
A major limitation of the study is the way it measured happiness: a single question asking participants to rate their happiness on a four-point scale.
“There is no perfect or generally agreed way to measure happiness,” said Liu.
Future research may focus on ways to accurately measure happiness that can be used across multiple studies.ROCKSTAR GTA 5 will not be getting a sequel soon from Rockstar
Some of Take-Two's biggest franchises fail to see a launch every year, creating long wait times for fans eager to play the next instalment. Rockstar has already revealed that the success of GTA Online has changed how the development team now work with GTA 5 and is surely a sign for the future that the next title could hinge heavily on a multiplayer mode. However, unlike the Call of Duty franchise and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, games such as Red Dead Redemption and GTA 5 are not released every year, posing the question of why?
ROCKSTAR GTA Online continues to be supported by Rockstar
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke on the subject, telling the MKM Partners Investor Day in New York City: "The market asks us, 'Why don't you annualize your titles?' We think with the non-sports titles, we are better served to create anticipation and demand. "On the one hand to rest the title and on the other hand to have the highest quality in the market, which takes time. You can't do that annually." "What we would like to do is be able to have enough hit intellectual properties in any given year, whether we have Title A or Title B, is not the issue.
"We'll have a handful of really great franchises and new intellectual properties that together really have the economic impact of an annualized business without the detriments of an annualized business." Zelnick continues to refer to the GTA and Red Dead games as "permanent" franchises, meaning fans don't have to worry that they'll be disappearing of shelves completely. Zelnick summed it up last year, saying: "I pretty much know the ones that I can assure you are permanent. "It's obvious that GTA is a permanent franchise as long as we keep delivering this incredible quality; it seems quite obvious that Red Dead is a permanent franchise, again with the same caveat, or Borderlands, for example, and NBA and others. "But not everything is going to be a permanent franchise. We can do very well even if it's not."(3rd UPDATE) Netizens slam the timing of SM's controversial move, which comes while the country is focused on the visit of a pope who champions the environment's protection
Published 4:35 PM, January 17, 2015
MANILA, Philippines (3rd UPDATE) – While almost the entire nation's attention was focused on the visit of Pope Francis, residents of Baguio City woke up on Saturday, January 17, to discover that SM Baguio had decided to cut 60 trees surrounding the mall for its expansion.
Baguio residents had fought hard to save the trees. More than a hundred residents and groups from the country's summer capital filed two environmental complaints and a contempt charge against SM Baguio in 2012.
They clinched a temporary victory when the Baguio Regional Trial Court issued a temporary environmental protection order (TEPO) against the plan to earthball trees in April 2012, but the same court dismissed all their petitions in December 2012. (READ: Baguio folk vow to take SM to High Court over trees)
There are no longer any legal impediments that would stop SM from cutting down the trees after the Court of Appeals affirmed the RTC's dismissal of the cases and lifting of the TEPO in December 2014.
In a statement issued Saturday evening, SM Supermalls president Annie Garcia said the mall has secured all the necessary permits for the planned expansion project.
The cleared space will be the site of SM Baguio's "green" Sky Park, Garcia said.
Netizens and residents on Saturday expressed their sentiments on social media, with many slamming SM for the move.
SM cuts trees in Baguio amid the Papal frenzy. Were the Sys not at the MOA yesterday to meet the @Pontifex? #SMBaguio — Jang Monte Hernandez (@akosijangirl) January 17, 2015
The Sy family owns SM, the country's largest mall operator.
Like a thief in the night, SM Baguio uprooted the helpless Pine Trees around the mall. Nasaan ang mercy and compassion dito? — raffy magno (@raffymagno) January 17, 2015
While we are busy watching #PopeFrancisPH in MoA Arena, SM Baguio cleared the pine trees. #SMaxedTrees #SMvsPineTrees — Perci Cendana (@PerciCen) January 17, 2015
Others said SM Baguio had the permission to cut the trees.
regading SM Baguio, it is said that various measures have already been done to mitigate the probable impact of the removal of the trees — Paul Farol (@paulfarol) January 17, 2015
if the tree cutting in #SMBaguio had a permit and was allowed by the court, what is the news there? @rapplerdotcom Corporate greed? ZZZZ — Paul Farol (@paulfarol) January 17, 2015
SM responds
The cutting of the trees clears the way for a Sky Park that will feature environment-friendly facilities, SM Supermalls said.
Read SM's statement below:
On December 2014, the Court of Appeals affirmed the Regional Trial Court's dismissal of the environmental cases filed against SM and lifting of the Temporary Environmental Protection Order paving the way to do our Sky Park project in Baguio.
The project will also feature green facilities to help absorb the impact of climate change: a Sky Park, which feature green walls consisting of live plants that will help improve air quality, making the mall both relaxing and enjoyable for the whole family. It also consists of a sewerage treatment plant (STP), and an underground rainwater catchment tank in the basement. The excess space of catchment tank will provide additional parking space that will help decongest traffic along Upper Session Road.
SM mall in Baguio has secured the final approval and necessary permits for this project from the pertinent agencies. Prior to this, inputs from various community groups have been gathered and considered. The project affected 60 trees.
After facing online rage back in 2012, SM had said it would replant the first batch of 43 earthballed trees from the area and were planting 50,000 more across Baguio.
In an FAQ posted on its website, SM said the entire expansion project will affect a total of 182 trees.
More vigilance
Calypso Alaia of the Boycott SM Baguio group called on fellow Baguio residents to learn from the incident and be more proactive in protecting their environment.
"Despite the fact that the trees are gone, the lessons are here to stay. Nasa atin po dalhin kung ano man ang mga lessons na ito (It is for us to carry on what these lessons are)," Alaia said.
"This might seem like a resounding defeat, but only to people who do not understand what has happened and what will happen," she added. (Read her entire Facebook post here.)
(Editor's note: We previously reported 182 pine trees were taken down during this particular incident. We regret the error) – Rappler.comCare home workers rewarded for doing right thing
Maurice Rowland of Hayward was the cook at Valley Springs Manor in Castro Valley. Maurice Rowland of Hayward was the cook at Valley Springs Manor in Castro Valley. Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close Care home workers rewarded for doing right thing 1 / 14 Back to Gallery
Editor's note: This article from November 2013 is apparently going viral on Facebook in April 2015.
Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the cook and janitor who stood like sentinels over 19 elderly residents abandoned by staff at a Castro Valley care facility, were honored last week at the Hayward Veterans Memorial Building. It was the latest of many laurels bestowed on the two men, who have been friends since middle school. In the week since news of their good deed spread, people responded with goodwill, gifts and donations to the men and their families.
Rowland and Alvarez stood fast for two days after the state-ordered shutdown of Valley Springs Manor, an assisted care center. They cleaned, fed and cared for patients on their own time, placing the dignity of human life above their paychecks. State officials moved swiftly last week to assume control of a Modesto care home owned by the same people who ran Valley Springs.
The selfless actions of these two men have drawn praise from every corner, including government bodies, veterans groups and scores of private citizens from the Bay Area to Ottawa.
In addition to the award from the American Veterans Association, they received a certificate of special recognition from Rep. Eric Swalwell's office and a commendation from the California Legislature.
And thanks to the generosity of Chronicle readers touched by the story, they are being compensated for their efforts as well. Checks and gift cards have poured in, and the two men have established a bank account to take in the donations, which they have agreed to split evenly.
"We didn't expect any of this," Alvarez said. "We've never expected anything from anyone in life."
The men were surrounded by friends and family at the brief ceremony in Hayward, and it was one of those occasions when parents could not have been more proud of their children.
Miguel's father, Angel Alvarez, said his son's actions were proof of God and his mysterious works.
"I think I raised him the right way," said Rowland's mother, Carrie Bell, who turned to me with a knowing smile and asked, "What do you think?"
Outpouring of support
That question has been answered by the impromptu outpouring of appreciation for the only two workers at the care center with the heart and dignity to stand up for what was right. One anonymous donor contacted The Chronicle last week to make arrangements to take Alvarez's and Rowland's children on a large shopping spree. Another has offered to pay them for the unpaid hours they worked after Valley Springs was shut down.
Summit Bank in Oakland has established accounts in their names, and the Castro Valley Chamber of Commerce has done the same, Alvarez said. Rowland said he has received more than a half-dozen job offers in the past week.
Oh, and Hollywood has come calling.
Alvarez has fielded calls from Paramount Pictures on behalf of the "Dr. Phil" show, and they are trying to schedule an appearance on the show. Another afternoon medical show, "The Doctors," produced by CBS, has called The Chronicle looking for contact information.
Alvarez's wife, Cindy Orozco, admitted a little sheepishly that she was initially angry with her husband when he refused to leave work for a planned family trip to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo. The couple have three children.
'I was heartbroken'
Orozco said she drove to the care center to see for herself what was more important than precious time with their kids. When she walked in the door, she said, the scene stopped her in tracks.
"I was heartbroken," she said.
As it turns out, Alvarez and Rowland did the right thing for the patients, for themselves and for humanity. Their decision to stay has come back to reward them in ways they could have never imagined.State Senate Minority Whip Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, said Wednesday that he would file legislation this year to force the city of Atlanta to hand over operations and management of the Atlanta Streetcar to MARTA.
During a press briefing at the Capitol, Fort said that the reason he's introducing the bill is because MARTA handles 95 percent of transit trips in metro Atlanta and has far more expertise running a transit system than City Hall does.
Fort, who is said to be considering a 2017 bid for mayor, said that the city has proven to be an inept operator, referencing a scathing audit released earlier this month by the Georgia Department of Transportation which found several safety and security lapses. The audit was conducted in late October and listed numerous concerns. Among them: the city and MARTA lack clarity when it comes to their roles in running the streetcar; nearly half of “safety-critical” positions remained unfilled; workers have received inadequate training; maintenance deficiencies exist; and, the city hasn’t properly reported accidents to state officials.
Fort went on to say that the streetcar has been rife with problems since opening, stating it is "over budget, not on time, has a fare system system that is deeply flawed and a staff that is not able to do the safety checks that are necessary."
"Streetcars are under deep debate all over the country, and it needs further discussion... about whether the streetcar is fundamentally unsuited for the city," Fort said.
"If it connects with transit and is fully integrated, that's good, but at the very least it needs to be operated by a transit agency rather than a city."
The bill is being drafted and will be filed in the next week or two, he said.
Since Fort is a Democrat in a Republican-controlled Legislature, it's unclear whether the bill will get any traction. Fort also proposed legislation that would prohibit a third-party vendor like PARK Atlanta from contracting with a local government to enforce parking, yet another issue that the city of Atlanta is currently wrangling with.
Reed officials have said they’re working to streamline a top-heavy streetcar management structure and that they may opt to turn streetcar operations over to a private vendor in the future. No final decision has been announced.
The Mayor's Office was dismissive of both the Atlanta Streetcar and PARK Atlanta proposals when asked to comment on Wednesday. Anne Torres, a spokeswoman for the Mayor, issued the following statement via email:
"We have no comment on either of these items because they are completely meaningless and have no chance of ever becoming law."
READ MORE
For more of the AJC's exclusive reporting about the first year of Atlanta Streetcar operations, click here: http://www.myajc.com/news/news/transportation/cling-clang-clunk-inside-the-atlanta-streetcars-fi/npnH7/
To read more about the challenges that lay ahead for the Atlanta Streetcar in its second year, click here: http://www.myajc.com/news/news/transportation/second-year-second-chance-for-atlanta-streetcar/npnMB/
To dig deeper on the city's ambitious plans to grow the 1.7-mile Streetcar line into a 50-mile network, click here: http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local/atlanta-approves-ambitious-streetcar-expansion-pla/npg34/Apple has been using its own employees to test out the Apple Watch's health and fitness features for almost two years. And recently, ABC's Good Morning America got a tour of the secret workout lab, where Apple fitted internal volunteers with sensors "worth millions of dollars" (and some scary looking masks) to amass a ton of data on exercise and physical activity.
In many ways, it looks like your typical gym, with rowing machines, treadmills, and plenty of yoga mats. But from the beginning, Apple has been collecting all of this activity to help develop and improve Apple Watch. True to Apple's famous obsession with secrecy, the employees weren't told what project they were contributing to — though we have to imagine it wasn't difficult to guess it related to some sort of wearable.
ABC's tour was led by Jay Blahnik — one of Apple's earliest big fitness hires — who showed off "climate chambers" that help recreate workouts in extreme temperature conditions and varying humidities. Apple also visited locations across the globe (Alaska and Dubai are named) for proper outdoor testing. "I think we've amassed already what may be one of the world's largest pieces of data on fitness, and our view is we're just beginning," said senior Apple executive Jeff Williams, who appeared at the company's Apple Watch event earlier this month. Apple's executives have repeatedly said that the device could have a profound impact on personal health.
But it remains to be seen whether Apple Watch will outperform other fitness bands when it comes to tracking your heart rate and overall activity. Heart rate monitoring in particular is an area where wrist-worn products like the Microsoft Band, Fitbit Surge, and others have proven imperfect; devices strapped directly to the chest are typically far more reliable. Can Apple's sensors make a difference? We're looking forward to seeing for ourselves in a few short weeks. Apple Watch will be released on April 24th.Advancements in driverless-car technology will be revealed by Mobileye (MBLY) and partner Delphi Automotive (DLPH) at the CES show in Las Vegas next month.
Mobileye, a developer of advanced driver-assistance technology, hooked up with auto supplier Delphi in August after it parted ways with Tesla Motors (TSLA) in July. The pair will jointly develop off-the-shelf autonomous driving technology for automakers.
Earlier, Mobileye joined Intel (INTC) and BMW (BMWYY) in another partnership to develop a fully automated driving system.
Mobileye's core product is chip and software technology that provides image processing and analysis used in cars with camera-based systems for assisted driving, such as automatic braking.
At the CES show in Las Vegas Jan. 5-8, Mobileye and Delphi plan to showcase their autonomous-driving technology with a 6.3-mile drive on highways and surface streets, using prototype vehicles. Mobileye will also reveal the progress it has made with mapping technology, which is the best in the business, Dan Galves, Mobileye's senior vice president of communications, said in a briefing Thursday morning.
IBD'S TAKE: Despite safety questions, the self-driving-car era is arriving fast, perhaps this decade. Automakers and tech companies are plowing billions of dollars into research and forging alliances in a rush for the inside lane on the automobile's most revolutionary track since the Ford Model T a century ago.
Mobileye, Intel and BMW aim to deliver a fully automated all-electric vehicle by 2021. Intel will provide a broad set of technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence. Mobileye is providing chips and software. BMW says this partnership is the foundation for BMW Group's autonomous-driving strategy, as it plans for fleets of fully autonomous vehicles.
Mobileye's CES briefing comes just days after Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) said it separated its self-driving car efforts into a new company, called Waymo, but under the Alphabet umbrella. The new Waymo unit also confirmed that it isn't trying to be a carmaker, but will focus instead on technology that enables autonomy. John Krafcik, the former auto exec who has led Alphabet's driverless-car project for the past several years, will stay as Waymo's CEO.
Apple's rumored car project is also reportedly headed in a similar direction as Waymo, after initially contemplating development of a car and self-driving systems. Apple has publicly acknowledged its interest in autonomous vehicles, telling transportation regulators that its work could revolutionize the "future of transportation."
Apple hasn't confirmed a specific project related to autonomous cars. But in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Nov. 22, Apple said it is "investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation."
Mobileye's split with Tesla was a result of the fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S that was using Autopilot mode, and for "pushing the envelope in terms of safety" with Autopilot, Mobileye Chairman Amnon Shashua said in September.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the split was "inevitable," and suggested Mobileye was holding Tesla back, with Tesla focusing on radar technologies and away from the camera technologies backed by Mobileye.
Mobileye stock rose 0.51% to 35.29 in the stock market today but is trading below its 10-day, 50-day and 200-day moving averages.
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PSEG, a Newark, New Jersey-based utility—long deeply involved in nuclear power—was foisted on Long Island, New York to be the utility on the island by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
In 1985, a Long Island Power Authority or LIPA was created and was key to stopping plans by the island’s utility at the time, the Long Island Lighting Company, to open its Shoreham nuclear power plant and go on and build |
, however, that it will be a wrench to leave his hometown club.
'I've always said that this is the club where I grew up, it's my home,' he told Spanish newspaper Diario de Sevilla.
Replacement? The deal could be an indicator that Luis Suarez is on his way out of the Anfield club
'I owe a lot to Sevilla, although I'm leaving a little hurt because I haven't had the chance to show what I can do in the Primera Division.
'It seems like I was going to return to Sevilla, but the Liverpool thing came up and it's a very important step.
'I've had to take a difficult and important decision and I hope I've got it right.'
Alberto has played once for Spain's U21 side, and scored 11 goals in 38 appearances for Barcelona B last season.Of course, the Iraq war has evolved and violence in the country has subsided. At the same time, President-elect Barack Obama and senior military strategists generally agree that tensions have risen in Afghanistan, leading to more violence and unrest.
In short, the story, certainly on television, is shifting to Afghanistan.
CNN now has a reporter assigned to the country at all times.
Michael Yon, an independent reporter who relies on contributions from Internet users to report from both areas of conflict, has already perceived a shift in both media and reader attention from Iraq to Afghanistan. “Afghanistan was the forgotten war; that’s what they were calling it, actually,” he said. “Now it’s swapping places with Iraq.”
For Mr. Yon and others who continue to cover Iraq, the cutbacks are a disheartening reminder of the war’s diminishing profile at a time when about 130,000 United States service members remain on duty there. More than 4,200 Americans and an undetermined number of Iraqis have died in fighting there since 2003.
ABC, CBS and NBC declined to speak on the record about their news coverage decisions. But representatives for the networks emphasized that they would continue to cover the war and said the staff adjustments reflected the evolution of the conflict in Iraq from a story primarily about violence to one about reconstruction and politics.
In Baghdad, ABC, CBS and NBC still maintain skeleton bureaus in heavily fortified compounds. Correspondents rotate in and out when stories warrant, and with producers and Iraqi employees remaining in Baghdad, the networks can still react to breaking news. But employees who are familiar with the staffing pressures of the networks say the bureaus are a shadow of what they used to be. Some of the offices have only one Western staff member.
The staff cuts appear to be the latest evidence of budget pressures at the networks. And those pressures are not unique to television: many newspapers and magazines have also curtailed their presence in Baghdad. As a consequence, the war is gradually fading from television screens, newspapers and, some worry, the consciousness of the American public.
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The TV networks have talked about sharing some resources in Iraq, although similar discussions have stalled in the past because of concerns about editorial independence. Parisa Khosravi, CNN’s senior vice president for international newsgathering, said such talks among the networks were not currently under way.
But journalists in Iraq expect further cooperative agreements and other pooling of resources in the months ahead. ABC and the British Broadcasting Corporation, longtime partners on polling in Iraq, may consolidate some back office operations early in 2009, two people with knowledge of the talks said. The people spoke anonymously because they were not authorized by the networks to talk about the plans.
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One result is that, as the war claims fewer American lives, Iraq is fading from TV screens. The three network evening newscasts devoted 423 minutes to Iraq this year as of Dec. 19, compared with 1,888 minutes in 2007, said Andrew Tyndall, a television news consultant.
In the early months of the war, television images out of Iraq were abundant. “But clearly, viewers’ appetite for stories from Iraq waned when it turned from all-out battle into something equally important but more difficult to describe and cover,” Ms. Arraf said. She recalled hearing one of her TV editors say, “I don’t want to see the same old pictures of soldiers kicking down doors.”
“You can imagine how much more tedious it would be to watch soldiers running meetings on irrigation,” she said.
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It is an expensive and dangerous operation to run at a time of diminishing resources and audience interest.
“Some news organizations just cannot afford to be there,” Mr. Yon, the independent reporter, said. “And the ones who can are starting to shift resources over to Afghanistan.”
CNN and the Fox News Channel, both cable news channels with 24 hours to fill, each keep one correspondent in Iraq. Among newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post continue to assign multiple reporters to the country. The Associated Press and Reuters also have significant operations in Iraq.
Stories from Iraq that are strongly visual — as when an Iraqi journalist tossed two shoes at President Bush this month — are still covered by the networks, though often with footage from freelance crews and video agencies.
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“But these other stories — ones that require knowledge of Iraq, like the political struggles that are going on — are going uncovered,” Mr. Angotti said.
Mike Boettcher, a Baghdad correspondent for NBC News from 2005 to 2007, said nightly news segments and embed assignments with military units occurred less frequently as the war continued.
“Americans like their wars movie length and with a happy ending,” Mr. Boettcher said. “If the war drags on and there is no happy ending, Americans start to squirm in their seats. In the case of television news, they began changing the channel when a story from Iraq appeared.”
A year ago, Mr. Boettcher left NBC after the network rejected his proposal for a “permanent embed” in Iraq and he started the project on his own. In August, he and his son Carlos, 22, started a 15-month embed assignment with American forces in Iraq. His reporting appears online at NoIgnoring.com.
Iraq has been, according to some executives, the most expensive war ever for TV news organizations.
Most of the costs go for the security teams that protect each bureau and travel with reporters. Iraq remains the deadliest country in the world for journalists, according to a report compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Nov. 30, a National Public Radio correspondent and three local staff members survived an apparent assassination attempt in Baghdad when a bomb detonated under their armored vehicle.
Keeping fewer people stationed in Iraq and traveling on assignment often cuts costs for the news organizations. In an unrelated interview this month, Alexandra Wallace, an NBC News vice president, said the network had correspondents in Iraq “most of the time.”
“If a bomb blew up in the green zone and Richard Engel wasn’t there, we do have an option,” she said. Mr. Engel, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, rotates in and out of Baghdad.
Mr. Boettcher is not convinced. “Like it or not, the country is at war and there is not a correspondent to cover it,” he said. “Sad.”Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
One of Liverpool's possible options if they continue to be frustrated by Roma over Mohamed Salah appears to be on his way to AC Milan.
The Reds are monitoring the situation of Lazio winger Balde Keita but his agent has revealed his move may only be north within Italy.
Keita’s agent Roberto Calenda told Sky Sports Italia on Wednesday that Lazia had reached a deal with Milan for the 22-year-old - but his client was still considering his next move.
Calenda said: “They communicated to us that they have reached an agreement with Milan, so we realised that he is on the market. Now we will assess our options.
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“It’s difficult to know what the price is when it comes to Lazio. We talked about many things with (Lazio owner and president) Claudio Lotito, but there has never been a concrete offer of a renewal.”
The suggestion that the Senegal international has not been offered a new deal with the Rome-based side was swiftly rejected by Lazio who claim the winger, who scored 16 goals and provided three assists in Serie A last year, has been offered new deals in each of the last two seasons.
Lazio sporting director Igli Tare said: “No more than two weeks ago there was yet another meeting with him (Calenda). His client was offered an official contract both last year and during the season that has just finished.
“I want to be very clear that the player was formally offered a contract renewal at the same figures as Lazio’s top players.”
Keita, a former member of Barcelona's La Masia academy, has had a notoriously difficult relationship with his club and his contract expires next summer.
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Salah remains Liverpool's number one target in an attacking wide positions but Roma's asking price of well above £35m has seen Liverpool consider options elsewhere.
The club this week began talks with Sporting Lisbon's Gelson Martins while Douglas Costa at Bayern Munich is also admired at Anfield.WHAT is Austria’s problem? In Vienna the streets are clean, the trams rattle reliably past and the bow-tied waiters still dispense their Sachertorte with supercilious smirks. The country is well-run, prosperous and secure. There are no neglected banlieues. Even the refugees who poured through last year have stopped coming. And yet Austria is on the verge of electing a far-right president from a party with an unsavoury past.
Last month, for the first time in post-war Austria, voters in the first round of a presidential election spurned the candidates backed by the centre-left Social Democrats (SPÖ) and centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP), which run the country in a “grand coalition”. In Sunday’s run-off they must choose between Norbert Hofer, the fresh-faced candidate of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), or Alexander Van der Bellen, an aged professor backed by the Greens. Mr Hofer is the favourite, and the rest of Europe is alarmed.
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The FPÖ operates from a familiar populist-right playbook. The suits have grown sharper while the outright racism has been cloaked. The hostility has shifted from Jews to Muslims, a strategy that resonates with voters of Serbian background, whom the party has assiduously cultivated. Its leaders prefer social media to the traditional kind. Its base is poorly educated rural men. It has no good words for America but plenty for Vladimir Putin.
If he wins, Mr Hofer is unlikely to wreak constitutional havoc. But should Heinz-Christian Strache, the FPÖ’s chairman, become chancellor at the next federal election (due in September 2018, if not sooner), some fear a Hungarian-style attack on independent institutions. Others worry about squabbles with neighbours; Mr Strache has mused that the German-speakers of South Tyrol, across the Italian border, might like to rejoin their Austrian brethren. What do voters see in this outfit?
For decades Austria was a living example of the old saw that there is no point in voting because the government always gets in. The Second Republic, established after the war, has been run almost without interruption by either, or (usually) both, the SPÖ and the ÖVP. Under Austria’s Proporz system, jobs, housing and business licences were doled out on the basis of party membership. Laws are written by party-affiliated labour or business groups and handed to parliament to rubber-stamp. Even now two motoring associations and two mountain-trekking clubs exist, to ensure that Austrians need never dally with another political tribe when their cars break down or when on an Alpine stroll.
This arrangement worked when growth was high and jobs plentiful. But when the system faltered, cronyism made an easy target for genuine opposition parties. Austria, which never went through a thorough German-style post-Nazi reckoning, was not inoculated against a xenophobic party like the FPÖ. The party chugged along for years as a political also-ran, until hostility to the clubbiness of Austrian politics lifted it into the major league.
The FPÖ became a serious force in the late 1980s under a charismatic leader, Jörg Haider, who was not averse to praising Nazi Germany. In 1999 it won 27% of the vote and joined an ÖVP-led coalition. (Austria’s horrified EU partners briefly cut diplomatic links.) But after a flurry of early reforms the government turned out to be no less wedded to the methods of patronage than its predecessors. The extent of the corruption the FPÖ practised while in office is only now emerging.
The party split, and for a while sank. Mr Haider died in a car crash in 2008. But last year’s refugee crisis revived it. Austria’s hapless social-democrat chancellor, Werner Faymann, initially supported Germany’s open-door policy before pirouetting gracelessly towards border closures and asylum quotas, as the FPÖ had advocated from the start. The grand coalition fed the discontent with aimless rows. The FPÖ has now topped polls for over a year. On May 9th, under pressure from his disgruntled party, Mr Faymann abruptly resigned.
After being sworn in this week his successor, Christian Kern, admitted that the grand coalition was losing voters’ trust. His speech also revealed the constraints on the government. Mr Kern backed Mr Van der Bellen for president but was unable to offer the SPÖ’s formal support, because many of its members hope to join the FPÖ in coalition. The ÖVP feels the same. The government now has its last chance to show that it has not run out of ideas. There is plenty to do, from schools reform to slashing red tape to constitutional changes. Some 90,000 asylum-seekers need integrating. “The ÖVP, and in particular the SPÖ, thought reforms would lose them elections,” says Franz Schellhorn, director of Agenda Austria, a think-tank. “Now the opposite is true.”
The best lack all conviction
The centre is struggling to hold all over Europe. In Austria the mainstream parties did their best to turn politics into dull mush, yet it has suddenly turned hard and consequential. The SPÖ and ÖVP, having brought rising living standards and preserved social peace for decades, are visibly out of ideas. Many Austrians cannot take apocalyptic talk of the FPÖ’s rise seriously. In France voters unite behind candidates they dislike to block the far-right National Front. But Mr Van der Bellen can rely on no such coalition to propel him to the presidency. For voters of a conservative bent Mr Hofer may actually represent the safer option.
So in many respects this is an Austrian story as much as a European one. But these days every European election carries a larger meaning. Far-right parties across Europe will cheer a victory for Mr Hofer on Sunday; liberals will lament it. Austria is not about to return to the 1930s. But the election of Western Europe’s first far-right head of state would still mark a solemn moment. Austria’s do-nothing coalition is on the front line of a struggle that many other centrist parties across Europe are facing. Some appear to have given up. This is Austria’s problem. But it is also Europe’s.OTTAWA
The NDP to-do list if it forms government grew Wednesday with a promise to scrap an agreement with China that Prime Minister Stephen Harper says would create jobs and protect billions in investments.
NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Harper traded barbs during a spat in the House of Commons that highlighted the ideological differences between New Democrats and Conservatives when it comes to economic growth and trade.
Mulcair used the September signing of the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) to accuse Harper of selling out Canada by signing a deal he says was negotiated in secret.
"Let me be very clear. The Conservatives will not tie the hands of the NDP. We will revoke this agreement if it is not in the best interests of Canadians," Mulcair said. "Why will the Prime Minister not allow the study of this deal? What does he have to hide?
Harper, who heads off to India this weekend on his latest global trek to drum up investment and encourage trade, portrayed the NDP as anti-trade.
"When the NDP says it is for trade, it has opposed trade with anybody. The NDP even said it was a sell out for Canada to have a free-trade agreement with the United States," Harper said. "That kind of extremism on trade is why Canadians will never entrust economic policy to the NDP."
The tough talk comes as the government reviews a $15.1 billion bid by a state-owned Chinese company to purchase Nexen, a Calgary oil giant.
Canadian companies have been skittish about operating in China because of that country’s history of corruption, and say FIPA will reduce the risks of investing in the fastest growing economy in the world.
The NDP and Liberals want the deal – which still needs cabinet ratification – to be brought before a Commons committee for study.
Earlier this week, the NDP promised to reverse changes to Old Age Security and has previously said it would hike corporate taxes, among other policies the Conservatives say will hit Canadians in the pocketbook.Marvelous has revealed (via Famitsu) their new Valkyrie Drive project, which we first got a tease of last January.
The news comes via AnimeJapan, at Tokyo Big Sight today. The new trans-media project is made up of three separate and yet connected entities, a PS Vita game, a social game, and finally a TV anime.
Release dates for the projects have not been announced.
We’ve compiled the information for all three below:
Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid Anime
The new TV anime features character designs by Hiraku Kaneko, with oversight by Yosuke Kuroda, and finally a production by studio ARMS. The story in Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid occurs on the eponymous island Mermaid, one of five man-mad islands, where reportedly “sexy battles” among gorgeous women happen.
The characters confirmed thus far are Maiden Mamori and Mirei Shikishima, voiced by Mikaki Izawa and Yuka Iguchi respectively.
Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni video game
[Editor’s note: The original report from Dengeki listed the game for PS Vita. This has since been removed, so for now we’ll keep an eye on this game as it develops.]
Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni‘s is in development by Marvelous and Meteorise, the developers behind Senran Kagura: Bon Appetit.
Details regarding the game’s narrative are yet to be confirmed but, if it follows the formula of the other two projects, it probably occurs on the island of Bhikkhuni.
The production staff include Japan’s “huge boob producer”, Kenichiro Takaki, and character designer Warai Manakakko.
The characters thus far confirmed are Ranka and Rinka Kagurazaka, voiced by Kanae Ito and Aya Suzaki respectively.
Valkyrie Drive: Siren social game
Valkyrie Drive: Siren occurs on an artificial island called “Siren,” where a battle puts the lives of young maidens in danger. The social game will be free-to-play, and have microtransactions. The story is set to be a tie-in with the TV anime and the PS Vita game.
The cast so far includes Setsuke Kisaragi, who will be voiced by Ayaka Ohashi, and Urara Sashou, who will be voiced by Azusa Tadokoro.
You can visit the project’s official website here.ELIZABETH -- As a woman sat with her son and nephew on a front porch late Thursday night, three masked men walked down the street, stopped at the house, and began firing shots, wounding all three on porch, people close to the victims said today.
"The bullets went right through them," said a relative of one of the victims as he sat somberly on the same front porch on Julia Street. "It was an unimaginable night." He said he was inside the house when the shooting occurred shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday.
Another man, who identified himself as the godfather of one of the men who was wounded, was also in the house and heard the shots.
"They came running in the house, all bleeding," he said. "I pretty much carried (one) to a chair," he said.
RELATED: 3 wounded in late night Elizabeth shooting
He said one of the men was shot six times and the woman was shot four times.
NJ Advance Media is withholding the names of the shooting victims and their relatives.
Both relatives said they believe the shots came from a small caliber gun because all three of the victims survived.
They pointed to a wooden chair where a bullet blew out a chunk of one corner on the seat. There is also a shattered window, where a bullet went through, into a house and into a room where a young girl was sitting.
All three wounded victims were taken to University Hospital in Newark where they were admitted for treatment.
One relative said the shooting was not a random act, and that the masked men intentionally came to that house.
"They knew what they were doing," he said.
Police received reports of the shooting about 11 p.m., and officers arriving at the scene found the wounded victims, authorities said. They said the woman, 47, and the two men, ages 32, and 22, suffered wounds that were not life-threatening.
Police said they are still investigating the motive for the shooting.
Authorities said it was unclear whether just one of the men on the street fired the shots or all three men fired guns.
MORE UNION COUNTY NEWS
Tom Haydon may be reached at thaydon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Tom_HaydonSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.Story highlights The man is tied to several massacres in western Rwanda
At least 800,000 people were killed in the 1994 genocide
The convicted man is a Swedish citizen of Hutu origin
A Swedish citizen of Rwandan origin was sentenced to life in prison Thursday by a court in Stockholm after he was tried and convicted for his role in the country's genocide nearly 20 years ago.
He is 54-year-old Stanislas Mbanenande, an ethnic Hutu. At least 800,000 people in Rwanda were killed in the 1994 genocide, one of the worst mass slaughters in the post-World War II era.
This is the first time that Sweden has tried a case for genocide, and also the first time anyone has been convicted of genocide in a Swedish court.
The victims were mostly from the Tutsi ethnic minority, who were targeted by Hutus over a rivalry that dates to colonial days. Some moderates from the Hutu majority who supported Tutsis also were killed.
Along with a charge of genocide, Mbanenande was convicted in the Stockholm District Court of gross violations of international law, including murder, attempted murder, inciting murder and kidnapping.
The case involves several massacres in western Rwanda's Kibuye prefecture, where Mbanenande was born and raised.
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Mbanenande was accused of having an informal leadership role and using an automatic weapon to shoot at groups of people. He took part in massacres at public buildings such as a church, a school and a sports stadium where people sought shelter.
He also is accused of taking part in the hunt for Tutsis in the Ruhiro and Bisesero mountains where people had fled to seek safety.
Mbanenande left Kibuye in 1994 when Tutsi-dominated invasion troops were nearing. He then lived in Congo until 1996, and then he moved to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
In 1999 his family moved to Sweden. Mbanenande eventually joined them and became a Swedish citizen in 2008.1. Prepare the box Scout around for a shoebox or similar-sized box. A larger box gives you more space to work with and allows you to put in more details.
If you're using a box other than a shoebox, cut out the front panel. Use tape or glue gun to fix any open flaps in place.
2. Plan the landscape and paint the box Paint on a snowy background and additional details such as clouds or falling snow. Paint the ground white for a snowy landscape and include a body of water to show how integral the sea is to polar life. You can also paint the outside of the box if you like.
Instead of painting the box, you can also cover the inside of the box with colored paper. Details such as snowy mountains or bodies of water can also be cut out of paper and glued onto the background or foreground.
3. Draw or print out the animals Draw the animals, cut them out from magazines, or print out online images. You can also print out these polar animal sets on A4 or Letter size card stock.
4. Color and cut out the animals Color and cut out the animal print-outs or drawings. The paper animals should be able to stand up so use card stock for printing them out or draw them on construction paper. Magazine animal cut-outs should be glued onto cardboard or any heavy paper to make them sturdier.
5. Background animals Plan where to position the animals in your diorama. You can glue on some of the animals onto the background.
6. Create paper tabs Make side, bottom, or center tabs for the rest of the animals. These will allow the animals to be attached to the bottom and/or sides of your box. There are a number of ways to make the tabs:
a.) Make L-shaped paper tabs and glue these at the back of the animal's legs (bottom tabs) and/or sides (side tabs).
b.) Incorporate the tabs into foreground elements such as grass, rocks, or snow. Draw the foreground element, including the tabs (shown in shaded area). Cut out the whole piece and glue it at the base of the animal's legs. Fold the tabs towards the back.
c.) Not in photo: Draw side and/or bottom tabs before cutting out your animals in Step 4.
7. Position the animals Position the animals inside your diorama. Glue the tabs to the bottom and/or sides of the box.
Without tabs, you can still position the animals on your diorama by gluing them atop objects like paper bowls, styrofoam chunks, paper cups, paper egg carton sections, and small boxes. This seal was glued on top of half-a-paper bowl, making it look like it is resting on top of a slab of ice.I was in London on Sept. 11, 2001, when it was impossible to call home because the lines were down; in that pre-smartphone era, it was also impossible to know what was going on, unless there was a television screen nearby. Cut off though I was, I felt surrounded by friends. Upon hearing my accent, shop assistants and taxi drivers asked after my parents: Had I spoken to them yet? Could they help? That night, the Tory party called off its leadership election; the German chancellor spoke of a “war against the entire civilized world.” The NATO ambassadors, meeting in Brussels, unanimously invoked the NATO treaty: An attack on one member state is an attack on all.
On March 22, 2016, I was in London once again, watching another generation of Islamist terrorists carry out another series of coordinated attacks, in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the European Union, as well as the headquarters of NATO. This time it was impossible not to follow the news, and not to see photographs of everything that happened, almost in real time. It was also impossible not to notice the reactions, which came a lot faster than they used to. Some were reminiscent of 2001. A Belgian flag was raised over 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British prime minister; the presidents of the United States and France spoke almost immediately in support of the Belgian government, too.
But among those first responses there was also a new tone, one that was definitely missing in 2001, and one that wasn’t even noticeable after the Paris attacks a few months ago. Instead of calling for solidarity against a common threat, a spokesman for the anti-European UK Independence Party declared that the open borders of Europe “are a threat to our security,” even though Britain is not part of Europe’s Schengen border treaty. A columnist for the Daily Telegraph declared Brussels the “jihadist capital of Europe” and mocked those who call for staying in the E.U. on the grounds of safety. Meanwhile, U.S. news organizations fell over themselves to get instant reactions from Donald Trump, who had just told The Post that he didn’t see the point of NATO, which “is costing us a fortune.” He didn’t disappoint, declaring that “we have to be very careful and very vigilant as to who we allow in this country.”
On both sides of the Atlantic, isolationism is now a fact of political life. Although it gets expressed differently in different places, the illogical idea that “my country will be safer” if it pulls out of its international alliances is growing. Never mind that Britain constantly shares intelligence and information on terrorism with the rest of Europe via E.U. institutions. Never mind that the United States works with NATO allies to track terrorist operations and deter attacks, or that we gain enormous security as well as economic benefits for doing so. Never mind that, nowadays, few security threats can be stopped by border guards anyway. Every terrorist attack on British soil in recent memory was carried out by British (or Irish) citizens and not foreigners; nuclear deterrence requires allies and coordinated responses; barbed wire cannot stop a cyberattack. The small-minded, shortsighted isolationists ignore reason and logic, instead substituting panic and fear.
Listen to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump discuss some of his foreign policy positions with The Washington Post editorial board. "NATO is costing us a fortune," Trump said. "We're not reimbursed fairly for what we do." (The Washington Post)
Of course there are reasons for this change: German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s controversial decision to apparently “invite” Syrian immigrants into Europe last summer has left many Europeans feeling queasy and out of control. Photographs from the war in Syria and the refugee camps in Greece have upset even people living in countries, the United States included, that have not accepted large numbers of refugees. But those are explanations, not an excuse for the stupidity of isolationism. We don’t have a choice: The only way to fight jihadism is through our existing military, economic and political alliances. And the only way to ensure that we have international support in the future, when a tragedy takes place on our soil — and it will — is to offer our support for a tragedy unfolding on allied soil right now.
Read more from Anne Applebaum’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.Sony is kicking off 2014 by giving some of this year's best games to PlayStation Plus subscribers. Bioshock Infinite, DmC: Devil May Cry, and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons will be added to the PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection throughout the month of January. That's on the PS3 side; Don't Starve will be the latest free title available on PlayStation 4, and PS Vita owners will be getting Worms: Battle Island and trivia game Smart As. You'll need an active PlayStation Plus membership to download and play these titles — they'll become unplayable if your subscription lapses without renewal.
Even so, January's games alone are arguably enough to justify the $49.99 annual subscription cost of PlayStation Plus. Thankfully there's more to look forward to, as new games will regularly be added to the rotating Instant Game Collection throughout 2014. Consider also that the 12-month voucher can often be found at a discount and it's easy to see why many consider PlayStation Plus among the best values in gaming.The Montreal Canadiens continued to strengthen their lead in the tough Northeast Division with a 2-1 win over the Boston Bruins. The win puts Montreal three points ahead of Boston for the division lead, with only 10 games left in this short season. Alex Galchenyuk and Michael Ryder scored for the Habs while Dan Paille responded for the Bruins.
PK Subban picked up two assists to extend his lead in points by a defenceman to four points. After missing the first six games of the season due to contract talks, Subban has come out swinging, picking up 32 points in 32 games.
Galchenyuk extended his personal point streak to three games with his fifth goal of the season. He got lucky when he threw a puck from behind the Bruins net that redirected off of Matt Bartkowski’s skate into the net. But after the game, Galchenyuk credited his linemates Brandon Prust and Lars Eller for his success.
“Every game we go out there to work hard and create momentum for the team,” Galchenyuk said. “And I think we did a good job tonight.”
Eller agreed with Galchenyuk
“Sometimes you just get that instant chemistry,” he said. “We try to use each other to our strengths and we’ll keep doing that.”
Coach Michel Therrien also thought the Eller, Prust and Galchenyuk line played well.
“They work hard, they skate hard and they mange the puck really well,” said Therrien. “It’s really important for us to have depth with our lines and they set the tone for the game tonight.”
Eller got into some trouble late in the game,giving the Bruins their only powerplay with less than a minute left. He was called for holding (and taking down) Zdeno Chara, which is no small feat.
But Boston didn’t get any scoring chances on their six-on-four and Eller said afterwards that he was “pretty relieved” when the buzzer went to end the game.
Therrien summed up how his team is able to find success after the game.
“We played the way we wanted to play, which to me is important,” he said. “My focus has always been on how we play and the guys did a fantastic time again tonight. I am really proud of those guys.”
Carey Price made 26 saves for the win and the only go he let in was on a tip from Paille that he didn’t see at all.
“It’s obviously two big [points] and they’re a division rival that we are battling for the top spot,” Price said. “The playoffs are coming up soon and we are just trying to set the tempo for the rest of the season.”
“You could see the goals, they were playoff type goals, three pretty much lucky goals,” Price added. “It’s a tough way to win but we’ll take it.”
The Habs lost defenceman Alexei Emelin early after he collided with Bruins forward Milan Lucic. Therrien only said he was out with a lower body injury but Price emphasized the importance of having Emelin in the lineup.
“It’s an unfortunate break, he’s a big part of our defence corps,” Price said.
As the playoffs approach, Galchenyuk and the Habs are getting ready for a long run. After finishing last in the conference last season, Montreal is poised to clinch a playoff birth within the week. And there is a good chance they will be facing the Bruins on their way to the Cup.
“It’s a big rivalry and it always feels like the playoffs,” Galchenyuk said. “But I’ve never played in the playoffs so I don’t know.”
After playing five games in eight days, the Habs will get a couple days off before they play again. Their next game is on Tuesday when the Washington Capitals come to town.Natural Homemade Pesticides: Recipes & Tips
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These homemade pesticides are cheap and easy to make with many being just as effective as some commercial products on the market. No fancy ingredients required, everything you need is likely stocked in your kitchen and garden. Most of the ingredients are earth friendly and natural with the harshest being liquid dish detergent–no need to use toxic chemicals!
Tip: The best method of pest control in the garden is to keep your plants healthy so they don’t attract bugs. Fertilize as needed (see How To Make Compost Tea) and stay on top of weeds by pulling them as they appear or using weed killers (see Homemade Weed Killer Recipes & Tips).
Begin treating for insects as soon as you notice signs of an infestation, the sooner you start the easier it will be to get rid of the critters.
Note: For recipes that require liquid dish detergent, use the basic stuff–nothing fancy with added bleach, nothing concentrated and no special antibacterial formulas. You can also substitute with a gentler liquid soap such as liquid castile or a perfume free, gentle liquid hand soap.
Update: As with all pesticides, take care when applying to food bearing plants, handling and storage of the pesticide. No one needs reminding I’m sure, but wash all produce well before consuming.
Rhubarb Leaf Mix
1 cup rhubarb leaves
6.5 cups water
1/4 cup liquid dish detergent or soap flakes
Cover rhubarb leaves with water and bring to a boil. Boil for 20 minutes then remove from heat and cool. Strain then add 1/4 cup liquid dish detergent. Apply. Good for aphids, june beetles, spider mites, thrips.
Rhubarb leaves are poisonous, take care when preparing and handling. Do not use on food bearing plants.
Garlic Tea
Make your own garlic spray by boiling a pint of water, throw in roughly chopped garlic cloves and steep until the water cools. Remove garlic bits then apply.
Garlic, Peppers & Onion Insecticide
2 hot peppers
1 large onion
1 whole bulb of garlic
1/4 cup water
Toss in the food processor and add water, blend until a mash is made. Cover mash with 1 gallon hot (not boiling) water and let stand 24 hours. Strain. Spray on roses, azaleas, vegetables to kill bug infestations. Bury mash in ground where bugs are heaviest. Good for thrips, aphids, grasshoppers, chewing and sucking insects.
Tomato Leaves Mix
Crush leaves from a tomato |
European Union and to 95 years in the U.S. According to the WIPO, in some countries at least, copyright-intensive industries are more profitable than construction, transport and mining, and the income going to them is rising rapidly. Meanwhile, governments are spending more of their national income on massive subsidies and tax breaks, both forms of rental transfer. And multinationals have become rentier entities in their home countries, in that they derive a rising proportion of their income from abroad, with more workers employed outside the country of origin or ownership. Governments compete with others by offering large amounts to corporations to relocate to their country or to stay there. The U.S. Council on Foreign Relations calculated that U.S. state and local governments provide over $80 billion a year on incentives and subsidies to companies to relocate or to stay put. This does not raise output or employment in total. It is simply a vast transfer payment to already wealthy corporations. Tax breaks are another growing form of subsidy, increasingly used in global competition, at the expense of ordinary people. For instance, in 2013 the United Kingdom introduced a patent box subsidy that provides foreign companies investing in the country generous tax breaks worth over 1 billion pounds annually on all profits derived from patented intellectual property. France, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and China have similar schemes. Because such subsidies lower tax revenue, they tend to increase government debt. Then governments argue their debt must be reduced by cuts in social spending, so those who depend on social welfare suffer the consequences through austerity. Unlike welfare claimants, corporations receive these subsidies without any conditions stipulated about their subsequent behavior. Tax credits are an even bigger source of unearned rental income. The biggest of all is the U.S. earned income tax credit, ostensibly designed to supplement low wages. In fact, it allows firms to pay low wages, since both firms and workers know tight budgets will be eased by the credits. It exacerbates inequalities because it subsidizes capital from public revenue and taxes on workers’ earnings. This lowers wages and boosts profits. Perhaps the saddest source of rental income is personal debt, the scourge of the precariat, those in and out of short-term jobs without strong rights. As real wages fall, they come under pressure to try to sustain the level of living they regard as the social norm. To do so, they borrow. As they have no security to offer and must borrow at short notice, they resort to high-interest lenders, notably payday loans, for which annualized interest rates can be as high as 5,000 percent. Millions of people are living on the edge of unsustainable debt. Today in member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, net household debt exceeds 1.3 times annual disposable income, and millions of people must devote part of their earnings to paying off interest on debts that stretch far into the future. In effect, falling wages mean that money itself becomes an increasingly scarce asset, giving owners of money (such as loan sharks) unprecedented opportunity to obtain more rental income. For the precariat, indebtedness is systemic, not incidental or occasional. The asset of money is scarce, so its price is driven up.
Distributive justiceThis article is over 2 years old
Singer-songwriter’s failure to respond to phone calls from the Swedish Academy after being awarded the Nobel literature prize ‘unprecedented’
Bob Dylan criticised as 'impolite and arrogant' by Nobel academy member
A prominent member of the academy that awards the Nobel literature prize has described this year’s laureate, Bob Dylan, as arrogant, citing his total silence since the award was announced last week.
The US singer-songwriter has not responded to repeated phone calls from the Swedish Academy, nor reacted in any way in public to the news.
Fascinating, infuriating, enduring: Bob Dylan deserves his Nobel prize Read more
“It’s impolite and arrogant,” said the academy member, Swedish writer Per Wastberg, in comments aired on SVT public television.
On the evening of 13 October, the day the literature prize winner was announced, Dylan played a concert in Las Vegas during which he made no comment at all to his fans.
He ended the concert with a version of the Frank Sinatra hit “Why Try To Change Me Now?”, taken to be a nod towards his longstanding aversion to the media.
Every 10 December Nobel prize winners are invited to Stockholm to receive their awards from King Carl XVI Gustaf and give a speech during a banquet.
Another side of Bob Dylan’s doctorate | Letters Read more
The academy still does not know if Dylan plans to come.
“This is an unprecedented situation,” Wastberg said.
Bob Dylan removes mention of Nobel prize from website Read more
Anders Barany, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, recalled that Albert Einstein snubbed the academy after being awarded the physics prize in 1921.
In 1964 French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre refused the literature prize outright.
Other contenders for this year’s prize included Salman Rushdie, Syrian poet Adonis and Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o.In politics, the dreaded foot in mouth gaffe is an occupational hazard.The casual statement, the careless snipe, the outdated phrase that bypasses the brain’s "sensitivity” filter can wound or even doom a public figure, especially if the offender happens to be conservative.
The relative scant attention paid to such faux pas from left-leaning offenders suggests a double standard may be at work.
This week offered several examples. Vice President Joe Biden, a presumed presidential candidate, fired off yet another quip that some say played off an offensive stereotype of African-Americans and basketball.
At a Black History Month event attended by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson,a former NBA player, Biden said, "I told the president, next game, I've got him. I may be a white boy, but I can jump."
Perhaps because Biden is perceived of as the gaffe machine that keeps on giving, or perhaps because his folksy demeanor gets him a pass, he is seldom held to account for such indelicacies.
More troublesome is a remark by Alex Sink, the Democratic House candidate in Florida's 13th Congressional District,who made a reference to Latinos in a recent debate that smacked of insensitive stereotyping - one that got little attention outside of a few conservative news outlets.
"We have a lot of employers over on the beaches that rely upon workers, and especially in this high-growth environment, where are you going to get people to work to clean out hotel rooms or do our landscaping," she said.
Also this week, UN Ambassador Samantha Power sent out a bizarre and grotesquely insensitive tweet about Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded on video tape by al Qaeda leader, Kalid Sheik Mohammed. "Daniel Pearl's story is a reminder that individual accountability & reconciliation are required to break cycles of violence," she wrote.
The Twitterverse briefly lit up, prompting a correction from Power, which still left critics scratching their heads. It read, "Correction: @DanielPearlFNDN's work is a reminder that individual accountability + reconciliation are required to break cycles of violence."
Also this week, Donna Brazile, the Democratic National Committee's vice chairwoman, tweeted out this embarrassing blunder in advance of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's veto of a controversial anti-gay rights bill: "Dear Arizona Republicans: Just so you know -- you've already lost this argument 50 years ago --You don't get to decide who sits at the lunch counter."
The tweet was accompanied by a grainy old photo of African-Americans seated at a segregated lunch counter.The tweet garnered no reaction until Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds saw it, and promptly tweeted that it was "The Lie of the Year." Brazile apparently forgot that segregation proliferated in the South under Democratic Party rule.
In each of the above cases, the offenders walked away virtually unscathed. Some analysts say when Republicans commit similar offenses, their careers are almost always damaged, sometimes beyond repair.
Tim Graham of the Media Research Center says swift retribution for GOP gaffes is a product of the left’s control, not just of media, but of the culture - from film, to music, to academia, to the publishing world and beyond.
"One of the ways these gaffes become so powerful," Graham says, "is that news media doesn't just notice once. It notices it again and again and again and they head into movies, into pop lyrics into late night skits, Saturday Night Live, they take a gaffe and absolutely try to immortalize it."
The New York Times on Friday reported that "Republicans have called Wendy Davis, a Democratic candidate for Texas governor, “Abortion Barbie,” likened Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Senate candidate from Kentucky, to an “empty dress,” criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thighs, and referred to a pregnant woman as a “host.”
The Times story finds that Democrats virtually salivate over such GOP mistakes. Emily's List, the political action committee that supports pro-choice female candidates, has raised $25 million this election cycle. Every time a Republican inserts foot into mouth, Emily's List's fundraising arm springs into action, and the cash register starts ringing.
Republicans do the same, but as the Media Research Center's Graham tells Fox News, " our megaphone is not as big."How to respond to App Store reviews
Tips based on replying to Play Store reviews for years
Vivek Pola Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 30, 2017
Recently, Apple started allowing developers to reply to reviews on the App Store. While this is a welcome addition, it can be a little confusing for developers to pick which reviews to reply and how to reply to a review. Some developers may even question the usefulness of replying to reviews. Luckily, at Newton, we have been replying to reviews on the Play Store for years and realized the importance of engaging with our users on the Store. In addition to this, we have figured out some pointers which might help developers who want to take advantage of Apple’s latest offering.
Why do you need to reply to reviews
Replying to reviews and being engaged with your users is always a great practice. There are some obvious and immediate results that you will notice. Especially in cases where users have missed a feature or in a case where an issue can be resolved easily. It is exhilarating to see such 1-star reviews getting updated to 5-star reviews.
In the long term, it will increase the reputation of your product among your competitors. A potential user always notices reviews of an app before downloading it. Engaging with users on the app store shows that you care. This can be the differentiating factor when a user decides to downloads your app instead of your competitor’s.
How to pick reviews you should respond to
While it is tempting to reply to every negative review and convert it to a 5-star review, it is not practically possible. You have to pick and choose which reviews to reply to and which to ignore. You will need to reply to reviews where your reply will make a difference to the user. Some points to keep in mind before picking reviews you want to reply:
Issues: Always try to reply to reviews where a user is complaining about a crash or any other behavior that is not intended.
Missed features: While we try to make the app as intuitive as possible, there is always a chance that some people may not notice features that are already available. Reply to such reviews with instructions and you are almost always guaranteed a 5-star revised review.
Feedback: Some reviews provide amazing feedback to developers. Identify such reviews and acknowledge that you have read and understood the feedback.
Trolls: In an ideal world, this wouldn’t be a problem. However, in the real world, trolls exist and it is better to not engage in such cases.
What you should say
Now that you’ve got an idea of the type of reviews you need to reply to, let me give some pointers on how to reply. Developers generally answer questions and clarify concerns of the users when they receive emails from users. However, you cannot use the same language and approach when replying to reviews. Since you cannot have a conversation with a user over a review, it is important that your reply either contains the solution for the problem the user is facing or the clarification a user needs in a particular case. Some ground rules you need to follow when replying to reviews:
Be precise: Do not get lost when you are replying to a review. Your reply should always be on point.
Be swift: There is no point in replying to a review a week after it is posted. Your replies should be as immediate as possible.
Use links: In many cases, users are looking for instructions on using a particular feature. Instead of replying with instructions hastily, make use of your FAQ page (or other sources) by providing a link where instructions are presented more clearly.
It’s OK to ask users to contact you over email: There are some cases which cannot be resolved with a single reply. Identify such cases and ask such reviewers to send an email to your support mailbox where the issue can be handled in a much more efficient way.
Hope that some of these points will help you when you reply to reviews. Have something more to add? Share your thoughts in the comments below.Syracuse, N.Y. -- A little-known Syracuse company is turning the dragon-filled worlds of Pokemon and other trading card games into a booming business.
Taking a high-tech approach to a low-tech industry, TCGplayer.com has created an online marketplace for collectible gaming cards. In a world where video games get most of the gaming industry's attention, TCGplayer has cut a niche for itself by becoming both the eBay and Amazon.com of the $1 billion trading card industry.
If you want to buy or sell new or used cards for popular collectible trading card games such as Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and HeroClix, chances are you'll use TCGplayer.com's digital marketplace.
The business has generated explosive growth for the company, which opened its first office just two years ago. It doubled its workforce on the 10th floor of Syracuse's State Tower Building, going from 40 to 80 employees, over the past year and is already looking for bigger offices.
Founder and CEO Chedy Hampson estimates the company will create 25 to 50 more jobs in 2016 as it enters the international market.
Collectible trading card games first emerged in the early 1990s and generally consist of fantasy battles between wizards, elves, dragons, goblins and other creatures -- all represented on playing cards.
Matches start with each player having their own deck with a set number of cards -- 60 in the case of Magic: The Gathering, the most popular of the games. The decks are shuffled at the start of a game, but players get to choose which of potentially thousands of cards to include in their decks for any given game. Players take turns playing cards to attack opponents or defend against attacks. Matches typically last 20 to 30 minutes.
Unlike video games, the most popular of which are played online between dozens of people who don't usually know each other, trading card games are played face-to-face by two people.
"It's low-tech, but I think that's part of the appeal," said Ray Moore, the company's vice president of product. "You're playing against a real, live person, and a lot of the time that's your friend."
TCGplayer emerged in 2008 from a web design company, Ascension Web Design, that Hampson, 42, a 1992 Corcoran High School graduate, and Moore, 39, of Baldwinsville, started in 1998. The two local men are both avid gaming card players who met at a Magic: The Gathering tournament in Syracuse. (Hampson beat Moore in their game.)
Along with designing websites for other companies, Ascension created several sites geared toward the gaming card industry. In 2002, Hampson reincorporated the company as Ascension Gaming Network and began publishing a monthly magazine featuring articles written by or about some of the country's top gaming card players.
Hampson said he would travel to gaming card competitions in Las Vegas and other cities and pay the top players up to $300 for brief interviews in which they would reveal their winning strategies.
TCGplayer magazine was distributed free at comic book stores and depended on advertising from a handful of game makers. Most of the time, Hampson and Moore published the magazines themselves, working out of their homes.
"I worked in my pajamas sitting on my couch," said Hampson.
Sometimes, revenues were high enough to hire a few employees, who also worked from home. But most of the time, that was not the case. Revenues were spotty at best. Hampson said game makers would advertise only when they had a new game they wanted to promote.
"We tried whatever we could," he said. "It was really difficult. There was no real payoff."
Their websites drew 40,000 visitors a day, but the sites also depended on low advertising revenue. In 2007, that revenue disappeared altogether when major game makers changed their marketing strategies and stopped advertising with TCGplayer.
That's when Hampson and Moore decided to go with something entirely different.
The magazine was scrapped and a new website, TCGplayer.com, launched in 2008 as a marketplace for retailers, usually comic book stores, and individuals to buy and sell used gaming cards -- a sort of eBay for the industry.
"We got the idea of a niche marketplace tailored to the games we covered," Hampson said.
The key for TCGplayer is the nature of trading card games. Players can buy new cards in packs, but they don't know which cards are included until they open them. This has created a market for used cards because it allows players to buy the ones they want and sell the ones they don't want.
TCGplayer makes money by taking a commission -- ranging from 2 percent to 10 percent, depending on the product -- on every one of those sales.
Many buyers who once used eBay now use TCGplayer.com almost exclusively because they can instantly see who is selling the cards they want at the lowest prices, Hampson said. And sellers like the site because they only pay a fee when they make a sale, he said.
"We started to attract a lot more visitors," he said. "People were using us to figure out the value of these cards. We became very quickly the price guide for this industry."
Used cards sell for a few cents for common ones to thousands of dollars for rare ones. One of the rarest, the Black Lotus from the game Magic: The Gathering, once sold for $10,000 on TCGplayer.com.
In February 2014, the company, then with 12 employees, moved into its first office -- temporary space on the third floor of the State Tower Building. It moved to a bigger office on the 10th floor a few months later.
In October 2014, the company expanded its business further by buying the most popular cards of Magic: The Gathering in volume and then selling them directly to players.
In this way, the company makes money on its markup and is able to maintain nearly full control over customer service, much like Amazon.com does with the many consumer products it sells. TCGplayer ships up to 500,000 cards a month from its Syracuse office to customers all over the country.
TCGplayer's "warehouse" consists of a 40-by-40-foot area of its office with trays containing millions of cards. The number in its inventory fluctuates based on anticipated demand, seasonality and data from the company's proprietary systems and analytics platforms -- what Hampson calls the company's "secret sauce." In this way, the company limits its stock and the need for warehouse space to the cards it knows it can sell quickly.
TCGplayer's website attracts 200,000 visitors a day and features gaming cards sold by TCGplayer and by about 350 comic book stores and more than 2,000 individuals, Hampson said.
The website includes a price guide showing a seven-day trend in prices for thousands of gaming cards, handy information for buyers searching for the lowest prices.
The site promotes the company's "core values," which give a clue to where management gets some of its inspiration:
Hampson said he's planning an expansion this year. TCGplayer is developing a mobile app and is making plans to enter the international market starting with Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia.
Hampson won't reveal the company's revenues or profits, but he said its new business model has boosted both substantially. It's also driven a need for more programmers, web designers, marketing personnel, and shipping and receiving workers.
Twenty-five percent of the company's new hires, particularly those in information technology positions, have come from outside the Syracuse area. As part of its recruiting, the company has produced a video that promotes Syracuse as a fun place to live and work.
Employees dress casually at TCGplayer. T-shirts are common. You won't find anyone wearing a tie. Employee perks include a free catered lunch once a month, and unlimited daily snacks and coffee. Benefits include health and dental insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan with matching company contributions and 12 paid vacation days.
The company recently was recognized as one of the 100 best workplaces for women by Fortune.com and the Great Place to Work Institute.
To get to know each employee, Hampson said, he plays one card match a week with a different employee. And he's taking his entire staff on two tour buses for a weekend in New York City later this month.
"It's to show appreciation to my employees," Hampson said. "We have very little turnover here."
The company is rapidly reaching capacity at its 6,000-square-foot office, which it moved into in November 2014. Hampson said the company is going to need 12,000 to 20,000 square feet of space to handle the growth of its workforce over the next two to three years.
The state has approved a $50,000 grant to assist the company with the planned expansion of its office and warehousing space and the purchase of related equipment and furniture. The company is also eligible for up to $200,000 in income tax credits under the state's Excelsior jobs program. Both the grant and the credits are contingent on TCGplayer creating at least 40 new jobs over the next five years.
Hampson said he plans to keep the company in Syracuse, possibly in the State Tower Building if space is available. Building owner Tony Fiorito said he would love to keep the company as a tenant and could provide the space it needs by relocating other tenants within the 21-story building.
Fiorito said TCGplayer is a perfect example of the kind of company that Syracuse could use more of -- a tech firm that has the ability to quickly ramp up its business and workforce.
"They're very talented," he said. "They're great individuals and they definitely have a great business sense."
Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148Toya Graham made headlines last year for grabbing her son away from the Baltimore riots. Now, this mom has lost her home.Graham's apartment burned down Saturday afternoon after her son Michael, the same son she reprimanded during the riots, was frying chicken tenders in the kitchen.He stepped away to use the bathroom and when he came back, the fire had ignited."Am I angry, upset with my son, yes. But he's alive. At the end of the day, I want him to know that I'm glad that it wasn't worse," Toya Graham said."I came back and it was smoking. So, I tried to come over here and take the pot. But then it started bursting out in flames. So, my first instinct was just to grab some water and try to put it out," Michael said.Water made the grease fire worse.Toya Graham doesn't have renters insurance.She set up a GoFundMe page and has raised more than $14,000.If that headline seems familiar, that’s because it is: Two years after an earlier iteration of the same loose collection of petulant misanthropes “declared victory” over the very profitable and very well-reviewed Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens, a self-declared “alt-right” group with the absolutely ridiculous name of Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys (DWDTFF) has “declared victory” over the also very popular and very well-reviewed Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi.
A representative of the group, which is almost certainly convinced that they are the victims here, reached out to The Huffington Post to claim credit for something that has been puzzling observers since the film’s release last weekend: Its relatively low Rotten Tomatoes audience score—currently standing at 54 percent—compared to its overwhelmingly positive critical score (92 percent) and massive box office success. (It’s already made more than $573 million worldwide, and is expected to cross the $600 million mark this weekend.) So how did they do it? A desperate, last-minute suicide mission into the heart of Rotten Tomatoes to destroy a vulnerable exhaust port that leads to the room where they cut critics’ bribery checks from Disney? (Still waiting on those, by the way.) Nah. They used bots—and shitty ones, at that.
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Apparently, the moderator of the DWDTFF page quickly took credit for sabotaging The Last Jedi’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score, citing Lucasfilm’s erasure of the Star Wars Expanded Universe when Disney took over and, more importantly, the presence of girls in the Rebel Alliance as the reasons for his hatred of the new films. “Regarding female heroes: Did you not see everything that came out of Ghostbusters? That is why. I’m sick and tired of men being portrayed as idiots. There was a time we ruled society and I want to see that again. That is why I voted for Donald Trump,” the self-proclaimed member of the “alt-right” tells HuffPo. “Han and Luke were written as incompetent father figures who are deadbeats, Poe is a victim of the ‘anti-mansplaining’ movement, and you just know they’ll turn the both of them gay,” this well-adjusted adult writes.
A more prescient comparison for the DWDTFF might be the bumbling General Hux, however, considering that the unspecified program—which HuffPo’s source claimed was “classified” immediately before taking credit for it—accidentally sent some of its negative reviews to the Rotten Tomatoes page for The Shape Of Water instead, leading to reviews that say things like, “to slow, unnessisary side story about a casino, WHO WAS SNOKE!!!!, and Rose is annoying” in the user reviews section for Guillermo Del Toro’s latest. For its part, a Rotten Tomatoes spokesperson thinks that DWDTFF is full of shit, and is retroactively searching for evidence to prop up a false claim.
You almost feel sorry for them: A ragtag group of rebels going up against a massive media empire that can’t even identify with the ragtag group of rebels in their favorite movie anymore, because it’s been ruined by—um—the presence of women and people of color. Never mind, these guys suck.
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[via Indiewire]CHAMPAIGN — Starting today, the Art Theater Co-op will participate in an international film series called the Seventh Art Stand, which opposes Islamophobia and President Donald Trump's proposed travel ban barring citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days.
More than 50 cinema houses, art museums, and libraries are participating, with programming selected by each. The Art will show at 7 p.m. over three Tuesdays this month the following films, all directed by women, about Muslims in the Middle East:
— Today, "Cairo in One Breath," from Egypt. The award-winning U.S.-Egypt co-production looks at the religious politics surrounding the adhan, or Muslim call to prayer. The movie illustrates everyday Muslim life in ways most people are not used to seeing. It has won best of festival awards at multiple festivals in the last six months.
— May 9, "Sonita," from Iran, won the 2015 Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize. The documentary is about Sonita Alizadeh, an 18 year-old aspiring rapper from Afghanistan and refugee in Iran. While filming, Iranian director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami went from being a fan to advocate of Sonita.
— May 15, double feature by Yemeni-Scottish director Sara Ishaq, "The Mulberry House" and "Karama Has No Walls."
The Oscar-nominated short "Karama..." and the longer "The Mulberry House" explore Yemen during Arab Spring. "Karama..." focuses on the participants of the "Friday of Dignity" uprising; "The Mulberry House" is a portrait of Ishaq's family, particularly her father, after she returns to Yemen for the first time in 10 years, on the eve of the revolution.
"At the Art, we see cinema as a tool of freedom, which touches the soul while stimulating our ability to think critically and extend empathy," said Art Theater director Austin McCann. "This series is an intervention into this political moment of intensifying violence and hatred. Through this and many other initiatives, we stand united and resolved in the prevailing notion that despite our government's efforts to ban people, their ideas, art and humanity will always be welcome in our spaces."
Tickets and information are available at arttheater.coop/the-seventh-art-stand/Editor's note: Pepper Schwartz is professor of sociology at the University of Washington and the author of many books, the latest of which is "The Normal Bar." She is the love and relationship ambassador for AARP and writes the Naked Truth column for AARP.org. She is also a senior fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit organization that gathers research on American families. The opinions in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- California, in an honest attempt to clarify communication about sexual consent in colleges and universities, has created just another way we can misunderstand each other. Let me be clear: I support efforts to make rape or date rape or sexual opportunism when someone is drunk less likely. Who wouldn't?
The law requires state colleges and universities to require "affirmative consent" from everyone engaged in sexual activity. Consent "must be ongoing throughout." The law specifies that silence and lack of protest makes consent impossible, and drunkenness is not an excuse.
But this step-by-step consent plan is just not the way hot and heavy sex generally proceeds on college campuses. And it falls apart when you consider that a lot of sex on campus happens when people are drunk. That's the real problem. Except for truly malignant or misguided offenders -- "she asked for it" kind of guys -- most sexual calamities happen when students are drinking.
In a study by American Sociological Association President Paula England, students reported a mean of six drinks for men and four drinks for women on their last "'hook up." That's just the tip of the iceberg, and that's what we should be addressing: the over-drinking and under socialization about what makes sex worthwhile and why unconscious sex is not in anyone's best interests.
But instead of dealing with the real problem, legislators are going to have a standard of conduct that most dating couples or people who meet at a party will not follow. This won't be a problem -- until someone believes he or she did not give a specific permission. If it sounds like an easy thing to do, remember how you were in your late teens and 20s and you might recall that being articulate during sex is not so easy.
Legislating sex on campus
Will people really ask permission as they make the transition from oral sex to intercourse if their partner seems to be enthusiastically joining in? Unlikely. And if both partners are drunk, is one more culpable than the other? I applaud the idea that both partners should be conscious, but do you think young men who throw a fraternity party think nobody will drink too much? And do the young women who go to these parties expect to stay sober?
If we want to make rules about something, we should try to make rules about these parties. That might work. And we should try to educate young people about how easy it is to ruin their lives when they are drunk. But who are we going to punish if it's a one-on-one encounter, both parties are drunk -- or not -- and each has different ideas of what was said?
As the professor of many university students and the mother of a girl and a boy who thankfully made it out of their 20s with no sexual and emotional scars, I worried about both my students and my kids in these years: I feared my daughter might get in a tough situation with a sexually aggressive date or that my son might be wrongfully accused by someone he didn't want to date any longer, or by a partner who changed her mind about what happened after a big night of partying. My fears were not baseless: I heard many examples of these kinds of situations.
Still, in our effort to protect the sexual victimization of women, we create a standard that is probably impossible to produce all the time. I am not convinced that young women cannot be given the tools to say no, and men cannot learn how to accept that answer.
I think most young men want to be wanted and proceed when they think they are. Yes, there are rapists who think they are wanted and that it's just incidental that they have a knife in their hand when she consents. But these are the criminal and pathological minds that not only won't follow this regime, they won't even think it applies to them. Other measures of avoidance and protection are necessary to save women from sociopaths. It's laughable to think this kind of predator would even notice, much less follow, these rules.
So who are they for? The guys who might misunderstand what a woman wants and find themselves mystified when charges are brought against them? Will these rules protect them? Probably not, because I think those guys will believe that their partner's behavior says it all. What would you do if you kissed someone passionately and he or she responded in kind? Would you ask permission before you began to use your tongue?
I'm not saying no one can do this. I think many smart and caring men and women do ask permission along the way and are careful and sensitive observers of what their partner wants and says. I'm all for encouraging that kind of protection of oneself and one's partner. But I think most of this would be clear and careful if it weren't happening in an alcoholic fog, and that's where I'd put my money and educational efforts.
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Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinionAfter a shocking midseason trade that sent him from the New York Red Bulls to D.C. United, it appears that midfielder Lloyd Sam’s stay in the nation’s capital will be extended a bit longer. And, judging from his form on the field, rightfully so. Sam and United are in talks for a contract extension, sources tell Metro with a deal expected to be finalized soon. With United, Sam tallied three goals and six assists in just 13 matches, a perfect fit in head coach Ben Olsen’s midfield. The once-capped Ghanaian winger is considered a solid locker room presence as well as being an asset on the field for United, the historically biggest rivals for New York. Recommended Slideshows 4 Pictures PHOTOS: Singapore's treasures star in NY Botanical Garden's 2019 Orchid Show 4 Pictures 36 Pictures Oscars 2019: Red carpet looks and full list of winners 36 Pictures 36 Pictures All of these celebrities have had their nudes leaked 36 Pictures More picture galleries 16 Pictures These photos of Trump and Ivanka will make you deeply uncomfortable 16 Pictures 4 Pictures Inside Brooklyn's Teknopolis is tech that makes us more human 4 Pictures 4 Pictures Inside The Strand's Fight Against Being Named a New York City Landmark 4 Pictures Having joined the Red Bulls in 2012, Sam locked down a spot on the right wing by the tailend of the next season, his keen play and creativity a major reason why the Red Bulls captured the Supporters Shield that season under then head coach Mike Petke. His form grew the next two seasons and he would finish with 20 goals and 22 assists in 106 league matches for New York. A fan favorite at Red Bull Arena, Sam’s speed and comfort on the ball also earned him frequent trips to the league’s weekly honors as well as a reputation for being one of the best wide players in the entire league. The Englishman also interestingly enough quickly took to American sports and was once champion of the Red Bulls Fantasy Football League…that would be American football. Set to turn 33-years old in September, the expected new deal for Sam is purportedly a “multi-year extension,” per a league source and includes a raise over his previous salary. Before coming to MLS, Sam played for prominent clubs in England such as Charlton Athletic and Leeds United. Related Articles The Muddled History of How the Margarita Was Invented Everything you need to know about Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn English FA Cup Manchester United Chelsea free live stream, watch onlineWord count: 348 Show less
Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come; the campaign is underway to add the legal use of marijuana on private property for recreational or medical purposes to the 2008 Michigan ballot. I know this is good news for many of you who enjoy a swisher sweet blunt as the epitome of your day, but good lord, what's next? I'm sorry but if this bill is accepted by the majority of the population, I am not looking forward to smelling the chronic on an everyday basis - the smell is atrocious! As a community, we already have to deal with the odor of cigarettes and the colorful, skunk smell of factory gases - can my lungs get a break? The "real" issue of legalizing marijuana is that it will open the door for other immoral behaviors to be culturally accepted. In high school, I remember how angered my mother was when she found condoms in my back pack that were given to me at school. Her comments stressed the idea that giving condoms to children or making them easily accessible was a clear message that having sex was OK. No, I am not saying that as adults you do not have the right to make your own decisions. However, we are discussing legalizing a drug, a substance that can adversely affect your ability to think rationally. I know that some of you are thinking "what about alcohol, it's a drug." And you are absolutely right, alcohol related injuries and deaths are rising every day. So why add another check box on the "cause of death" sheet? For those who did need this substance for medical reasons, its use should be strictly monitored under medical supervision. I don't think our society is truly ready for the amount of maturity that legalizing this drug is going to take. For those advocates of this petition, I urge you to truly think about not just the immediate satisfaction, but the long term effects. What we do now can ultimately affect our next generation. AuthorAffiliation Send your questions or comments |
to bond and grow together.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ev Boyle: ‘It’s too easy to think voting doesn’t matter.’ Photograph: Dan Tuffs for the Guardian
Lucas, who studies exercise science, said he might not have voted in the coming primary without prodding from his girlfriend. “Before, I didn’t dwell too much on politics,” he said, seated beside Lopez.
Of Mexican and Irish heritage, Lucas also found motivation in Trump’s rise – as have many other Latinos who have registered to vote. “Trump has (tilted) my vote away from Republicans in general, at least in this election. I’m leaning Democratic.”
Lopez feels the Bern, so if she has her way, Lucas will vote for Sanders. First, though, he must register. “I’ve sent you the link,” Lopez reminded him.
Lucas nodded. “I know, I know. I’m on it.”
Vote Allies is also reaching out to felons such as Troy Williams, 49. A former violent gang member who served 18 years in San Quentin, he was released in October 2014 and is now a film-maker, but he cannot vote in this election.
“I committed a crime and I was sentenced to time in prison... but not to be disenfranchised from the country in which I was born. I don’t have a voice. I don’t feel I’m part of America without a voice,” he said.
Williams helped organise a mock vote in San Quentin for the 2008 general election – turnout and results closely reflected the rest of the US, he said. Denying felons the vote was unfair and, given the disproportionate number of African Americans behind bars, racially tinged, said Williams. “No valid reason has been given for someone not to vote in the American process just because they committed a crime. I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”
Virginia’s governor, Terry McAuliffe, recently paved the way for more than 200,000 convicted felons who have served their time to be eligible to vote, an executive order he dubbed historic.
Republicans denounced it as an abuse of power which enfranchised murderers and rapists in an attempt to tilt the state Democratic. Mehlman, of the Federation of American Immigration Reform, objected to the principle of vote sharing but did not fear dramatic consequences. “People who are inclined to give their vote to an illegal alien are likely to vote the same way as an illegal alien. So it won’t make any real difference in how votes are cast.”Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley both came out and fought 100 mph tonight, resulting in a great fight, but one where Pacquiao was simply better than Bradley. This time, he got the scores: 116-112, 116-112, and 118-110, all for Manny Pacquiao, who is once again the WBO welterweight champion.
Pacquiao (56-5-2, 38 KO) and Bradley (31-1, 12 KO) were about dead even through six rounds, but Manny took over from there, as Bradley tired and might have suffered some sort of minor injury. Pacquiao's speed, angles, and power all looked like, well, The Old Manny Pacquiao, while Bradley certainly lived up to his talk of trying to knock Pacquiao out in the fight.
In short, it was a terrific battle, and the right man won a better fight than we saw in 2012, settling the score. After the fight, the two warriors embraced, traded smiles, and Bradley clapped for Manny being announced the deserving winner.
During the bout, Bradley's trainer Joel Diaz lambasted his fighter for fighting stupidly, which was indeed the consensus opinion of the fans and media discussing the bout on Twitter. Bradley was easily drawn into a firefight, where Manny just had the advantage.
"You can't say nothing bad about Manny," Bradley told Max Kellerman after the fight. "He's the best fighter in the world, eight-division world champion. I lost to one of the best in the world, man."
Bradley did say he felt he'd suffered a strained calf in the fight, which it did appear was the case around the seventh round. But while Bradley did say that he felt the injury occurred, he also said he wasn't making an excuse, and did nothing but congratulate Pacquiao for the win.
Will there be a third fight? Maybe someday. Maybe someday not too long from now. They're both top fighters, both under the same promoter, and there's only so many fights out there for them, especially at this level.Thousands lined up for a transportation job fair at Chicago State University on Aug. 8, 2011. (Credit: CBS)
Updated 08/09/11 – 5:10 p.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) — With renewed worries about the economy in the wake of the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, nearly 10,000 people showed up for a job fair hosted by Congressman Bobby Rush on Tuesday.
As WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports, everyone from the CTA to Southwest Airlines to railroads and the military were on hand at Chicago State University for a transportation job fair.
And, as CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker reports, as of 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, nearly 10,000 people had turned out.
Ray Abrams, 45, was among the first in line for the job fair Tuesday morning.
“I’ve got qualifications. I’ve been to college. I’ve had job experience. I’ve done some of everything in my life,” he said.
LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports
https://cbschicago.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/mp3_bc__carts_job-fair-report3-aug9.mp3
Abrams is doing his best and working part time in Tinley Park.
“After the concerts, I’m a groundskeeper. I clean the grounds,” he said. “That’s only two days out of the week. When I bring that home, that’s $135.”
Abrams is a proud man – confident and positive.
“I’m strong, man – my wife’s strong, and we make it,” he said. “I’m not struggling. My family eats; we eat every day.”
Stephanie Watson arrived for the job fair at 5 a.m. and waited in line in a lawn chair.
“I know it’s a job fair – I know how many people don’t have a job, and how many people would be here, so I knew it was best to be early,” she said.
Watson woke up with a mission Tuesday morning.
“I’m looking for anything they will give; ideally I am rating customer service,” she said.
Watson has been unemployed for the past nine months. For her friend, Candace Mitchell, it’s been three years.
One by one, dressed to impress, people began filing in. Behind them, the line outside wrapped around the sidewalk, with each person desiring one of the many thousands of transportation-related jobs available.
Ricky Frazier, a father of six, lost his security job two years ago. He said he’s looking for anything that offers a paycheck.
“I’m their daddy. I’m supposed to be able to get them what they need and, as a husband, I’m supposed to be able to get my wife what she needs,” Frazier said.
He was just as desperate as the other thousands of men and women who filled the auditorium at Chicago State University and who stood in long lines in the hot sun to get into the job fair – a scene illustrating the pain of the economy.
At one point, the university passed out free water to those who had no intention of leaving.
Twenty-nine companies from the transpiration industry distributed information about job openings. None of the recruiters expected the response they got on Tuesday.
“It’s actually been overwhelming for us. We started running out of some flyers that we had brought in and some of our material because there was just so many people here,” job recruiter John Ramonez said.
The crowd was so overwhelming that at 2 p.m., organizers began to turn people away.
Ron Durr had driven to the job fair from Naperville, but he was among those turned away.
“I drove all the way from Naperville … trying to find some employment.”
Recruiters say they have plenty of positions to fill.
When asked how many drivers her company was looking for, Cheryl Jackson of the Illinois Central School Bus Company said: “As many as we can get. School is about to start.”
“We have ramp agents – the gentlemen who load the planes, operations, boarding customers, or customer service,” said Southwest Airlines recruiter Rodrigo Cervantes.
Metra is also hiring, with plans now going ahead for the Englewood Flyover Project. The north-south bridge will carry Metra Rock Island Line trains over east-west Amtrak Norfolk Southern trains and transcontinental freight tracks above 64th and State streets, and it recently received $133 million federal dollars.
U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) helped bring the project to Chicago, and he says in the days to come, it will require about 1,400 permanent jobs.
He says with this project and many more transportation jobs out there: “A lot of them will be hired today. I’m more than confident. I’m sure.”
Rush said in these hard economic times, the transportation industry is booming, and it’s overlooked. He wanted to bring in as many transportation companies together as possible.
Rush also said he expects the companies that attended the job fair to follow up with real job offers.Legislation aimed at regulating how Internet providers such as Comcast offer Internet service to their customers has collapsed, said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman and Sen. Harry Waxman (D-Calif.), who also authored the proposed bill. A draft of the bill was leaked earlier this week, which would curb the FCC's (Federal Communications Commission) ability to enforce the guidelines laid out in the bill after two years. The agency would also not be allowed to impose additional rules on Internet service providers, the draft mandated.
A lack of support from Republicans made it impossible for the legislation to pass before Congress' mid-term elections, Waxman said. "With great regret, I must report that Ranking Member Barton has informed me that support for this legislation will not be forthcoming at this time," he said in a prepared statement. "This development is a loss for consumers and a gain only for the extremes. We need to break the deadlock on net neutrality so that we can focus on building the most open and robust Internet possible."
The proposed legislation was termed as a temporary fix to protect net neutrality while Congress considered a permanent solution. The bill would have prohibited wireless broadband providers from blocking Websites, as well as applications that compete with voice or video conferencing and restore for two years the FCC's authority to prevent blocking of Internet content, applications and services. "If our efforts to find bipartisan consensus fail, the FCC should move forward under Title II," Waxman said. "The bottom line is that we must protect the open Internet. If Congress can't act, the FCC must."
Waxman's proposal for the FCC would see the agency move phone and cable companies into Title II, or Broadcast Servers, section of the Telecommunications Act passed in 1996. Title II outlines the granting and licensing of broadcast spectrum by the government, including a provision to issue licenses to current television stations to commence digital television broadcasting, the terms of broadcast licenses, direct broadcast satellite services and restrictions on over-the-air reception devices.
"Under our proposal, the FCC could begin enforcing these open Internet rules immediately-with maximum fines increased from $75,000 to $2 million for violations," Waxman explained. "I do not close the door on moving legislation this Congress. Cooler heads may prevail after the elections. But I want my position to be clear: My goal is the best outcome for consumers."
Digital rights pubic interest group Public Knowledge issued a statement agreeing with Waxman's position that the FCC needs to step in to legally protect consumers of broadband wireline and wireless Internet service. "We are in full agreement with Chairman Waxman that the FCC must act now to protect consumers by reinstating its authority over broadband," said Public Knowledge President and co-founder Gigi Sohn. "We expect the FCC to do so to carry out one of the fundamental promises of the Obama administration. Consumers for far too long have been without the legal protections the FCC can provide. The economy will need the boost that the National Broadband Plan and expanded affordable access to broadband could provide. These will not be possible unless the FCC takes action."
Sohn thanked Waxman and his staff for work that went into trying to craft "rudimentary rules of the road" for the Internet. "We also observe that this effort would not have been needed had the FCC followed through in its responsibility to set national telecommunications policy. We can wait no longer," Sohn said. "We expect those members of Congress who argued that it was Congress' duty to set telecommunications policy would recognize the authority of the FCC in the absence of legislation."Meet GRIPsher. GRIPsher is a compact style multitool that packs functionality into a small, light, and robust size. It was dreamt up by an Army Veteran, refined by an MIT engineer, and brought to life with common sense.
Help us grow the GRIPsher community and share our page on your favorite form of social media. We really appreciate the help!
GRIPsher is not like the other compact multitools you own. While many other tools claim useless functions, stretch the imagination of possibilites, or simply have tools that do not work well, GRIPsher means business. It is over engineered to provide unparalleled functionality and utilization.
GRIPsher is a natural extension of your hand. It is designed to replace all the times you use your finger tips to pinch a hex bolt, your finger nail to screw in a flat head, or pinch a wire to strip it.
GRIPsher is packed with real and true functionality. Features and tools included were carefully thought out and refined based on actual user feedback. We wasted no time trying to stick in another 'nail scraper' or a 'can opener.' Instead, we observed which functions on a multi tool users actually use and optimized these tools to be readily accessible and functional using a single hand. This is no ordinary addition to your Everyday Carry (EDC).
It is a sophisticated tool that can accomplish a wide variety of functions. Whether it's on your keychain, belt loop, or bag, there is a spot for GRIPsher everywhere! It is easy to carry in a variety of ways and spaces making it quickly accessible when needed.
GRIPsher looks like a cool tool, but what is so special about it?
GRIPsher is packed with rich and unique functions. The design mimics an extension of the hand with the benefit of increased functionality. The placement and design of the tool was carefully thought out based on which tools are used most often.
GRIPsher has a lot of cool functions, some more hidden than others. Below is a breakdown of all of the cool features you can perform using a GRIPsher and where they are located on the tool.
Some of you may be wondering, why the odd looking green jaws on bottom? The HEXGRIP System allows an easy and fully adjustable way to secure hex screw bits in one cutout and hex bolts and nuts in the other cutout, which is at a 20 degree angle for easy use. The below graphic explains the ease and wide range of applications and how to use the system:
Help us reach our first stretch goal of $120,000 and get a free Spyder case!
GRIPsher is packed with useful features and nifty functions. We highlighted some of them below:
The Jaws also glow-in-the-dark to make it easy to find and see at night.
While GRIPsher is built by MIT Engineering, it is certainly forged with military experience. The Tools For Troops program aims to help troops serving around the globe in the US Military get something nice. The way the program works is simple. When making a selection of what item to support, simply select the GRIPsher black model. When they are ready, you will receive a GRIPsher black with Green Jaws. A service member will receive a GRIPsher Black with black jaws. This is the only way to get a GRIPsher Black.
When production has commenced and we have units to ship, a corresponding unit for every GRIPsher Black sold will be delivered to an American woman or man in uniform across the globe. We cannot take specific requests for service members you may know, at this time.
NOTE: This project is not endorsed, sponsored, or supported by the Department of Defense, its subsidiaries, or any affiliated United States Government Agencies. This is a program run by Outsmarting Technologies LLC, a for profit company, looking to help do something nice for service members who rarely get cool things given to them for free.
There are several great rewards to choose from! In addition, we have several stretch goals. If the funding for our campaign reaches the indicated levels, the reward indicated will be given for free with every GRIPsher unit purchase!
GRIPsher is a precision crafted multitool that has been designed an optimized to deal with a large array of tough conditions.
17-4 Stainless Steel was chosen for the body for its stiffness, corrosion resistance, and surface toughness. It is used in countless military, medical, and aviation applications.
The weight and thicknesses were carefully analyzed and modified to over engineer this tool to ensure optimal performance in harsh conditions.
The jaws are made of Nylon ensuring they have the stiffness, impact strength, and wear resistance to endure very harsh conditions.
We made and tested more than 50 designs to ensure GRIPsher could endure a variety of conditions and use cases.
GRIPsher units were subjected to a series of drop, wear, temperature, and durability testing to ensure they can survive the most rigurous field conditions.
While on deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the original idea for GRIPsher was dreamt up by a soldier. Since then, and more than 50 revisions later, we have GRIPsher as it is today. We prototyped it out of stainless steel (the same material as the production units) to ensure they will perform properly under even the harshest of conditions. Our manufacturer is already up to speed and organized to begin manufacturing GRIPshers as soon as our campaign is successfully completed.
Thanks for checking out our page. What started out as a cardboard cutout I made thousands of mile from home turned into a real product has been quite a journey. A share on the social media platform of your choice would be a great help to us!
Be sure to check out and like our Facebook!The scale of Arsène Wenger's achievement when he reaches 1,000 matches as the manager of Arsenal next Saturday at Chelsea, having endured for almost 18 years at Highbury, places him among the greats. The obvious comparison, like Sir Alex Ferguson's with the former era-defining Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby, is with Herbert Chapman, who championed Arsenal during a transformational time for the club and football itself.
Wenger has without question done something similar, becoming Arsenal's first manager from overseas when he took over from Bruce Rioch, who had done well at Bolton but was deemed inadequate for the Gunners' new Premier League and European future. Wenger pioneered and embodies not only the more cerebral football revolution that has taken place, the famous introduction of proper nutrition and the sparkling passing style that buried sneers of "boring Arsenal" but also the club's institutional change, from homely Highbury to the 60,000-seat stadium named after the United Arab Emirates' state airline.
Chapman, who lasted as manager only nine years, from 1925-34, before dying young, was a broader visionary, embracing modern fitness, professionalism and big-money signings for the team, as well as greater press projection and the brilliant coup of having the nearest tube station named Arsenal.
Wenger, also a towering figure in an era of great change, is more restricted in his influence. His professorial air, mastery of languages and economics degree can be a distraction when assessing him: Wenger has always been minutely obsessed with the football. There is a sense in which he has not embraced Arsenal's and football's epochal changes as Chapman did and that they have instead been hurdles, irritants to negotiate, and that the vast Emirates Stadium project was somehow built around him while he was frowning over formations.
Chapman, having astonishingly won two consecutive Football League championships at Huddersfield, won a third in 1926 and laid the foundations for Arsenal's dominance of the 1930s. Along with the upper-class chaps on the board chaired by Sir Samuel Hill-Wood, and the art deco extravagance and marble halls of Highbury constructed while northern football hotbeds were sinking into depression, "lucky Arsenal" were deeply resented by many as they lorded their five title wins.
With Wenger, by contrast, even while recognising his great abilities, achievements and longevity, his failure to win a trophy for nearly a decade has, inescapably, to be faced. He acknowledged it this week, before Sunday's derby at Tottenham Hotspur, the north London rivals whose absence from the Champions League and lack of a new stadium Arsenal can justifiably measure their huge progress against. Wenger laid the blame for Arsenal's lack of ultimate success on the comparative lack of money, the single most defining feature of his era, compared with that of the oil billionaire owners at Chelsea and Manchester City.
"I believe that when one day I look back, certainly I will be very proud of what I have done," Wenger said. "It was a trophyless period but certainly a much more difficult and sensitive period, and we needed much more commitment and strength than in the first part of my stay here. I went for a challenge that I knew would be difficult because we had to fight with clubs who lose £150m per year when we had to make £30m per year."
Wenger was discussing this second period, since the last trophy won, the FA Cup of 2005, and 2003, the year Arsenal's Invincibles – including Sol Campbell, Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry – won the double, including Wenger's third Premier League title, and so far, his last. In his lament he conflated two causes: the cost of building the Emirates Stadium and the arrival of the oil-rich Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan at City. They knocked Arsenal further back, bankrolling their own clubs with massive expenditure, which had not previously been a basis of the game's economics or culture, Jack Walker at Blackburn excepted.
Arsenal always solemnly declared they would not follow suit, that the directors, who mostly inherited their shares, chaired by Peter Hill-Wood, Sir Samuel's grandson, would not subsidise losses. The board coined the phrase "self-sustaining model" for this, and Wenger pledged to abide by it, always praising it as the responsible way to run a club. Now he identifies it as the reason Arsenal, seeking to break even or make a profit and with the stadium debt to repay, could not compete with Manchester United, Chelsea and City, who have won all the Premier League titles since 2005. "If I ask you tomorrow to race with Usain Bolt and win the race," Wenger mused this week as a comparison, "you will realise quickly it is difficult".
He has not always been as blunt about Arsenal's situation, often adopting the position of feeling rather above the grubby business of money. At the Arsenal annual general meeting of 2007, held in feverish mood after the recently ousted David Dein made £75m selling his shares to the Russian-Uzbek magnate Alisher Usmanov, the other long-term shareholders pledged not to sell, describing themselves as the club's custodians. The then managing director, Keith Edelman, who had steamrollered through the huge headache of the new stadium, said takeover talk had been "killed" and ran through the financial results. Income was hugely up, as planned, but £37m was paid in finance charges and players sold, including Ashley Cole to Chelsea. Henry had also gone that summer, to the resurgent Barcelona for £16m, and Vieira was sold to Juventus for £13.7m in July 2005. Edelman made the pitch that the Emirates was proving its worth in boosting income, with the famously expensive tickets and corporate feasting. Wenger, there to talk about the football and sprinkle the suits with stardust, took the microphone and joked: "Thanks about the money: it's very boring."
Now, looking back over the two distinct periods of his remarkable tenure, he blames the money for the lack of prizes. The custodians, meanwhile, did in fact sell, and make fortunes for themselves, selling in 2011 to Stan Kroenke, the American whose absentee ownership seems at odds with Arsenal's traditions. Wenger and the board reckon now that, having come through the most difficult years financially, and with Chelsea and City constrained by financial fair play rules, Arsenal have amassed a cash pile to buy top-rank players, exemplified by the £45m spent on Mesut Özil last summer.
"I accepted to stay here for a long time knowing that we had little chance to win the Premiership," Wenger said this week. "But I think now we are in position again where we can fight with other clubs to sign big players."
He failed crucially to sign a striker for this season, a deficiency likely to cost him another title. Arsenal are favourites for the FA Cup, though, and ending the trophy drought would be a breakthrough. Approaching 1,000 games in office, the French coach who pioneered Arsenal's modern era is looking ahead to many more and promising a third distinct period, in which he will spend the huge money he has always sniffed at and win again.Get the biggest FC Barcelona 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
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has told Jan Vertonghen he will not be sold to Barcelona this summer.
Levy wants to tie the 27-year-old to an improved £60,000-a-week contract as the defender has just two years left on his current deal.
Vertonghen had his contribution to the Londoners' cause questioned by fans and former boss Tim Sherwood last season.
Spurs' new head coach Mauricio Pochettino, however, sees the Belgian as an important part of his first-team plans.
Meanwhile, Ajax boss Frank De Boer has claimed he was close to beating Pochettino to the Spurs job.
De Boer angered the Tottenham top brass last season by revealing they had contacted Ajax about his services while Sherwood was still in the job.
Spurs instead opted for Pochettino, but De Boer said: “I was really close to a move to Tottenham. It works at a club just like a business: it is voted on, and finally they have come to the conclusion that they wanted Pochettino.”Anticipating what Barack Obama has called “common-sense gun safety laws,” the Bush administration has rushed through a last-minute gun rule that is the antithesis of common sense. The Interior Department published a rule last week that will allow loaded, concealed weapons in nearly all of this country’s national parks.
The rule, which will take effect next month, will apply to national parks in every state that has a concealed carry law, even if guns are prohibited in state parks. The administration — again — also has ignored the point of a public comment period. It received 140,000 comments on this proposed rule change, the vast majority opposing it, and still went ahead.
There already is ample provision for carrying unloaded and properly stowed guns in transit through the parks. This is a rule that was bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association, and it reflects its obsession with overturning even the most sensible restrictions on gun use.
Right now, the National Parks are among the very safest places in this country, according to the F.B.I. The presence of concealed, loaded weapons is likely to change that, and it also is likely to pose an increased threat to wildlife.
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The parks were set aside to preserve their natural beauty and provide enjoyment for visitors. Loaded guns — concealed or unconcealed — are completely inconsistent with that purpose and with the enjoyment of visitors who do not wish to come armed.
Unfortunately, far too many states have laws that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons. But no one should misinterpret those laws as the will of the people. They too are the will of the N.R.A., which has done everything in its power to force dangerous gun laws through one State Legislature after the next.By Jonathan Saul and Parisa Hafezi
LONDON/ANKARA (Reuters) - Britain's vote to leave the European Union and the rise of U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump have paralyzed efforts by Western governments to encourage already highly reluctant international banks to do business with Iran.
Uncertainty is frustrating Tehran's push for foreign investment to revive its struggling economy: over Britain's political and economic future, over whether Trump - who wants to scrap a nuclear deal with Iran - will get into the White House, and over whether banks will fall foul of U.S. sanctions if they process transactions with the Islamic Republic.
Iran's failure to get full access to the global financial system a year after it signed the nuclear deal with world powers has intensified domestic political infighting. It has also turned up the heat on President Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist facing re-election next year, who has gambled on attracting foreign investment to help raise voters' living standards.
Under the deal, international financial sanctions on Iran were officially lifted in January this year and yet it has secured banking ties with only a limited number of smaller foreign institutions.
One senior Iranian official said Tehran was examining alternatives. "Iran will continue to work with small banks, institutions as long as major European banks are reluctant to return to Iran," said the official.
"Our estimation is that this uncertainty will continue for a few years. We are in talks with many countries, mainly China, Russia and African countries to widen our banking cooperation aimed at resolving existing banking, financial problems."
U.S. banks are still forbidden to do business with Iran under domestic sanctions that remain in force. European lenders also face major problems, notably rules prohibiting transactions with Iran in dollars - the world's main business currency - from being processed through the U.S. financial system.
Banks remain nervous following a string of heavy U.S. penalties, including a $9 billion fine on France's BNP Paribas <BNPP.PA> in 2014, largely for violating U.S. financial sanctions.
WATCH AND SEE
Britain says it remains committed to tackling the banks' concerns, while the U.S. Treasury says it won't stand in the way of legitimate business with the country.
However, Iranian officials and foreign bankers believe the British political upheaval after last month's referendum has distracted governments in London and other European capitals, while the possibility that the shock will send the British economy into recession has deepened banks' caution yet further.
"Fear over Brexit's financial consequences have made Britain and other European countries more careful over their interaction with Iran. Most of them have adopted the policy of watch and see," another senior Iranian official told Reuters.
"The British banks and authorities have a very big problem to deal with and since the vote, they have been less eager about Iran and I can even say almost not interested. Of course, we believe we can still work with British banks and have told them so."
European banks have generally cited the U.S. elections as a political risk, while avoiding detailed comment on how a victory for the Republican nominee Trump might affect their business.
However, another Iranian official, who also declined to be identified, said the election and Trump's promise to tear up the Iran nuclear deal if he wins was complicating Tehran's efforts.
"Major European banks are worried about its outcome. An official from a German bank told us recently that they could not risk getting involved in Iran especially when Trump was a candidate," the official said.
EXTREME NERVOUSNESS
Many large banks also fear breaking the remaining U.S. restrictions on Iran, including on dealing with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - a military force that has extensive business interests including through front companies.
"Banks appear to be increasingly reluctant to do business now with Iran," said a sanctions manager at a UK-based bank. "It's the unidentifiable IRGC links - there is extreme nervousness about that whole issue from a reputational risk perspective."
In June, FATF, a global group of government anti-money-laundering agencies, decided to keep Iran on its blacklist of high-risk countries. FATF did welcome Iranian promises to improve and called for a one-year suspension of some restrictions, but this did little to ease the banks' fears.(Last Updated On: September 26, 2018)
Backpacking without money: when it runs out! – Is Part 3 of the Long-term budget traveling realism’s series.
This post is for long-term budget travelers and backpackers who plan to travel for months and years on end. This has no relevance for those who take short holidays or set timeframe trips.
When your funds run dry and coping with backpacking without money!
I’ll make no bones about it, backpacking without money or running out of it can undoubtedly be one of the worst situations and feelings a backpacker can have. A real low point for backpackers, It can make you feel really shitty about yourself and travel, incompetent and at times even depressed. Self-doubt takes over and you question yourself about why you’re even bothering to continue. It can ruin your whole traveling experience…That’s if you allow it to!
I’m not stupid!
You might be shaking your head saying, “Well I’m not stupid enough to get into this situation, I won’t be backpacking without money” – Yup, I hear you loud and clear but here’s the thing – Shit happens when you’re long-term budget traveling and it could happen to you!
Yes, sometimes it’s our own stupidity, our own fault, or because we’ve taken our eye off the budget. There are times when we can miss calculate exchange rates, not realized how expensive a country is, or we’ve just overspent.
However, there are also times when it’s out of our hands, an accident or injury incurring medical costs that the insurance doesn’t cover. Or, getting robbed/mugged, fraud on our accounts, and sometimes it’s just the case that we don’t want to go home.
This is another traveling realism that can happen to anybody at some point. It just depends on how you look at it like it’s the end of the world or put a positive spin on it.
The end of the world…
Put yourself in these shoes for a minute; You’re in a foreign country and far away from home. Your money has dried up, nothing to fall back on, no way of borrowing more money from family back home either. Money for rent, food, transport and bare essentials is drying up fast…You find yourself stuck in a dark hole and can’t see a way out.
Your mind over thinks, how will you eat? Where are you going to stay? How are you going to survive? You start beating yourself up for getting into this mess. Sometimes you even deflect and start blaming others, convincing yourself it was their fault.
I’m sure you’re getting the picture…
Slippery road!
I used to hate it, I wallowed in self-pity, felt sorry for myself and I let it feel like the end of the world. It was like I was shackled, having to watch others have the times of their lives, eat, drink, go on excursions as they pleased while I couldn’t; it really fucking sucked!
Once you start feeling like this, it’s a slippery road. Trust me I’ve been down it a few time and endures some very low points backpacking without money. I’ve had to borrow money from people I’ve barely known, gone days without a proper meal, missed out on trips and excursions, I’ve even had to glue my shoes back together.
Sometimes backpacking without money just comes with the territory with long-term budget travel. There can be times when the funds do dry up and if it happens to you, remember it’s not the end of the world, there are ways around it and for funds to return.
Like with so many facets of traveling life, having to cope and travel with little to nothing is another learning curve, a test of character if you like.
The positive spin…
You may be asking how there can possibly be a positive spin on backpacking without money?
Well if you don’t let the self-pity take over, you can turn this negative situation on its head. Look at it as a challenge, a test, or even better…a game.
Before you think I’m completely crazy, think about it. We’re budget backpackers for a reason; we don’t have much money, to begin with. Many of us have struggled and survived through life on the bare bones following the simple principles of finding bargains and making what little money we have stretch.
So while we start out trips on the tightest shoestring budgets, when the money really starts to dry up the game really starts. And that game is to search for bigger bargains, seek out the FREE stuff, and get the imagination really rolling.
You’ll be surprised at just how much fun you can have, how many new doors open up, and just how much satisfaction when you get when you let your creativity and human instincts take over and lead you.
Ways to keep your travels going!
Channel your imagination, let your human instincts out.
Do some research into things that are free or cost very little, check hostel boards, and talk to locals. Locals can give you tips and insights into things that are not touristy but just as impressive. Remember places that are popular with casual tourists have a high chance of being an overpriced tourist trap.
There are plenty of things you will find from locals or just by exploring a place yourself that are not listed in blogs, Lonely planet or TripAdvisor.
Imagine there’s an excursion you just can’t miss but you can’t afford to do it the traditional way, so you find another way of doing it.
For example:
You can dissect it. Strip it down, instead of organizing and booking through tour companies or hiring transport, look at other ways of getting there. Talk to locals, ask other travelers, take local buses, walk there if possible. Find out if there are entrance fees and what they are. Some places have different prices for locals and tourists, different entrances to the same place can have different prices or find out if certain days are cheaper than others or even free.
By doing some research and using your creativity you will be amazed how much you can end up saving.
Juggle your budget, become a savvy backpacker.
As a long-term budget traveler, you have to learn and become savvy. You learn how to manage your money better, adapt to changing currencies and you have to juggle your daily budget around.
When you travel through multiple countries at once managing your budget can get complicated, especially if the currency exchanges are |
the political insurgency Ron Paul inspired is unclear, and that is of the utmost importance to anyone who understands the need for a broad-based antiwar movement in this country. If we look at the long and distinguished history of antiwar activism in America, what is clear is that, since the 1950s, the barricades have been manned by a few dedicated pacifists and a few politically idiosyncratic writers, as well as the minuscule Leninist sects. There was a burst of antiwar activism in the 1960s, but this soon petered out as the former New Leftists settled down to mortgages and tenured positions in the universities. In the age of Obama, these same types are celebrating the “liberation” of Libya and Syria, authoring learned treatises on the virtues of “humanitarian” interventionism.
The inspiring sight of thousands of college students lustily cheering Ron Paul’s calls for dismantling the Empire — this is the future of the actually existing antiwar movement, if there is to be one. Paul’s movement is just the latest in a whole series of developments that have enabled anti-interventionists to establish a significant niche on the intellectual Right for the first time since the 1940s. The success of the Paul campaign was largely an expression of this growing tendency among conservatives.
A new chapter is being written in the history of antiwar activism in America, and we don’t yet know how it will end. What we can know, however, is this: the leadership of any movement has to be earned. It isn’t automatic, it isn’t hereditary, and its authority is entirely derived from its fidelity to the original message — the ideas that inspired many thousands to give their time, energy, and money. Once those ideas are cast aside, or corrupted, the excitement and idealism that generated all that activity begins to die down — and the movement begins to shrink, in numbers and in spirit.
It is possible, of course, to fall into the opposite error, which is sectarianism. The sectarian disavows all alliances and satisfies himself with showing up at a meeting, denouncing all present as tools of the Establishment and Pawns of Mysterious Forces, and then sitting down to nervous giggles. The Paulians showed their tactical flexibility when they united with supporters of Santorum to ensure a level playing field at party conventions.
Tactical flexibility married to political independence and ideological intransigence — these are the elements of a victorious anti-interventionist strategy inside the GOP, or, indeed, inside any party organization. These lessons are taught in the course of the struggle, and it is hugely important the right lessons are learned. In politics, as in life, nothing succeeds like success — but whose success, and at what price?
As we stare down into the abyss of a major war in the Middle East, such issues as whether or not to vote for imposing draconian economic sanctions on Iran are matters of life and death. In times such as these, you are either on one side of the barricades or you are on the wrong side. It’s dangerous to straddle the fence when it comes to war: you’re likely to get shot at by both sides.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
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Read more by Justin RaimondoSome of the biggest jobs in college football have opened up over the past two seasons, with national powerhouses Texas, Michigan, USC, Penn State and Florida among the schools making new hires.
The list of coaches potentially on the hot seat this season doesn't quite have the star power to match, but there are still plenty of big programs who could be searching for new leadership if things don't improve this season.
I picked 18 coaches whose jobs might be in trouble, then asked SB Nation's team sites how many regular season wins those coaches need to be safe.
Obviously anybody is likely in trouble with a one-win season, and some names like Kyle Whittingham, Mike Gundy and Pat Fitzgerald would be in trouble with four wins or so, but I'm mostly sticking with coaches who need to win around five games to keep their jobs.
It's time to impress
Al Golden, Miami
Regular season wins needed: Eight
According to the NFL Draft, Miami just had one of the country's most talented rosters... and still went 6-7. However, State of the U's Cam Underwood says the 2016 recruiting class, currently ranked No. 3 in the country, could help Golden.
If an early signing period is instituted and some top guys sign, or if things on the recruiting trail are trending towards a strong finish on National Signing Day, that could save Golden from the chopping block... for now.
Brian Kelly, Notre Dame
Regular season wins needed: Eight or more
Notre Dame looks loaded offensively with a new quarterback, and expectations are high. One Foot Down's Eric Murtaugh:
Seven wins could potentially get Kelly fired. Eight to nine wins, and he'll be on a very hot seat.
Need a good season
Kirk Ferentz, Iowa
Regular season wins needed: Seven
Could Ferentz force Iowa to pony up that massive buyout? Black Heart Gold Pants's Patrick Vint says money will be a factor in other ways.
If Iowa averages more than 70,000 fans per home game, Ferentz could go 5-7 and keep his job, because this is a business. If Iowa averages fewer than 70,000 per home game, he probably has to go 7-5 with at least two trophy game (Iowa State, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Minnesota) wins, which the athletic department could claim as some sort of forward momentum. And if the AD gets fired or leaves, all bets are off.
Dana Holgorsen, West Virginia
Regular season wins needed: Seven or more
Matthew Kirchner of The Smoking Musket says Holgorsen's security could depend on how he gets along with his new boss.
There's a lot to be said with what kind of relationship Dana forms with new AD Shane Lyons. Holgorsen was previous AD Oliver Luck's hand-picked guy, and maybe that gave him a little more leeway. If they don't work together well, seven wins probably isn't enough.
Bowl game or bust
Tim Beckman, Illinois
Regular season wins needed: Six
Jim Vainisi of The Champaign Room says allegations made against Beckman could play a role.
Mike Thomas' only justification for keeping Beckman this long is that the team has gotten slightly better each season. It's possible Thomas could cave in to the increasing pressure from alumni/boosters and make a change if the Illini match their 6-7 mark from a year ago. The Simon Cvijanovic situation will play a monumental role in Beckman's status. If even some of these accusations are proved true, he could be packing his bags before the season begins.
Norm Chow, Hawaii
Regular season wins needed: Six
Chris Turner of Mountain West Connection says Hawaii might finally be able to free itself of Chow's contract.
Right now, the only reason he was retained for a fourth year is money concerns. Hawaii's athletic department has been in the red for a while, so it would have cost a lot to cut ties. However, he can be bought out of his fifth year for $200,000. So unless Hawaii tears off a bowl bid, that fifth-year buyout is looking very likely.
Willie Taggart, South Florida
Regular season wins needed: Six
Ryan Smith of Voodoo Five says Taggart is on a short leash, despite dominant recruiting.
After two years of recruiting better than pretty much every mid-major but two awful seasons to show for it (six total wins, 99th and 123rd in F/+), it's pretty much a consensus around the program that USF has to at least make it to a bowl. This far into his tenure, there's no excuse for such a huge gap between recruiting and on-field success.
Mike London, Virginia
Regular season wins needed: Six, or just beat Virginia Tech
Streaking the Lawn's Jay Pierce gives London two different marks to hit.
Frankly, a 5-7 record could keep him employed, especially if one of those wins is against rival Virginia Tech. It would signal an institutional acceptance of running a clean ship, signing the occasional five-star recruit from the 757, and mediocrity on the field. That's a decision many fans dread, but none would be surprised to see.
Relatively safe
Kevin Wilson, Indiana
Regular season wins needed: Five
Kyle Robbins of The Crimson Quarry says Wilson should be back, barring a major setback.
Hoosier fans largely understand patience, and Indiana has been trending upward every season under Wilson. Attendance is up. They're producing early-round draft picks. Recruiting classes are as good as or better than ever. And they've been fun to watch and competitive. Wilson took a team with its fifth-string-from-spring, true freshman quarterback into Ohio Stadium and led the national champs in the fourth quarter. He doesn't need to make a bowl to save his job after losing Tevin Coleman, but he can't afford a major backslide.
Paul Rhoads, Iowa State
Regular season wins needed: Five
Wide Right & Natty Lite's Dan Becker isn't buying a six-win minimum.
The rumor out of Ames is that AD Jamie Pollard told Rhoads he's going bowl-or-bust, but I don't think Pollard really means it. Most Vegas prognosticators have the over/under on the season win total at 4.5, and I think where Rhoads falls on that determines his fate.
Randy Edsall, Maryland
Regular season wins needed: Five
I asked myself, Pete Volk of Testudo Times.
A week ago, this probably would have been six games, marking a third-straight bowl. But since the commit of four-star local quarterback Dwayne Haskins and a potential program-changing recruiting movement, Maryland is going to be a little more willing to cut Edsall some slack with a tough Big Ten schedule.
Scott Shafer, Syracuse
Regular season wins needed: Five
Sean Keeley of Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician says even with a new AD, Shafer has leeway.
He took Syracuse to a bowl in his first season and, while last year's 3-9 result was pretty rough, it's easy to point to a slew of injuries that would've derailed any season, no matter who was the coach. Shafer also just landed arguably Syracuse's best recruit in years in RB Robert Washington, and if Shafer goes, so will Washington.
Darrell Hazell, Purdue
Regular season wins needed: Four
Travis Miller from Hammer and Rails sets expectations low.
The schedule this year is tougher than last season, but the expectations are still very low because Purdue is recovering from a major overhaul. Purdue was only 3-9 in 2014 but still had some signs of incremental progress. I think we need to see that continue. Winning 4-6 games with an upset or near-upset of a "name" team would be the next step for a team that only has 12 scholarship seniors.
Mike MacIntyre, Colorado
Regular season wins needed: Three
A new boss could complicate things, but Ralphie Report's Jon Woods thinks the coach is safe.
Three to five would still be a huge disappointment when considering the Buffaloes' experience and schedule, but I think the school would still give him one more year for stability, knowing that there is a very small class leaving after this season. But there is a new AD since his hiring, so that could come into play.
Wait, they wouldn't get rid of him, right?
Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech
Regular season wins needed: Six
Roy Hatfield at Gobbler Country says while Beamer intends to coach through 2016, a sub-.500 season could result in an early retirement.
Lane Stadium is the house that Frank built. What do 27 years, 100 percent graduation of seniors since 2012, 22 straight bowl games, and the best winning percentage in the ACC since 2004 get you? What does a national championship appearance and multiple BCS berths get you? Simply put, it gets you time. Beamer's seat is definitely warmer than five years ago, but the Hokie Nation is perfectly willing to let Frank Beamer determine his own timeline.
Les Miles, LSU
Regular season wins needed: Six
Billy Gomila from And The Valley Shook says Miles doesn't really have anything to worry about.
Fans will be enraged at anything worse than 10 wins (and for some, anything short of an undefeated national title won't be enough), but Miles still has a significant dollar amount on the buyout of his contract, somewhere in the eight-figure range. He's not going anywhere unless LSU turns in some sort of sub-.500 disaster.
Steve Spurrier, South Carolina
Regular season wins needed: Five
Spurrier has built up too much good will for a forced change, Garnet and Black Attack's Chicken Hoops says.
Gamecock fans will want to see the defense improve under new management and would also like to hear fewer rumors about other coaches calling plays or Spurrier contemplating retirement. But when it comes to actually losing his job, it's still much more likely he walks away than we send him packing.
Larry Fedora
Larry Fedora, North Carolina
Regular season wins needed:?
Instead of getting thoughts from UNC fans, we polled Twitter. Just know that Fedora should try to win as many games as he can.
SB Nation presents: Shocking pictures of college football coaches as kids!When it opens next month, Denver’s new Carla Madison Recreation Center will be a marvel of the parks system, from its outdoor climbing wall and bouldering rock to separate lap pool and children’s pool areas to a stacked-floor design that makes it the city’s first truly urban facility.
Throughout, the center gets plenty of natural light and, from some vantages that include a rooftop deck, has stunning views of downtown and the mountains to the west.
The nearly complete $44 million project is at East Colfax Avenue and Josephine Street, across the City Park Esplanade from East High School. The Denver Post recently took a tour inside the 67,000-square-foot, five-story center — the city’s first new recreation center since 2011 — on a recent morning, as workers set up weight and cardio equipment and focused on finishing touches. (Scroll down to see photos inside and outside the building.)
A grand opening for the rec center is set for 3 p.m. Jan. 8, with the doors opening for public use at 5:30 p.m. That opening was recently pushed back nearly a month, but Denver Parks and Recreation officials say the reasons, including an issue involving backup generator power to the elevators, were minor.
“This is going to be a nationally recognized facility,” predicted John Martinez, the deputy executive director overseeing recreation. “It’s the first urban rec center (in Denver) in terms of going vertical — having a gymnasium over the pool. It’s just a unique design.”
The center features bright-red floor tiles and other red accents throughout in honor of its namesake, Carla Madison, a longtime neighborhood advocate for City Park West who was known for dyeing her hair bright colors and wearing vibrant clothing.
While serving a term on the City Council, Madison died of cancer in 2011, at age 54.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Work is almost complete at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Workman Craig Love, left, and Ken Burton, right, check out the view from the 2nd floor balcony that overlooks the outdoor plaza at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post A workman finishes a concrete pathway in the outdoor plaza at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Workman Barry Dunn gets ready to install security cameras on the fifth floor of the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The fifth floor offers sweeping views of the Denver skyline and the front range mountains. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Public art on the outside
Visitors are greeted outside the entrance with a noticeable piece of public art, a wall-covering piece called “Circuit,” for which artist Erik Carlson received a $165,000 commission from the city. The installation includes LED lights that are connected to equipment in the weight room and will change colors as the linked machine is used.
East of the building, a public plaza includes gathering areas as well as a bouldering rock that invites visitors to climb it.
Designed by Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture and built by Adolfson & Peterson Construction, the project has been expanded in scope and budget several times, with support from Mayor Michael Hancock.
Additions to the original design included a rooftop event space and a climbing wall with an auto-belay system — a braking apparatus for climbing lines — that’s on a balcony.
Before construction began, the city had used the site as a popular dog park. Soon, a new dog park is set to open on the northwest part of the property.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Chris Hale, with Denver Parks and Recreation, works on cleaning the kids pool in the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Chris Hale, with Denver Parks and Recreation, far right, works on cleaning the kids pool in the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Water flows through features in the new kids pool in the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Chris Hale, left, with Denver Parks and Recreation, works on cleaning the kids pool in the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Workman Craig Love, left, and Ken Burton, right, watch as test water flows through features in the new kids pool in the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post A worker checks on the 8 lane competitive swimming pool at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post An 8 lane competitive swimming pool is one of the many new amenities at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Chris Hale, left, with Denver Parks and Recreation, works on cleaning the kids pool in the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Two pool areas on the garden level
Visitors enter the rec center on the second floor, which contains the check-in desk, administrative offices, a “child watch” facility and a multipurpose community room. From balconies along the main hallway, the pool areas are visible below, on a garden level.
This cool giant pouring water bucket will soak kids in one of two natatoria at the new Carla Madison Rec Center.
Story here: https://t.co/klP0opWQ78 pic.twitter.com/2C4CdC8cAl — Jon Murray (@JonMurray) December 7, 2017
On the north end of the building is a lap pool with eight lanes, which East High’s swim team plans to use for practice. Closer to East Colfax is a children’s play area that — with a lazy river, tube slide and splash pools, as well as big water features — is more a kid-size water park than a pool.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post A large cardio and fitness center with lots of natural light is one of the many amenities at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The fifth floor offers sweeping views of the Denver skyline and the front range mountains. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post A large cardio and fitness center with lots of natural light is one of the many amenities at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The fifth floor offers sweeping views of the Denver skyline and the front range mountains. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Gabriel Martinez works on installing a power rack weight system in the large cardio and fitness center at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The fifth floor offers sweeping views of the Denver skyline and the front range mountains. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post DENVER, CO - NOVEMBER 29 - A regulation size basketball court with 6 baskets that can go up and down for kids and adults is one of the many amenities at the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on November 29, 2017 in Denver, Colorado. The fifth floor offers sweeping views of the Denver skyline and the front range mountains. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
Gym level includes large cardio/weight room
One of the challenges of a multifloor rec center will be keeping tabs on what’s going on, Martinez says. So the building includes 47 security cameras to help staff keep tabs on the place.
That’s less of a challenge on the wide-open third floor, which houses a full-size basketball court (with sideways practice courts), a cardio/weight room with a two-story ceiling and access to the outdoor climbing wall. That feature is likely to be open only at certain times, Martinez said, given the need for staff monitoring.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Painter Joe Garcia walks past windows on the fifth floor of the new Carla Madison Recreation Center that offer sweeping views of the Denver skyline and front range mountains on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post Barry Dunn works on installing one of 47 security cameras found through out the new Carla Madison Recreation Center offers sweeping views of the on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post The fifth floor of the new Carla Madison Recreation Center offers sweeping views of the on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post This is a multi-purpose room for dance or yoga in the new Carla Madison Recreation Center on Nov. 29, 2017 in Denver. The fifth floor offers sweeping views of the Denver skyline and the front range mountains. The stunning new recreation center, located at 2405 East Colfax Ave, is set to open to the public in early to mid-January 2018. The $44 million project has the kids' pool as well as an 8 lane competitive swimming pool, a regulation sized basketball court, a fitness and cardio workout center, a yoga and dance room as well as amazing views from its 5th floor conference center among many other things.
Upper floors: Fitness room and rooftop deck
On the fourth floor, group fitness classes will use a room with a view — as well as a garage door on the western windows that can make it open-air.
And on the fifth floor, the rooftop event space has a large gathering room, again with a garage door, a catering kitchen and a deck that has the best views of the city and the mountains.
Another vid from the Carla Madison Rec Center – this from the rooftop, showing the view. Best at the end.
Story here: https://t.co/klP0opWQ78 pic.twitter.com/uPczQ0zaGm — Jon Murray (@JonMurray) December 7, 2017
The top floor won’t be open to the public, but it will be available for rent — and might be perfect for a small-to-medium wedding and reception.
How much do memberships cost?
The Carla Madison Recreation Center is expected to be most popular in Denver’s 28-facility system, with 31,000 projected users each month, Martinez said.
Memberships will be at Denver parks’ “regional center” level, the costliest of three tiers. That level provides access to any rec center, with a pass costing $30.75 a month or $332.10 a year for adults, with a day pass costing $6. The city offers a cheaper membership for young adults and free access to residents 18 or younger.
Starting Jan. 2, the city is launching the MY Denver PRIME program, which will allow free access to recreation centers for residents 60 and older.I feel terrible for Bill Morneau. He's a decent, stand-up guy. His devotion to public service is for real. He entered politics to serve his country and help make Canada a kinder, fairer place. No wonder he was Justin Trudeau's star recruit. He is exactly the kind of smart, hard-working and high-minded person who is all too rare in public life.
Now Mr. Morneau has discovered what many people have learned the hard way. Business is easy. Politics is hard.
The way he fumbled the small-business tax reforms was bad enough. The plan to tax employee discounts (what idiot in the tax department thought that up?) made things even worse. That wasn't even his idea. So unfair! Now comes a cascade of revelations that seem deliberately designed to remind Canadians that he belongs to the top zero-zero 1 per cent – and that they do not.
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Read also: How the Canadian government bungled the idea of 'tax fairness'
It's not just the villa in the south of France. It's the news that the villa happens to be owned by one of his private companies – a fact that he inadvertently, or conveniently, forgot to mention. It's the further news that he didn't put his substantial private holdings into a blind trust, as federal politicians usually do. It's the lingering perception that Mr. Morneau – a very rich man married to a very wealthy woman – is happy to go after farmers, fishermen, mommy doctors and other ordinary folks, while blithely exploiting the best loopholes for himself. It's the sense that our trust-fund Prime Minister and his jet-setting sidekick – who claimed to be fighting for the middle class and those working hard to join it – have no more clue about the middle class than they do about the undiscovered tribes of the deepest jungles of the Amazon. It's all terribly unfair, of course. The Liberals' popularity has plunged five points in the past four weeks, one poll found.
How did it all go so wrong?
Some blame rookie staffers. Some blame bad luck. The failure to disclose the corporation that owns the villa, according to Mr. Morneau's staff, was the result of "early administrative confusion." But the real problem is that Mr. Morneau has been hopelessly flatfooted. The public backlash took him by surprise. He allowed the opposition to gang up on him. He couldn't even explain his own tax measures to angry citizens. Worst of all, he had no idea that his wealth might work against him. As The Globe's Robert Fife said on CTV, "If you've got a finance minister who can't defend himself when it appears he's going after ordinary working people who are running small businesses, you've got trouble."
Back in the good old days, Mr. Morneau's appointment was applauded across party lines. He was praised for his prudence, his probity, his kindness and his social conscience. "When I saw his name, I thought, 'This is a fantastic choice,'" said David Dodge, the former governor of the Bank of Canada. "For Bill Morneau, the learning curve is going to be very short," predicted former prime minister Paul Martin.
Did Mr. Morneau try to bend the rules? Not a chance. He's not that kind of guy. But politics is rough, and even the perception of an appearance of a conflict of interest can generate unpleasant headlines that leave a bad impression in the public mind. One impression is that Mr. Morneau is the kind of guy who pals around with Steve Mnuchin. (In case you've forgotten, Mr. Mnuchin, Donald Trump's treasury secretary, is best known for trying to commandeer an Air Force jet for his honeymoon trip last summer. Mr. Morneau and his wife, Nancy, were at his wedding.)
It's true that Mr. Morneau doesn't mingle much with ordinary folk. He fits right in with the Davoisie – the global class of moneyed, progressive types who have big ideas to change the world. They believe in the transformative power of governments, if only they are led by the right people. They are the thought leaders who swooned over Tony Blair, Barack Obama and now our own Justin Trudeau. They believe in big concepts like "deliverology," infrastructure banks and the Innovation Supercluster Initiative. It's no accident that Mr. Morneau's economic advisory council is chaired by Dominic Barton, who also heads McKinsey & Co., the leading consulting company in the world.
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Life is harder down in the trenches. That's where Mr. Morneau is spending all his time these days, trying to salvage what he can from the smoking ruins. Yesterday, the Prime Minister himself showed up to give him an assist. At a pizza shop in Stouffville, Ont., the two men rolled up their sleeves and listened to Canadians. Mr. Morneau ate a hefty piece of crow. Mr. Trudeau announced that the government is cutting the small-business tax to 9 per cent.
Now if only they could explain away that damn villa.THEY live 300m below sea level, consume their own body mass in food each day and for the first 120 days of life only feast on live prey.
But despite these obvious challenges, Kiwi scientist Steve O'Shea will attempt to keep a giant squid alive in captivity and break his own world record.
An earlier attempt in 2000 saw the squid specialist reach the 150-day mark.
"The broad squid is very difficult to rear in captivity due to its 3mm size on hatching and the complex changes in diet over the first 60 days in life," Dr O'Shea said.
"But it brings me one step closer to the end game - growing a giant."
Dr O'Shea collected the squid eggs from seaweed in the Hauraki Gulf, near Auckland, and was rearing them in a tank at Auckland University of Technology.
"The end game is to improve our understanding of these deep-sea creatures and how to keep them alive in captivity so that we can experience some of the more exotic, bizarre and fantastic squid that frequent our waters," Dr O'Shea said.
A SQUIDCAM will be set up to allow people around the world to track his record-breaking attempt online.Michigan State Police troopers stand outside Allen Funeral Home in Davison Township Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, where trooper Timothy O'Neill was brought during the afternoon |
this review is shorter than usual and doesn't include some of our proprietary tests. The reason is it has been prepared and written far away from our home office and test lab. Still, we think we've captured the essence of the device in the same precise, informative and detailed way that's become our trademark. Enjoy the good read!Its been just a few days since Google announced its latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow version. But developers have already started working on the new update for existing devices.
According to the new Weibo post from the active Chinese developer, Ivan, we could see the first developer version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow on Xiaomi Mi3 real soon.
Of course, you may have to wait for a few more weeks until the first usable version is available, but its still good to see that thanks to such active developers, you can try out the latest Marshmallow Android update months before the official release.
Ivan notes that he’s still fixing bugs on his Xiaomi Mi3. And once he’s done with the Xiaomi Mi3 model, he will move on to the flagship Xiaomi Mi4.
So, Mi4 users also have something to cheer about. Further, he adds that he will also try to install it on the three year old Xiaomi Mi2 model as well (if possible) and finally move on the the Xiaomi Mi Note standard edition.
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At least 21 people have been arrested after violence broke out Saturday between groups of Trump supporters and detractors holding rallies in downtown Berkeley, according to police.
Hundreds of people with opposing opinions on President Donald Trump threw stones, lit fires, tossed explosives and tear gas and attacked each other with makeshift weapons as police stood by.
Violence escalated when counter-protesters against a pro-Trump 'Patriots Day' rally broke through netting separating the two groups in Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr Civic Center Park.
This is the third time that violent confrontations have broken out on the city's streets in recent months.
Supporters of the president attended a 'Patriots Day' rally, which was organized by the Liberty Revival Alliance, potentially as a counterpoint to Tax Marches being held in cities across the country.
About 250 police officers were deployed on Saturday afternoon as violence broke out among more than 200 protesters. Officials in Berkeley sought assistance from the nearby Oakland Police Department, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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A Donald Trump supporter breaks up a scuffle during the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally in Berkeley, California as counter-protesters broke through netting separating the two groups in a park
Trump supporters face off against protesters with smoke from a smoke bomb at Milvia St. and Center St. in Berkeley
An aerial view of the chaos in Berkeley shows how demonstrators left Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where the fighting began, and walked along Berkeley streets closely followed by police
A Trump supporter bleeds after being hit by a counter protester. Dozens of police officers in riot gear were standing nearby
An anti-Trump protester flees from an oncoming charge of Trump supporters on Center St. in Berkeley Saturday afternoon
A police officer detains a pro-Trump demonstrator as groups of Trump supporters and detractors clash in Berkeley, California
Pepper spray was used by both sides of the clash which broke out early Saturday and continued through the afternoon
A Trump supporter wrapped in a Trump flag and a shirt that says he is a proud supporter of the Muslim ban looks on as fights break out
When the violence erupted in Berkeley they were quickly able to arrest one man (not pictured), and soon others were arrested as several fistfights broke out
Tens of thousands of people in 150 cities across the country marched on Saturday to demand that President Donald Trump release his tax returns and to dispute his claim that the public does not care about the issue.
His predecessors in the White House going back more than 40 years had done so.
One of the spots they are demonstrating is right on the doorstep of Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is spending a long Easter weekend.
The marches across the country coincide with the traditional April 15 deadline for U.S. federal tax returns, though the filing date was pushed backed two days this year.
There were no reports of violence or arrests at any of these protests, which contrasts with the clash between Trump supporters and opponents that erupted at the rally in Berkeley, where police officers in riot gear stood by.
When the violence erupted in Berkeley they were quickly able to arrest one man, and soon others were arrested as several fistfights broke out. Some of those arrested were on suspicion of a deadly weapon, according to Officer Byron White of the Berkeley Police Department and the LA Times.
Both sides threw explosives and sprayed tear gas at each other, and a number of people had to have milk poured into their eyes after being affected by the gas.
Trump supporters charge against anti-Trump protestors amid smoke from a smoke bomb that was thrown into the crowd
A Trump supporter gets creative when he throws spoonfuls of scalding beans towards protesters rallying against the president
Fist fights broke out among members of both groups on the streets around Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where pro-Trump supporters had scheduled a rally. Fireworks and smoke bombs were thrown into the crowd, and a few demonstrators were doused with pepper spray
A bloodied demonstrator is seen after a brawl broke out between conservatives and demonstrators in opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump
One of the anti-Trump demonstrators was detained by police officers in Berkeley as fights broke out around her
An anti-Trump demonstrator wears all black and burns an American flag handkerchief during the protest in Berkeley
A conservative demonstrator peacefully chants toward a group of counter-demonstrators during the rally
A man takes a hit in the back with a pole which was being used as a makeshift weapon after actual weapons were banned from entering the area
An anti-Trump protester is seen being pulled from one of many fistfights that had broken out between the two protesting groups
A woman gets milk poured in her eyes after getting sprayed with a chemical irritant, which was most likely tear gas
A Trump supporter (L) who is wearing a body camera assists an injured man who was beaten up as multiple fights continue to break out
A man crouching for cover (C) gets hit with a bike lock as protesters use anything they have for makeshift weapons in the brawl
'A large number of fights have occurred and numerous fireworks have been thrown in the crowds,' Berkeley police said in a news release. 'There have also been numerous reports of pepper spray being used in the crowd.'
The police department later said that the protesters were expanding the area of their demonstrations.
Dozens of people have been pictured bloodied or otherwise injured as fights continue to break out in the California city.
Both groups threw rocks and sticks at each other, and even used a large trash bin as a battering ram, according to the LA Times. A bank even boarded up its ATMs before the rally as a precaution.
Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Byron White told Buzzfeed News: 'The City of Berkeley police department is a small to medium-size department. Our police department total is 176. I can tell you most of that 176 is here today.'
He also said city officials did not receive protest permit requests from either group, but found out about them through social media and distributed flyers.
A Trump supporter runs at counter-protesters while pepper spray flies at him from an unknown source
A Trump protester holds a sign that compares the president to a Nazi as the fights break out around him in Berkeley
A pro-Donald Trump supporter is taken into custody by police during the competing demonstrations as dozens are arrested for displays of violence
A man pulls a knife in the crowd of protesters as things escalate between pro and anti-Donald Trump protesters in Berkeley
A bloodied Trump supporter yells as multiple fights break out between Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters in Berkeley
Hundreds of people with opposing opinions on President Donald Trump threw stones, lit fires, tossed explosives and tear gas and attacked each other with makeshift weapons as police stood by
A man with spiked rings clenches his fists as he enters an area where hundreds of protesters on each side of the political spectrum fight one another
Berkeley Police tweeted a picture some of the weapons that they have confiscated throughout the day as violence plagues the California city
A woman is pepper-sprayed in the face as Tax Marchers fight with pro-Trump protesters at the 'Patriots Day' rally for free speech on Saturday
White also explained that because there was no official communication between the city and protesters, officers had to estimate how many demonstrators would show up.
He said: 'The amount of people at the park for the demonstration was in the hundreds.
'It's a challenge for us to keep that amount of demonstrators inside that area with the amount of people we had. It would require another level of force for us to do that.'
However, he explained that he does not think they underestimated the protests, saying: 'Every time we have a demonstration in the city of Berkeley, we learn a little bit from it'.
During the protests Berkeley police posted to Twitter a picture of some of the makeshift weapons they had already confiscated, including metal pipes and baseball bats.
Another aerial view shows what is occurring in Berkeley as pro- and anti-Trump demonstrators clash
An injured man lies on the pavement as another injured man (R), bloodied from a brawl, walks away from the madness
Demonstrators left the park eventually and walked along the streets of Berkeley when the fights started to break out
A man is hit over the head with a Trump flag as fights break out between two opposing political protest groups and police stand by
Canadian alt-right blogger Lauren Southern spoke at the event and criticized societal change and Kim Kardashian, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Demonstrators later left the park and proceeded to walk along Berkeley streets while police followed closely.
A weekly farmer's market held in the park was cancelled due to the planned demonstration.
But one vendor came to sell her wares anyway and told the LA Times: 'Rain or shine or fascism we will be here.'
The rally follows a March 4 confrontation planned by several of the same groups that left several people injured and led to arrests.
In February, protesters threw rocks, broke windows and set fires outside the UC Berkeley's student union building, where then-Breitbart News editor and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was set to speak.
His presentation was cancelled.
A man was left bloodied after beaing hit over the head by a Trump flag in one of many fights that broke out between Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters in Berkeley
Anti and pro-Donald Trump protesters clash during the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally and look ready to punch each other. Many of the pro-Trump protesters showed up wearing helmets
Members of the California III Percent provide security at the Patriots day 'free speech' rally which turned violent early on Saturday
Members of an alt-Right group called the 'Oath Keepers' also provided security during the rallyA 42-year-old single friend tells me she is thinking of freezing her eggs. I nod with a tight, fake smile. I’m torn: on the one hand, I know how tough everything to do with fertility is because my husband and I have been trying to have a baby since we got married three and a half years ago when I was 41 and he was 45. On the other hand, going through this, and writing about it for The New York Times Motherlode blog, I’ve amassed a vast trove of information about in vitro fertilisation (IVF), egg-freezing and women’s fertility. I know you can’t start thinking about freezing your eggs at 42. Because even if you immediately stop thinking about it and start doing it, it probably wouldn’t work at that age.
What I really want to tell my friend is that if she is serious about having a baby, her best bet would be to go out to the nearest bar and hook up with a stranger – during her 36-hour ovulation window, of course. But I won’t tell her to sleep with a random guy, I won’t ask if she ovulates regularly, nor will I say anything else about the state of her ticking – nearly stopped – biological clock: it’s too delicate a subject.
Besides, I know exactly how she feels. I know how little we women know about our own fertility – despite the daily bombardment of news about declining fertility and egg-freezing and snatching up a husband in college à la the notorious ‘Princeton mom’, Susan Patton, author of Marry Smart (2014), who says women at Ivy League universities should spend that time to find a mate. After all, I didn’t know much about fertility either.
It was three months before my 41st birthday when I went first went to a gynaecologist to discuss what steps to take before trying to conceive. Solomon and I had been dating 15 months and had just had the ‘talk’, a vague discussion in which we concluded that I would go off birth control and we’d start trying to get pregnant. (It would take me another three months and a ring to understand that the baby talk was his proposal for marriage.) I found a female ob/gyn, whom I believed would be more sensitive than a man.
‘So, I read somewhere that you shouldn’t start trying to conceive until you’ve been off birth control for a while,’ I said to the gynaecologist. ‘How long should I be off the Pill before I start?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t wait if I were you. You don’t have much time,’ she said snidely.
Ouch. I looked up from my note pad, where I’d been scribbling notes from our conversation, like ‘get a mammogram’ and ‘start taking pre-natal vitamins’. I’d been in the woman’s office for about 10 minutes and it felt like she was being… well, kind of a bitch.
‘Excuse me?’ I said. I felt like I’d gone to buy lipstick at a cosmetics counter and been offered plastic surgery.
‘You’re almost 41. You don’t have time to wait,’ she said again with a grim look in her eyes. I still wanted to know whether trying to conceive immediately after stopping the Pill could raise the chance of birth defects. (I later learned that that’s patently false – a woman’s fertility is often higher right after she goes off birth control.) But her comment was said with such finality, such disdain – and no actual medical facts to accompany it – that I just took my mammogram script and high-tailed it out of there.
I didn’t heed her advice. I suppose I was still fixated on the ‘first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a carriage’ thing – and I waited half a year until the month of my wedding to have unprotected sex. Lo and behold, a week or two after the nuptials, I discovered I was pregnant. Huzzah! I wanted to throw the positive pregnancy test in that smug gynaecologist’s face and say: ‘Who you callin’ old now, girl?’
But before I could make it to a doctor (a different one), I miscarried. Then I got pregnant again, then miscarried again. Over the next three and a half years, I moved from natural conception to assisted reproduction and IVF, and subsequently learned everything I never wanted to know about pregnancy, miscarriage, age and fertility. Alas, it was too late for me. Sure, I’d gained all this knowledge about the speed of fertility decline but, at 43, I was getting too old to have a baby.
It’s too painful to wonder what would have happened if that first gynaecologist had sat me down calmly and opened up some informative graphics to show how women’s fertility drastically declines with age – beginning at around 32, more rapidly after 37, then precipitously at 40. The way a doctor might explain to you the risk of smoking by showing you a picture of blackened lungs, or describe the effects fat has on arteries, often leading to heart attacks: simple medical facts, presented in an objective manner, without judgment or guilt or some hidden cultural agenda.
Sadly, all this is missing from the discussion on women’s fertility.
Many studies show that women are not only woefully ignorant when it comes to fertility, conception and the efficacy of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) – but they overestimate their knowledge about the subject. For instance, a 2011 study in Fertility and Sterility surveyed 3,345 childless women in Canada between the ages of 20 and 50; despite the fact that the women initially assessed their own fertility knowledge as high, the researchers found only half of them answered six of the 16 questions correctly. 72.9 per cent of women thought that: ‘For women over 30, overall health and fitness level is a better indicator of fertility than age.’ (False.) And 90.9 per cent felt that: ‘Prior to menopause, assisted reproductive technologies (such as IVF) can help most women to have a baby using their own eggs.’ (Also false.) Many falsely believed that by not smoking and not being obese they could improve their fertility, rather than the fact that those factors simply negatively affect fertility.
‘You don’t have much time,’ she said snidely. I felt like I’d gone to buy lipstick at a cosmetics counter and been offered plastic surgery
Fertility fog infects cultures and nations worldwide, even those that place more of a premium on reproduction than we do in the West. A global study published for World Fertility Awareness Month in 2006 surveyed 17,500 people (most of childbearing age) from 10 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America, revealing very poor knowledge about fertility and the biology of reproduction. Take Israel, a country that puts such a premium on children that they offer free IVF to citizens up to age 45 for their first two children. According to a 2011 study in Human Reproduction, which surveyed 410 undergraduate students, most overestimated a women’s chances of spontaneous pregnancy in all age groups, but particularly after receiving IVF beyond age 40. Only 11 per cent of the students knew that genetic motherhood is unlikely to be achieved from the mid-40s onward, unless using oocytes or egg cells frozen in advance. ‘This can be explained by technological “hype” and favourable media coverage of very late pregnancies,’ the authors concluded.
Media hype is one reason why so many overestimate the possibility of getting pregnant when older. With frequent news stories of older celebrities having babies – Amanda Peet (now expecting her third child at 42), Jane Seymour (who had twins at 44), Geena Davis (twins at 48), Kelly Preston (third child at 48), Beverly D’Angelo (twins at 49) – it’s hard not to think the sky’s the limit.
But the stories behind how these actresses came to have these children hardly ever come to light: for example, was it their first child? (A woman who already has children is more likely than a first-time mother to conceive when older.) Did she use IVF? (Most celebrities do not admit it.) Most importantly, did she use her own eggs or donor eggs? (Donor eggs from younger women reset the fertility clock, because it’s the age of the egg, not the uterus, which matters most – up until age 45, when age begins affecting pregnancy even with donor eggs.)
The stories behind how these actresses had their children at such advanced age hardly ever come to light. Yet fixation on celebrity fairy tales gives the rest of us false hope
For a woman over 42, there’s only a 3.9 per cent chance that a live birth will result from an IVF cycle using her own, fresh eggs, according to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). A woman over 44 has just a 1.8 per cent chance of a live birth under the same scenario, according to the US National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Women using fresh donor eggs have about a 56.6 per cent chance of success per round for all ages.
Indeed, according to research from the Fertility Authority in New York, 51 per cent of women aged between 35 and 40 wait a year or more before consulting a specialist, in hopes of conceiving naturally first. ‘It’s ironic, considering that the wait of two years will coincide with diminished fertility,’ the group says.
Stories of celebrities and other older women having babies have led to misunderstanding precisely because they fly in the face of long-held beliefs: for many years, all women heard was that fertility takes a dive at 30-35. But when you see plenty of people having no trouble having babies until 40, you think it’s just a scare tactic. That’s what happened to me, anyway. Raised in a traditional Jewish, family-oriented community that emphasises early marriage and plenty of children, I was constantly warned about waiting too long to get married and have kids. But when I left that community, I saw so many women who had kids at 37, 38, that I thought it was all bubbe meises, old wives’ tales.
It’s not. There is a declining rate of fertility strongly tied to age – but the exact numbers have recently come up for debate. In a piece for The Atlantic in 2013 headlined ‘How Long Can you Wait to Have a Baby’, the psychologist Jean Twenge showed that much of the research cited by articles and studies (such as how one in three women aged 35-39 will not be pregnant after a year of trying) was based on ancient figures, such as French birth records from 1670 to 1830. She also cites a 2004 Obstetrics and Gynecology study examining chances of pregnancy among 782 European women. With sex at least twice a week, the study found, 82 per cent of 35-to-39-year-old women conceived within a year, compared with 86 per cent of 27-to-34-year-olds. ‘In our data, we’re not seeing huge drops until age 40,’ Anne Steiner, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, told Twenge.
This information might have helped people such as me. Had I known that 40 was the real age when fertility generally takes a dive – and not that I’d long passed it five or 10 years’ prior – I might have rushed into baby-making. I might have saved myself from a hellacious IVF journey that still hasn’t ended.
It’s easy to blame our cultural fertility fog on the media and faulty scare-mongering statistics. But the problems go way deeper – and start much earlier.
‘I think as a society no one tells women what fertility is,’ said the reproductive endocrinologist Janelle Luk, medical director of Neway Fertility in New York City. When it comes to women’s health, she said: ‘There’s a cultural barrier.’ Even a menstrual period is only discussed in terms of inconvenience, cramps and pain. ‘When you’re 15 or 17, you’re not planning to have a family, and you only learn about preventing pregnancy,’ she added.
‘Women don’t know there’s a limit: the message is equal, equal, equal. But our biological clock is not’
Luk became interested in women’s health issues from an early age. Her own mother had been given away in China as a baby and raised by relatives because she was a girl. They moved to the US when Luk was 10, and by the time she was in college she got involved as a sex health advocate. She talked on campus about sexually transmitted diseases such as the human papilloma virus (HPV) and chlamydia, which causes infertility in 10 per cent of the infected. ‘It’s part of biology, and women should know because the consequences are severe: HPV could lead to cervical cancer – it’s not fair, but that’s how it is.’
‘No one talks about fertility,’ said Luk, who does not believe women are really open to hearing about it. ‘I don’t think women know that there’s a limit: the message is equal, equal, equal. Women say: “We want to go to college, we want to work on our careers, we want to be equal to men.” But our biological clock is not.’
Or was not, she adds. Today, especially in the past two years, with the advancements in egg-freezing – the flash-freezing vitrification process improves egg survival rates to 85 per cent – women can start to level the playing field by freezing their biological clocks. The problem with oocyte cryopreservation? ‘The younger the better,’ Luk told me – before the age of 30 is ideal. But women often don’t become cognisant of the need to do it until their fertility starts declining, and the process is less likely to produce a baby.
Another way women might even out the fertility playing field is by focussing on the so-called male biological clock. But is there one? Although there have been recent news stories about how advanced age in men (over 40 or 50) increases time to conception and the incidence of autism and schizophrenia, the absolute risk is negligible. ‘When you look at the numbers, you have to separate what the absolute risk and the increased risk is,’ said Natan Bar-Chama, director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. ‘The absolute risk is still really very small.’
Fertility fog is not just a cultural problem, it’s human nature, says Aimee Eyvazzadeh, a San Francisco Bay Area fertility specialist who calls herself the egg whisperer. Recently, a 51-year-old woman telephoned her to discuss egg-freezing. ‘Nobody wants to be told they’re infertile. Women are shocked when nature applies to them,’ she says. She wishes women were more informed. She recommends a woman start by talking to her mother.
Women can also take certain tests to ascertain their fertility age. One blood test measures follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), indicating the egg quality, especially as compared with other women in the same age group. Another test, for Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), assesses ovarian reserve (how many eggs are left) and their potential for fertilisation. ‘It’s part of general health to prevent infertility,’ Eyvazzadeh said. Patients in their 40s complain to her that they wished they’d gotten those blood tests earlier, because now they can’t use their own eggs. ‘If she were counselled at an earlier age, and educated, perhaps she would have made different decisions.’
But who is going to counsel women who are so in the dark? In 2014, The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) had its Committee on Gynecologic Practice deliberate the issue. The Committee Opinion recommends education about age and fertility for ‘the patient who desires pregnancy’ – and that is a quote.
there are no guidelines for talking to a woman about her fertility unless she herself brings it up
In other words, only women who are already trying to get pregnant or thinking about it should be counselled about how age affects fertility. But what about the other women – the ones who do not realise their fabulous health might not protect them from age-related declining fertility; the ones who might want to start thinking about freezing their eggs while they’re still young enough; the ones who are waiting for one reason or another to have a baby and don’t know that perhaps, like me, they don’t have that much time. Does ACOG believe it’s the doctor’s responsibility to bring up the subject?
‘We feel that women should be able to talk to their ob/gyn about fertility,’ said Sandra Carson, ACOG’s vice president for education. ‘We certainly want to remind women gently that, as they get older, fertility is compromised, but we don’t want to do it in such a way that they feel that it might interfere with their career plans or make them nervous about losing their fertility.’ In other words, there are no guidelines for talking to a woman about her fertility unless she herself brings it up.
All this talk of ‘gentle’ reminders and ‘appropriate’ counselling has a history – a political one. Back in 2001, the ASRM devoted a six-figure sum to a fertility awareness campaign, whose goal was to show the effects of age, obesity, smoking and sexually transmitted diseases on fertility. Surprisingly, the US National Organization for Women (NOW) came out against it. ‘Certainly women are well aware of the so-called biological clock. And I don’t think that we need any more pressure to have kids,’ said Kim Gandy, then president of NOW. In a 2002 op-ed in USA Today, she wrote that NOW ‘commended’ doctors for ‘attempting’ to educate women about their health, but thought they were going about it the wrong way by making women feel ‘anxious about their bodies and guilty about their choices’.
Although the ASRM denies the backlash is connected, its spokesman Sean Tipton says the organisation has not done a fertility awareness campaign since.
In the end, lack of fertility education on the medical side and the unwillingness to explore it on the patient side seems to come down to the fear of offending women.
Naomi R Cahn, author of Test Tube Families (2009), argues that ‘the politics of reproductive technology are deeply intertwined with the politics of reproduction’ but ‘although the reproductive rights issue has a long feminist genealogy, infertility does not’. Discussion of infertility is threatening to feminists on two levels, she contends: ‘First, it reinforces the importance of motherhood in women’s lives, and second, the spectre of infertility reinforces the difficulty of women’s “having it all”.’
the debate over egg‑freezing involves such work-life concerns as better maternity leave and family rights
Even a debate over egg-freezing has assumed political overtones. When Facebook and Google recently announced that they would pay $20,000 health benefits for female employees who wanted to freeze their eggs, ‘Room for Debate’ roundtable discussion in The New York Times had three of the five women opposing it: one was worried about the health concerns, another about fairness, and the third about corporations paying women to delay motherhood. In other words, the debate over egg‑freezing involves such work-life concerns as: ‘Why don’t we have better maternity leave?’ or ‘Why isn’t this country more supportive of family rights?’
I was one of those arguing in favour of egg-freezing, because despite success rates being low, they are better than waiting five years with older eggs. At 35, you have 20‑30 per cent chance of your frozen eggs creating a baby in the future, using IVF. At 42, it is 3.9 per cent – the difference is vast.
Unfortunately, the polarising nature of the debate on egg-freezing does little to lead us out of our fertility fog or illuminate the discussion. It just has many women categorically deciding they’re not going to freeze their eggs. That is a perfectly acceptable choice, except that these women seem to be deciding without investigating their individual fertility status, relinquishing control over their fate.
‘Shunning that information about the relationship between fertility and age, however, ignores biological facts and, ultimately, does a disservice to women both in terms of approaching their own fertility and in providing the legal structure necessary to provide meaning to reproductive choice,’ writes Cahn.
Although published five years ago, her words are particularly prescient in the US today in light of proliferating anti-abortion laws and ‘personhood legislation’ – proposals to declare legal human life from the minute an egg is fertilised, granting an embryo the same rights as a newborn. Resolve, the national US infertility awareness movement, resolutely opposes personhood legislation because it ‘would produce so many legal uncertainties about the status of embryos’ that it would make IVF virtually impossible. In the US, IVF would go the way of abortion, with clinics closing their doors, especially in conservative states; women would have as much difficulty getting fertility treatment as they do abortions.
Maybe this threat to embryos and IVF will finally wake women from their fertility fog and allow them to be educated about their own bodies, its capabilities and its limitations. Just like they would be informed about any other medical condition.
‘It is only with this information that reproductive choice becomes a meaningful concept,’ Cahn writes. ‘Choice cannot mean only legal control over the means not to have a baby, but must include legal control over the means to have a baby.’As best we can tell, local churches in the Roman world of the apostolic age were essentially small communes, self-sustaining but also able to share resources with one another when need dictated. This delicate web of communes constituted a kind of counter-empire within the empire, one founded upon charity rather than force — or, better, a kingdom not of this world but present within the world nonetheless, encompassing a radically different understanding of society and property.
It was all much easier, no doubt — this nonchalance toward private possessions — for those first generations of Christians. They tended to see themselves as transient tenants of a rapidly vanishing world, refugees passing lightly through a history not their own. But as the initial elation and expectations of the Gospel faded and the settled habits of life in this depressingly durable world emerged anew, the distinctive practices of the earliest Christians gave way to the common practices of the established order.
Even then, however, the transition was not quite as abrupt as one might imagine. Well into the second century, the pagan satirist Lucian of Samosata reported that Christians viewed possessions with contempt and owned all property communally. And the Christian writers of Lucian’s day largely confirm that picture: Justin Martyr, Tertullian and the anonymous treatise known as the Didache all claim that Christians must own everything in common, renounce private property and give their wealth to the poor. Even Clement of Alexandria, the first significant theologian to argue that the wealthy could be saved if they cultivated “spiritual poverty,” still insisted that ideally all goods should be held in common.
As late as the fourth and fifth centuries, bishops and theologians as eminent as Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria felt free to denounce private wealth as a form of theft and stored riches as plunder seized from the poor. The great John Chrysostom frequently issued pronouncements on wealth and poverty that make Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin sound like timid conservatives. According to him, there is but one human estate, belonging to all, and those who keep any more of it for themselves than barest necessity dictates are brigands and apostates from the true Christian enterprise of charity. And he said much of this while installed as Archbishop of Constantinople.
That such language could still be heard at the heart of imperial Christendom, however, suggests that it had by then lost much of its force. It could be tolerated to a degree, but only as a bracing hyperbole, appropriate to an accepted religious grammar — an idiom, that is, rather than an imperative. Christianity was ceasing to be the apocalyptic annunciation of something unprecedented and becoming just the established devotional system of its culture, offering all the consolations and reassurances that one demands of religious institutions. As time went on, the original provocation of the early church would occasionally erupt in ephemeral “purist” movements — Spiritual Franciscans, Russian non-possessors, Catholic Worker houses — but in general, Christian adherence had become chiefly just a religion, a support for life in this world rather than a radically different model of how to live.
That was unavoidable. No society as a whole will ever found itself upon the rejection of society’s chief mechanism: property. And all great religions achieve historical success by gradually moderating their most extreme demands. So it is not possible to extract a simple moral from the early church’s radicalism.
But for those of us for whom the New Testament is not merely a record of the past but a challenge to the present, it is occasionally worth asking ourselves whether the distance separating the Christianity of the apostolic age from the far more comfortable Christianities of later centuries — and especially those of the developed world today — is more than one merely of time and circumstance.The Obama administration seems to be in a race with academia to see who can do the most pandering to the LGBTQ “community.”
While President Obama thinks women who dress as men are entitled to Civil Rights Act protections, the University of Maryland recently hosted a “Queer Beyond Repair” conference that included a keynote speech on the future of the sexual device known as the dildo.
Kathryn Bond Stockton, Distinguished Professor of English and Associate Vice President for Equity and Diversity at the University of Utah, was the featured speaker on the topic, “Impure Thoughts and All They Birth: What Does the Dildo of the Future Look Like?”
Titles of other topics or panels at the University of Maryland event included:
“How a Girl Becomes a Ship”
“Black Queerness and Trans Bodies”
“Traveling to ‘Dark Places’: Race, Touch, and Sadomasochism”
Another speaker was Dr. Tom Roach, the coordinator for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Bryant University. It was a Friday, he reminded his audience, which means literally the “day of Frige,” also named for the goddess of sex, love, and power. His PowerPoint highlighted the fact that Frige is the primary deity for Wicca, or witchcraft.
Roach’s panel, “Sex, Data, and the Law,” and his presentation in particular, “SCOTUS Interruptus: Raiding Rentboy.com in the Wake of Obergefell v. Hodges,” were wake-up calls regarding the current LGBTQ agenda.
Celebrating transgenderism is only one part of the sexual madness the Obama Administration is promoting for the nation. The next great cause, now popular in academia, is legalizing prostitution.
The author of Friendship as a Way of Life: Foucault, AIDS, and the Politics of Shared Estrangement, Roach based much of his presentation on the work of Michel Foucault (1926–1984), a French philosopher who died of AIDS and was accused of deliberately infecting his partners with the deadly disease.
“In the mid |
the distribution of downloads shows that several other markets also generate significant downloads, including China, India, France, United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico and Russia. That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t consider other markets. Your app may have characteristics that make it perform differently in different markets.
Many markets have low credit card penetration, and the Store supports additional payment instruments so users in those markets can purchase apps and make in-app purchases. The Store supports Alipay, PayPal, as well as carrier billing (Windows Phone only) with 65 partners in 38 markets. Carrier billing offers consumers a convenient one-click way to buy apps, games and in-app purchases, and we see developer paid transactions typically increase by 3x in developed markets and 8x in emerging markets.
Languages of Store Customers
Language is a key driver of downloads and adoption. As you evaluate languages to support in your Windows and Windows Phone apps, you can extend the reach of your existing apps by adding support for more languages.
Offering your app in English only will only cover about 25% of Windows Phone customers, though it covers a larger percentage of tablets and PCs users. Adding Spanish, French, Mandarin, Russian and German increases coverage to more than 75% of the base.
Don’t know where to start? Take a look at our docs that show how to localize your Windows or Windows Phone apps.
Monetization Options
Another important decision is what monetization model or models to adopt in an app: paid apps, in-app purchases, or in-app advertising (showing ads in the app). Revenue analysis from August 2014 shows that all three models are generating revenue and thus are good options to consider, though in-app purchasing and advertising have been generating significantly more revenue than paid apps.
In-app purchase of durable and consumable digital products is the model that has grown the fastest in the Windows Phone store, and is becoming an increasingly significant source of revenue in the Windows store. Advertising also continues to grow, although it is a more significant source of revenue in Windows than Windows Phone. The paid apps model is beginning to show a slight decline as developers move to the “freemium” app model that offers both in-app purchases and/or advertising as a potential revenue source. As the adoption of in-app purchasing continues, particularly of consumable in-app purchases, we expect this to become an increasingly significant source of revenue.
The //build presentation Maximizing Revenue for Phone, Tablet and PC Apps in the Windows Store has more detail about the different revenue models and best practices to help you optimize your app for maximum revenue.
Windows Phone In-App Purchases
As in-app purchase is both the fastest growing and highest source of revenue, we have included a drill down in this month’s blog.
In-app purchase was available on Windows Phone starting with Windows Phone 8, and has continued to grow and improve, including aligning the API with Windows 8.1, enabling a larger number of in-app purchase items in the catalog.
Apps that use this source of revenue effectively are quickly becoming the highest-grossing apps in the store. As this trend continues, even some paid apps are moving to a “freemium” model with a free base app and an in-app purchase feature. We now see that in August, all of the top 20 highest-grossing apps used in-app purchase, as well as 44 of the top 50 highest-grossing apps.
Another interesting data point is that lower price points on in-app purchases do not necessarily lead to higher revenue. While the majority of apps in the Windows Phone Store are offering in-app purchases at or below $2.00, the top 20 highest-grossing apps have in-app purchases ranging from $0.99 to $99.99, with the average being $24.84 and a mean of $10.99. Nineteen of these 20 apps are games offering consumable in-app purchases, and only one uses durable purchases as its main revenue source. In short, if the value is there, in-app pricing does not have to be low to be profitable.
You may be wondering about in-app purchases for the Windows Store. I’ll provide an in-depth analysis in a future blog post.
For Further Analysis
We recommend you take some time to browse through the app catalog in the categories you want to develop for, and analyze the top apps in each category to see what is making these apps successful.
We also suggest you begin developing for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 using universal projects, since these have become the primary operating system for users. Universal apps allow you to develop and manage one source code for both platforms. Also, we strongly recommend consider using the in-app purchase model to increase your app revenue.
This data can help inform your decisions for new apps and app updates. Please share your ideas on what additional data you would find helpful as you keep building better apps. We expect to add new analyses in the future, so your ideas will help us plan our upcoming quarterly updates.
–Bernardo Zamora, Director of Business Operations, Windows apps and Store
Updated November 7, 2014 11:25 pmCLEVELAND, Ohio - The Browns have hired former Colorado head coach Jon Embree to coach tight ends on head coach Rob Chudzinski's staff.
They also have added former Cowboys defensive line coach Brian Baker to coach outside linebackers.
Embree, a former tight end for the Rams in 1987-88, spent the past two seasons as head coach of the Buffaloes, where he went 4-21, including 1-11 in 2012 before being dismissed in November.
Prior to that, Embree was tight ends coach of the Redskins in 2010 and the Chiefs from 2006-08.
Embree also spent three seasons as an assistant at UCLA and 10 at Colorado, his alma mater. He takes over a position that includes Jordan Cameron, Alex Smith and Ben Watson, who will become a free agent on March 12.
"Jon is an outstanding football coach, and he has proven himself at the collegiate and NFL levels," Chudzinski said. "He has coached some outstanding players in this league, and has also been instrumental in developing players in college who have gone on to productive pro careers. We believe he can have a great impact on our tight ends, and I look forward to working with him."
Baker coached the Cowboys' defensive line the past two seasons under former Browns defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, who was fired by the Cowboys. In 2012, the Cowboys finished 19th in defense, including 22nd against the run and 19th against the pass. They were 16th in sacks per pass attempt.
Baker brings 17 years of NFL coaching experience, mostly with the defensive line. The Browns have hired former Jaguars assistant Joe Cullen to coach their defensive line, but Baker played outside linebacker at Maryland (1981-83) and coached the position at Georgia Tech from 1987-95.
"Brian's addition to our staff gives us another coach with extensive NFL experience," Chudzinski said. "His players have consistently achieved a great deal of success and he has coached numerous Pro Bowl-caliber players. He has coached in several defensive schemes in his career and that versatility will be valuable as he works with Ray (Horton) and the rest of our defensive staff."
Before joining the Cowboys, he coached for the Panthers, Rams, Vikings, Lions and Chargers. In the first of his two seasons with the Panthers in 2009, his line accounted for 25.5 of the team's 33 sacks. That season, end Julius Peppers recorded 10.5 sacks to earn his fifth Pro Bowl selection, and Baker helped the defense finish fourth in the NFL in both pass defense and percentage of passes intercepted. In 2010, he guided a Panthers line that had three of its members finish in the top-10 on the team in tackles.
Chudzinski will add a few more assistants, including a running backs coach. Gary Brown is not expected to be retained.On a beautiful sunny morning, 939 undergraduates and 1,545 graduate students received their MIT diplomas today after hearing an address by Sal Khan ’98, MEng ’98, founder of the online Khan Academy, that elicited gales of laughter while also providing thought-provoking advice.
MIT President Susan Hockfield told the graduates that she has more in common with this year’s class than with previous ones: She too, she said, will be moving on after nearly eight years as the Institute’s leader. Hockfield, who will be succeeded as president by Provost L. Rafael Reif on July 2, said, “All of us likely look forward to commencing our next chapter with a sense of breathless excitement.”
Among the lessons Hockfield said she has learned at the Institute: “Every day, MIT faculty, students, postdocs, staff and alumni take a sharp look at the way things are — and find a way to make them better.” One sterling example of that, she said, is Khan, who has created “a brand-new catalyst for transforming how, when and how well everyone learns everywhere, online.”
In introducing Khan, John Reed ’61, SM ’65, chairman of the MIT Corporation, pointed out that this was not Khan’s first appearance before Killian Court: As president of his senior class, Khan spoke at Commencement in 1998, saying then that “it is no exaggeration to say that we will change the world.”
Reed added: “Having checked this assignment off his to-do list, he joins us here today.”
Khan said that his experience at MIT has “played a much deeper role than many of you might appreciate” in his own life. He was proud of his alma mater, he said, when hearing of its plans a decade ago to launch MIT OpenCourseWare, making course materials available to anyone in the world for free — and more recently with the announcement of edX, a partnership with Harvard University that will carry that concept of free access to top-level higher education even further. While other institutions were looking for ways to profit from, or defend against, online education, MIT opted for free and open access — “to put principle over profit,” as Khan put it.
That model, he said, “in no small way inspired what has now become the Khan Academy,” which offers thousands of free educational videos aimed at elementary and high school students.
Khan compared MIT to the fictional Hogwarts school in the bestselling Harry Potter series. “The ideas and the research and the science that percolates behind these walls, that’s the closest thing to magic in the real world,” he said. “Frankly, to people outside this campus, it looks like magic.”
Khan described the MIT faculty as “the leading wizards of our time, the Dumbledores and McGonagalls,” he said, referring to Harry Potter’s fictional teachers of wizardry.
Coming back to MIT, Khan said, felt like returning to a close family. MIT students all share “that same core desire to understand the universe … to push humanity forward,” he said. Faced with the demands of a curriculum that pushes them to their limits, he said, “you cry together, you laugh together, you procrastinate together, you have sleepless nights together,” resulting in “the deepest possible bonds” — which Khan compared to those of soldiers who have ventured through combat together.
Khan urged the graduates, as they face life, to try to be “as incredibly, and maybe delusionally, positive as possible,” and to force themselves to smile “with every atom of your body,” even in difficult times.
Before they set out into the world, Khan asked the Class of 2012 to carry out a “thought experiment.” He urged them to imagine themselves 50 years from now, reflecting back on their lives, and thinking about the things they might have wished to do differently: spending more time with family members, or expressing their love more openly to those they care about.
But then imagine, Khan said, that a genie appears and gives them the chance to travel back those 50 years, and find themselves back again at Commencement — with a second chance to realize that “I can laugh more, I can sing more, I can dance more, I can be more of a source of positivity for the people around me, and empower more people.”
As they embark on this imagined “second chance,” Khan said, he was “just in awe of the potential that’s here.” Addressing the graduates as “the wizards of tomorrow,” he said, “I’m just excited to see what you’re going to do with your second pass.”
Hockfield, in her charge to the students, thanked the Class of 2012 for its class gift of $20,000, which will be used to fund special projects and trips by student clubs and organizations. More than 80 percent of the class contributed, she said, noting that this was, “by an enormously wide margin, the highest participation in the history of MIT.”
“I know you will leave here with the deep imprint of this community’s profound commitment to service,” Hockfield said. “Now is the moment for us to send you forth … to put MIT’s spirit and principles to work around the globe.”Round 1: The FBI vs. Apple. Round 2: The FBI vs. journalists?
A nagging contradiction of the news industry’s long struggle with digital adaptation is that journalists cover the tech industry’s biggest moves for their audiences every day — yet their employers continually fail to grasp the implications of tech stories for their own organizations.
Apple’s ongoing fight with the FBI over privacy is a story worth considering through that frame. This case isn’t just fodder for pageviews or ratings. It highlights problems in the news industry that demand a reckoning.
Now. Before our own full-blown crisis erupts.
Unlike Apple, media companies don’t make password-protected gadgets with localized encryption. But they do have a related technical problem in that most of them haven’t done enough to encrypt the networked flow of information in and out of the newsroom. This leaves sources and users vulnerable.
(At this point, a few disclosures are in order: I co-founded and write open-source encryption software for a for-profit company, Roscoe Labs. I’m also a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post).
To find a good organizational encryption plan, a useful starting point is the seven-point list of recommendations from Encrypt All the Things, an initiative of the digital-rights organization Access Now. Their goal, obviously, is to encrypt as much of the Internet as possible, from personal websites to organizations the world over.
Newsrooms, of course, have particular needs that deserve separate attention. Perhaps their most industry-specific challenge is protecting whistleblowers and other vulnerable sources who need anonymity as they communicate with journalists.
This topic has recently been the focus of two studies that are each very much worth a read. One was presented at the Usenix Association’s symposium in August, authored by a team of professors from Columbia Journalism School and STEM faculty from the University of Washington. The other, released last week, is by Javier Garza Ramos of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Center for International Media Assistance.
The upshot of both pieces is that there are glaring holes in the processes journalists around the world use to protect communication with their sources. At the same time, the threats are increasing everyday from from governments, criminals and other bad actors.
Ramos surveyed 154 journalists from North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. He began with a simple question: Do you regularly use digital tools for general security?
Sixty percent said no. And even among the “yes” respondents, the picture may be bleaker than it appears at first glance, once we factor in the follow-up questions Ramos asked about specific security tools and practices.
Ramos wrote:
The survey also reveals that in some cases, journalists think they are using security tools that are not really secure. Asked about tools they use for safely conducting certain activities (communications, sharing documents, etc.) some respondents mentioned tools that are not designed for secure purposes or that have vulnerabilities. In other words, the tools they think that are secure, are actually not. This suggests that while there is an awareness of the need for security, there is little education about what is safe to use.
As someone who’s been both a reporter and developer, I think would be ideal to encrypt every piece of communication that comes in and out of a newsroom — every voice call, every email et cetera. Reporters should also be trained in the use of encryption technology to protect sources so they don’t inadvertently compromise someone by using the wrong tools, whether they’re personal or employer-provided.
Encrypted tiplines of the sort that developer Aaron Swartz was working on at the time of his tragic death are also a great idea. But these tiplines are not a cure-all because they ultimately rely on the user to make a technically astute decision in choosing the right way to contact the news organization.
A less technically savvy tipster — say, a local government clerk or a mid-level bank executive — might not make the right call in that regard. That person might just ring up a reporter he or she knows the old-fashioned way, or send an email to an address that’s linked on the news organization’s website, overlooking the encrypted tipline.
Better, then, to implement what engineers call redundancy. Create secure tiplines, yes, but also encrypt all the newsroom’s other communication by default, or at least as much of it as possible.
News organizations also need to focus their attention on protecting users as they consume and interact with news. Potential third-party surveillance of this activity, which offers strong signals about a reader’s identity and interests, opens up truly Orwellian possibilities that simply weren’t foreseen in the heyday of old-fashioned press runs loaded onto delivery trucks.
This is why, over the last year or so, a growing chorus of advocates has been urging news organizations to adopt the encrypted HTTPS protocol for Web publishing. Unfortunately, few have heeded the call so far, with admirable exceptions including The Washington Post and several digital-native publishers. Almost everyone else — including Poynter.org — has kept their site unencrypted for the time being.
Again, this unwisely ignores the direction where the Web is inevitably going anyway, pushed largely by players outside the media industry. The Mozilla Foundation, maker of the Firefox Web browser, announced in April 2015 it intends to phase out support of unencrypted HTTP. Even more important, Google has advocated that all sites switch to HTTPS, to the point that it’s already begun to favor HTTPS sites in search results, and it has plans to begin warning users in its Chrome browser about non-HTTPS sites at some point.
Translation: If you don’t switch to HTTPS soon, you’re setting yourself up for yet another hit to your site traffic, either because it won’t rank highly in search or because users will be scared off.
In the face of this scenario, one of the big supposed knocks on HTTPS utterly crumbles away. I refer here to the fact that HTTPS is incompatible with certain third-party ad networks that by design insert themselves between publisher and reader.
I ask, what good is preserving compatibility with such third-party software if it’s going to cost you the very eyeballs that make the ads valuable in the first place?
The better solution, I believe, is to go HTTPS and self-host ad serving and analytics. With open-source tools like the analytics platform Piwik and the new certificate authority LetsEncrypt, this isn’t as prohibitive as it once might have seemed.
Yes, a transition to self-hosting ad functionality would entail some labor and associated costs. But it would protect users better and have the added strategic benefit of giving organizations tighter control over their bread-and-butter revenue stream.
Finally, I’d like to make explicit a premise that runs through all the recommendations I’ve made above. I know people might quibble with some of the specific steps I mentioned, but I hope we can agree on this, if nothing else:
Encryption is ultimately a matter of not just the Fourth Amendment, as it’s often couched in news stories, but also the First Amendment. People cannot speak with true freedom if they don’t know who’s in the room, real or figurative. That goes for the average Joe in his day-to-day life, and it goes for the one profession specifically named in the First Amendment: the press.
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PrintThe United States is now the only nation in history to visit every planet in the Solar System after completing a 9- year, 3-billion mile journey to Pluto. The success of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has brought the agency back into the spotlight and may help re-establish America’s role as pioneers that once sent men to walk on the Moon.
But who were these explorers that flew those first missions and pushed the space program forward? We all know the household names of famed Apollo 11. Astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin who took the first and second steps on the Moon, but the Apollo missions continued for three more years following that first voyage. Armstrong passed away in 2012 from complications during a coronary bypass surgery while Aldrin, now 85, uses his legacy to school Senator Ted Cruz and Congress on why NASA needs funding.
Odds are you can’t name even a few of the ten American Astronauts that followed those historic first steps on the lunar surface. Three of them have passed away (after retirement) and the others live quiet lives while knowledge of their achievements fade with each new generation. Of these forgotten heroes, one in particular has managed to unorthodoxly float his legacy above a permanent retirement on Wikipedia: Edgar Mitchell.
Long after piloting the Antares Lunar Module during the Apollo 14 mission and being the sixth man to walk on the Moon, Mitchell wrote this:
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
Not only that, His controversial views on the existence of extraterrestrials are often cited by UFO documentaries and conspiracy theorists from around the world. After receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Richard Nixon in 1970 and his retirement from NASA two years later, Mitchell has been outspoken about the government’s alleged knowledge and coverup regarding alien visitation.
Today, at 84 years old, Edgar Mitchell has retired to a modest life in West Palm Beach, Florida—where I visited him to find out if this strange legacy matches the man.
Can you describe what it was like to travel from Earth to the Moon?
Well it was an incredible feeling and certainly life-changing. There’s a certain pleasure that goes along with the cooperative effort on a mission like Apollo 14. For me, working as an organizer and having come off that job successfully is always a satisfactory thing that can happen.
Were you concerned about the mission following the Apollo 13 crisis?
There’s always concern and extreme caution. After Apollo 13 we worked hard on upgrades and fixes. We added a third oxygen tank. We felt pretty confident about the mission and the hardware holding up.
You are often cited in describing the ‘Overview effect’. How would you explain that concept to someone with no interest in space exploration?
Simply appreciation for our role and significance in the universe. I consider myself a cosmologist. Just the fact that all of us who went out had some part of that experience of being overwhelmed by getting off the planet and looking at it in its setting and that perspective. Being part of a larger reality for me was a life changing experience. I had to do that to find out what are we going to do to making it better. Realizing the fact that we are not on a sustainable path. I had an epiphany on the way back and starting really looking at it. The more I dug into it, it started becoming obvious that we aren’t on the right path.
Did you take a good look at Earth while standing on the moon’s surface?
A little bit but we were too busy. The Earth was there, It was directly overhead. You didn’t have to make an effort to look at it. Seeing it in that perspective was quite the experience and seeing the earth as part of the heavens changes your own personal perspective. My role in the universe completely shifted. I saw myself as part of a bigger cosmic picture.
Astronaut Scott Kelly has recently embarked to spend a year in space aboard the International Space Station, do you think he will have this kind of experience?
If he has the opportunity to. I hope so. I can’t be sure that he will. Its certainly an opportunity to appreciate the beauty of the planet and the nature of the universe. it’s a sense of our role in the universe and what this is all about.
You previously mentioned sustainability. As a scientist do you see that as a major issue in today’s society?
We’re not on a sustainable path right now in civilization. We are consuming ourselves and the attitude is that “I don’t want to hear about it”
How do you think we became such an unsustainable and apathetic society?
The lack of awareness has been our fallacy. Our separation of science from ourselves and it’s association with a strict attitude. Science is strictly materialist. When we move towards a more conscious appreciation of each other- there comes an ability to serve a greater good. its hard to serve a greater good otherwise.
Can you elaborate a little on the current state of science and why you see it as a failure?
Matter and energy has been the only concern of science for 400 years. Mind and consciousness was not part of it and not considered a proper science. Science and experimentation is a technique for proving relationships in lab and using evidence to validate positions. Nothing wrong with that – that’s what science is about. To find material ways to either prove or disprove a different postulate. This Newtonian approach moved us away from utilizing science as part of everyday life.
The love of nature, love of each other is what we’re talking about. Appreciation at a personal level. Science has a way of making it very stiff and impersonal at times. Serving the greater good is most important. We’re not going to get anything done unless we do. Science needs to go beyond the data and be used to understand the universe at a personal level.
Going back to sustainability, how do we approach the issue in order to fix it?
Being self sufficient and using natural resources to sustain your life. And quit reproducing! Sustainability can only be accomplished by not having so much offspring. Our exponential population growth is wiping out natural resources on this planet.
We need to ask what are the resources that are going to become scarce and learning how to replace or to preserve those resources. Main thing is that this begins with every one of us. It just can’t be leadership, we’ll all have to step in and do our part. Within this century as a civilization we’ll be in deep trouble. Serving the greater good in all our activities and motives towards solving the problems we have. Sustainability is that problem and it has a lot of facets to it.
Did you start thinking this way after you returned from the Moon?
More so yes but I was raised in a family that was very loving. We grew up on a ranch farm with animals around us and we were appreciative of the role of animals in our lives. I got this attitude from my parents. Appreciation for life and everything in our lives. As I came into my house each day I always saw my picture of my pony that I had when i was 14. I valued it as a friend not as a pet. That was the attitude I learned from my parents. love for nature and all it’s complexities.
Do you think that appreciation is something the newer generations need to adapt?
It’s not just those generations, it’s all of us. I certainly in my own life try to live that way. I’m very comfortable here—I have a lovely home. As you can see out there I’ve got a batch of trees. I’ve gone back into the nursery business just to help protect the trees. We found a lot of trees that were going to be destroyed. The owner wanted the trees off his land so we got back into the nursery business to protect those trees. I hope people will shift to this kind of view. we have our children and we have our pets. if we learn to operate with appreciation for these aspects of life and treat them as blessings. These things that make life comfortable.
You have made controversial statements in the past regarding the existence of extraterrestrials. Do you still stand by these statements?
Yes I do. The evidence for visiting of other species goes back in historical record. Back past the bible to ancient times. Clearly they have been coming here in more recent times. Governments keep hushing it up. They don’t really want to talk about it.
Why do you think they refuse to talk about it?
I don’t really know a good reason for that except for fear. Fear of not wanting to acknowledge that we’re not the best thing around. There’s a lot of rumor around stuff going on. I do know personally all the published research here and in South America and I’m on first name basis with everyone in the field. There is no doubt that they’ve visited and they are here now.
I think the best answer is that the real control of information is about money. The government and powerful parties may use the technology for profit motives. They want to hold onto everything. Particularly the idea of going off the planet – they want to hold onto it. The monied interest has a hold on it.
Robin Seemangal focuses on NASA and advocacy for space exploration. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he currently resides.‘Facebook poke’
courtesy of ‘liako’
How dumb can you get? Really, really, REALLY dumb. Jonathan Parker, a PA resident, decided to rob stands accused of robbing a house outside of Martinsburg in Berkeley County, WV. But that’s not the dumb part. Ready for this? He checked his Facebook account on the victim’s computer and left it logged in! The Martinsburg Journal (sort of my home newspaper, unfortunately) reports. He apparently stole two diamond rings, in addition to some equipment from the garage. Because of his awesomeness, the police were able to nab him relatively easily.
He is being held right now in the Eastern Regional Jail in Martinsburg on $10,000 bail and could actually get up to 10 years for this. But that’s just for the crime; what can we give him for being the dumbest person on earth? I guess this really shows just how important Facebook is in our lives today. And since comment contests have been popular on WeLoveDC lately…let’s try one here. What do you think he set his status to when he logged into Facebook while robbing someones house? Add yours in the comments.After years of questions about how it will make revenue, Pinterest’s roadmap to monetization is becoming more clear. The company announced today that its Promoted Pins program, which it made available in beta to certain brands eight months ago, has performed “just as good and sometimes better than organic Pins,” and it will make the program available to all advertisers on January 1.
Pinterest claims that brands who participated in the Promoted Pins beta program saw a 30 percent increase in “earned media” — or the amount of people who save a Promoted Pin to one of the boards. Promoted Pins are repinned an average of 11 times, the same as a normal pin made by one of the site’s users. Furthermore, Promoted Pins continued to get more pins in the month after a campaign, or a 5 percent increase in earned media.
Once the Promoted Pins program rolls out, Pinterest says advertisers will have access to more ad formats and advanced targeting. In addition, it’s also launched the Pinstitute, a twee name for a program that will show advertisers how to leverage Promoted Pins through workshops and webinars.
The Pinstitute follows the launch of Pinterest’s analytic dashboard in August, which lets advertisers track how their pins performed and how much content is being pinned from their sites through Pinterest’s Pin It buttons.
Pinterest has been focused on monetizing its site since raising an impressive $225 million Series E in October 2013, which valued the company at $3.8 billion. At that time, Pinterest said one of the key uses of the capital would be to continue development of monetization, which it first began testing around the same time it closed its Series E, into a global program.A 20-year-old Florida woman has gained an online following for being able to touch her elbow, earlobe and eye by extending her tongue.
Barcroft Media reported that Gerkary Bracho Blequett’s lizard-like licking talent has attracted an online following of more than 1 million people who watch her YouTube videos.
Blequett, of Ocala, believes she has the longest tongue in the world.
“People’s reactions are different,” she told the news website. “Some people react like, ‘That’s nasty,’ some people react like, ‘Whoa, I wanna see it again,’ and some people just get scared.”
Blequett said she learned she had a gift when her friends dared her to try licking her eye.
She said the realization that she could also touch her elbow and earlobe was “shocking.”
When Blequett posted a photo of herself on Instagram, she said she garnered several new followers. After some of them questioned whether her tongue was real, she posted a video to prove it. Nearly 7,000 people watched the video on Instagram and some 1 million more did so when she posted the footage on YouTube.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Oh my god, you’re the girl from that video,’” she told Barcroft. “It’s crazy.”
Next, Blequett wants to dethrone the current Guinness World Record holder for the longest tongue in the world. That person’s name is Nick Stoeberl, whose tongue measures 3.97 inches long, according to Barcroft. To do so, she’d need to have a professional take an official measurement of her tongue.
Karina Blequett, Blequett’s mother, has confidence her daughter will take the title.
“She is going to be very famous with her long tongue,” Karina Blequett told Barcroft.Mark Thompson Steps Away
ENTERCOM Classic Rock KSWD (100.3 THE SOUND)/LOS ANGELES morning legend MARK THOMPSON, host of the “MARK in the Morning” show, will hand over the reins of the show to his former co-hosts, ANDY CHANLEY and GINA GRAD. His final “MARK in The Morning” program on KSWD will be WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3rd, from 6-10a.
Beginning on THURSDAY, AUGUST 4th, 100.3 THE SOUND’s morning drive time show will be called “ANDY & GINA in the Morning.” While keeping some of the most popular features of “MARK in The Morning,” the new program will devote more airtime to playing music.
THOMPSON first rocketed to fame as half of the popular “MARK & BRIAN” morning team, first on WAPI/BIRMINGHAM and then on KLOS/LOS ANGELES from 1987 to 2012.
“Doing ‘MARK In The Morning’ was the best job I’ve ever had and the best staff I’ve ever worked with. We did it right, and I will always be proud of that. THE SOUND has decided that they need to play more music in the morning, and that’s not really the type of show I do. I try my best to entertain those who are listening with humor and shenanigans. So it wouldn’t make sense for me to host a music-intensive show. Both THE SOUND and I knew that,” said THOMPSON.
In the near future, THOMPSON plans to launch a syndicated weekend show on THE SOUND called “Cool Stories in Music,” in which he takes a famous group or artist and, along with their timeless hits, tells the story behind the music that few people know.
“THE SOUND brand is built on Classic Rock,” said PD DAVE BEASING. “ANDY and GINA will play a lot, and they’ll continue to offer sports with TODD DONOHO, LA RAMS reports with SAM FARMER of the LA TIMES and ‘Flick Chat’ movie reviews with GRAE DRAKE of ROTTEN TOMATOES. Plus, MARK’s daughter KATIE THOMPSON will remain as THE SOUND’s ‘Chick On the Street’ reporter.”
Speaking of his successors in mornings on THE SOUND, THOMPSON commented, “I love these people and I will be cheering for them. I also want to thank GM PETER BURTON and PD DAVE BEASING for having the vision to bring me back to L.A. morning radio. I will forever be grateful for the opportunity. They’ve asked me to continue my relationship with THE SOUND in other ways and we’re discussing options.”
“Working with MARK THOMPSON is a career highlight,” said VP/GM PETER BURTON. “We’re excited to help him launch ’Cool Stories,’ and we hope to partner with him in other ways, too."
« see more Net NewsTim Cook sounded confident as he tried to reassure disappointed investors on an earnings call earlier this week. But analysts managed to put the revered Apple CEO on the defensive.
“2013 came around, we’ve got some new products, obviously, but nothing really from our new product category,” Brian Marshall, an analyst at ISI Group, said to Cook on the call. “Do you care to comment on the innovation cycle of the company and the cadence there?”
“Are you still a growth company?” challenged Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays.
Cook and Apple’s management team have one thing to be very confident of, even as investors and analysts become more comfortable putting difficult questions to them. And that one thing is: China.
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China’s technology market is booming, and the country is making up an increasingly large slice of Apple’s revenue. Emerging markets now look like they’ll be the biggest new source of revenue for Apple. Sales in the Americas last quarter actually declined by 1% compared with the year-ago period. But the company’s sales in China increased by a full 29%. And with Apple’s sales in China hitting $8.8 billion last quarter, that part of the company’s sales are almost half its $20.1 billion Americas revenues.
“China is an incredibly important market to Apple,” Cook told analysts and investors on the call. “I think you can’t be in the business that we’re in and not have a reasonable China business.”
Last month Apple cut a crucial deal with a massive Chinese wireless carrier, China Mobile, which opens up a huge market for the company’s iPhone. China Mobile has 760 million subscribers — more than double the population of the U.S. and more than triple the number of U.S. users who subscribe to AT&T and Verizon Wireless combined |
their stories.
Refugees and migrants certainly benefit from the uses of social media that everyone with internet access does; but the emerging platforms in the space are where the traditional model of solitary, isolated migrants can be disrupted. Tools specifically tailored to the needs of the excluded have the potential to create the most significant change in a networked world.
To read other articles from the issue, subscribe to the magazine in print, iPad, or phone find out more here or on iTunes, search for “Index on Censorship”.
This article and photograph is part of Across the wires, the spring 2015 issue of Index on Censorship magazine, and should not be reproduced without permission of the magazine editor. Follow the magazine on @Index_magazine
© Jason DaPonteTD Ameritrade Holding Corp said on Monday it and Toronto-Dominion Bank would buy privately held Scottrade Financial Services in a deal valued at $4 billion, combining two of the biggest U.S. discount brokerages.
TD Ameritrade, the biggest U.S. discount brokerage by trade executions, said it would end up paying $2.7 billion for Scottrade's brokerage business after the sale of Scottrade Bank to Toronto-Dominion Bank's U.S. banking unit for $1.3 billion.
The $2.7 billion comprises $1 billion in new common TD Ameritrade shares and $1.7 billion in cash.
TD Ameritrade CEO Tim Hockey told CNBC's "Closing Bell" the deal is largely a scale play.
He said the company plans to consolidate the roughly 500 existing Scottrade branches and the 100 existing TD Ameritrade branches into about 450 locations total. He said the company will not leave any markets.
"We will make sure that we have the right locations in the right markets to serve both the Scottrade clients as well as the TD Ameritrade clients," he said. "We think of it as both high-tech and high-touch in the future."
The deal comes at time when discount brokerages are facing weak trading volumes and slow revenue growth as wealth managers cut fees amid intense competition.
Hockey said Rodger Riney, Scottrade's founder, CEO and controlling shareholder, was interested in partnering up with a larger firm like TD Ameritrade to take advantage of the investments it's made in its technology, platforms and "leading-edge tools and products."
Riney will join TD Ameritrade's board after the close of the deal, the companies said. The Scottrade founder and chief executive said last year he was being treated for a form of blood cancer.
TD Ameritrade, which is 42 percent owned by Toronto Dominion Bank, said it expected to save about $450 million annually in combined expenses and more than $300 million in "additional longer-term opportunities" once the deal closes.
The deal is expected to close by Sept. 30, 2017, the companies said. Barclays Capital is financial adviser to TD Ameritrade, while Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is legal adviser. Goldman Sachs is advising Scottrade, with Sullivan & Cromwell acting as legal adviser.
—CNBC's Antonio José Vielma contributed to this report.De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images
Birds evolved from dinosaurs, and dinosaur fossils are often covered with impressions of feathers, which made some palaeontologists speculate whether feathers were a common trait that appeared early in their history. Now a team analysing feathers on the overall dinosaur family tree argues this is taking things too far.
Palaeontologists have known for about two decades that theropods, the dinosaur group that contained the likes of Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor and from which modern birds evolved, were covered in feathery structures from early on in their history.
By contrast, the ornithischian lineage — which contained animals such as Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus — and the huge, long-necked dinosaurs in the sauropod lineage were considered to be scaly, similar to modern reptiles. Indeed, all evidence pointed in this direction until the discovery, beginning in 20021, 2, of a few ornithischians with filament-like structures in their skin. This led to speculation that feather-like structures were an ancestral trait for all dinosaur groups.
Keen to know more, palaeontologists Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London and David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto created a database of all known impressions of dinosaur skin tissues. They then identified those that had feathers or feather-like structures, and considered relationships in the dinosaurian family tree.
The results, which Barrett revealed at the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology’s annual meeting in Los Angeles in late October, indicate that although some ornithischians, such as Psittacosaurus and Tianyulong, had quills or filaments in their skin, the overwhelming majority had scales or armour. Among sauropods, scales were also the norm.
“I’d go so far as to say that all dinosaurs had some sort of genetic trait that made it easy for their skin to sprout filaments, quills and even feathers,” says Barrett. ”But with scales so common throughout the family tree, they still look like they are the ancestral condition.”
The findings provide “a valuable reality check for all of us who have been enthusiastic about suggesting dinosaurs were primitively feathered”, says Richard Butler, a palaeontologist at the University of Birmingham, UK, who was not associated with the study.
Even so, Butler points out that the findings are not set in stone. “We don’t have primitive dinosaurs from the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods preserved in the right conditions for us to find skin or feather impressions,” he says. “This picture could quickly change if we start finding early dinosaurs with feathers on them.”Flashback This One's a Jaw Dropper
VIEW: An excerpt from our 2000 report, The Case for Innocence. The clip's a bit longer than usual -- but worth every second.
It's about the Roy Criner rape/murder case in Texas and why, despite the evidence from two DNA tests, Judge Sharon Keller, writing the majority opinion for the Texas Court of Appeals, rejected a new trial for Criner. The exchange at the end of the clip between Judge Keller and producer Ofra Bikel is fascinating.
Here's a piece in this month's Harper's Magazine on the mindset and logic of conservative judges like Keller who push for finality in the criminal justice system, despite evidence of innocence. The article twice cites Judge Keller's rulings.
Also, read here more about Criner's case, and its final outcome.Image copyright Thinkstock
One in five people with motor neurone disease (MND) waits more than a year to see a brain specialist for help with diagnosis, a snapshot survey suggests.
The MND Association report, based on responses from 900 patients in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, says the delays stop people getting early care.
While the charity accepts a diagnosis can be "notoriously difficult" to make, it urges GPs to be vigilant about MND.
GP leaders have worked with the charity on a scheme to improve diagnosis.
About 5,000 people in the UK have motor neurone disease.
It is a progressive and incurable condition causing damage to the nervous system - which can lead to problems including difficulties with walking, speaking and breathing.
More than 50% of people with MND die within two years of being diagnosed. But care - such as breathing assistance and feeding tubes - can ease symptoms.
'No single test'
The MND Association says an urgent referral straight to a neurologist (a brain and nerve specialist) is crucial to people getting appropriate help as soon as possible.
But two in five of the people surveyed said they went to their GP at least three times before a referral to a neurologist was mentioned.
About half were seen by other healthcare staff first, including physiotherapists and ear, nose and throat specialists.
Karen Pearce of the MND Association said: "The problem is there is still no single diagnostic test for MND and we appreciate that it is also challenging for GPs, who might only see one patient with MND in their whole career.
"Symptoms can be similar to other conditions so people can spend months seeing various specialists and undergoing unsuccessful treatments until MND is suspected. However, there are things we can do to improve this."
'Life-shortening disease'
Bob Keats, 61, from the Isle of Wight, was diagnosed more than a year after noticing his first symptoms. During that year he had a series of visits to doctors - including GPs and ear, nose and throat specialists - but it was his wife's dentist who eventually suggested he should see a neurologist.
He told the BBC: "I'm not critical of the process as it is such a rare disease that most doctors will not have come across it."
But he added: "MND is a real threat. It requires a higher profile and with that comes quicker recognition by doctors and neurologists and better support in terms of preparing the patient for the sad news that they have a life-shortening disease."
The association says a scheme put in place together with the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) to help GPs spot signs earlier, appears to be having some success.
RCGP leader Dr Maureen Baker agreed early diagnosis was essential but said the constraints of a standard 10-minute consultation added to difficulties in reaching a diagnosis.
"When you consider that GPs across the UK make in excess of 1.3 million patient consultations every day, it brings home just how difficult identification of such a rare condition is at initial presentation."
About 900 people with the condition (28% of all those asked) responded to the questionnaire.Appearance and function match the final product, but is made with different manufacturing methods.
Looks like the final product, but is not functional.
Demonstrates the functionality of the final product, but looks different.
A prototype is a preliminary model of something. Projects that offer physical products need to show backers documentation of a working prototype. This gallery features photos, videos, and other visual documentation that will give backers a sense of what’s been accomplished so far and what’s left to do. Though the development process can vary for each project, these are the stages we typically see:
These photos and videos provide a detailed look at this project’s development.
About
Introducing Step Smart
Step Smart is a new product designed by Balco Lifestyle to assist with safe ladder use.
Ladder safety is serious!
Ladder related injuries and deaths are becoming more prevalent especially among 50+ year old male users. These injuries occur whilst conducting non-occupational activities (mainly DIY around the home).
Ladder instability is the number one cause of ladder accidents, typically as a result of the ladder being positioned on uneven ground or on an unstable surface or structure. Consumers ASSUME the ladder is level and stable – they often over reach to paint, clean, repair or build something.
The current market in ladder accessories does not feature any products utilizing digital technology. Current ladder accessories are primarily mechanical. There are no products designed to identify and monitor the issue of stability, only to correct the issue.
Our solution - Step Smart!
Step Smart is a new product designed by Balco Lifestyle to assist with safe ladder use.
The Step Smart can mount to most ladders on the market and is very easy to do so.
Once mounted, turn your Step Smart on to begin setting your ladder up correctly.
Press SET once everything is level and you are ready to use your ladder. The Step Smart will notify you if your ladder shifts to an unsafe position from the original state.
Slow beep alarm
When you see red flashing lights and hear the slow alarm sound your ladder is at a dangerous angle and should be adjusted immediately.
Rapid beep alarm
Solid red lights and rapid beep alarm means your ladder is at its tipping point and is likely to fall.
Determining tipping angles
Using a formula we were able to determine ladder tipping points with some set parameters.
We tested with a range of different ladders and weights in real world environments to best assess at what point a ladder will tip.
This calculation assumes the following:
The user keeps their body within the edge of the ladder
The user stands no higher than the third highest step
The ladder weight is evenly distributed top to bottom
Straight extended ladders are NOT leaning against a wall
Important!
It should be noted that whilst we hope Step Smart results in safer ladder use, it will not prevent falls. Our aim for this product is to assist users in using their ladders with more confidence. Like a trucks reversing beep or a heart rate monitor, it is about early warning through visual and audible ques to prevent something serious occurring.
Now use your ladder with peace of mind!I've been using ORMs for years, starting with my own hand-hacked library back in the days before there were good ORMs for Python, and more recently settling into a comfortable reliance on SQLAlchemy. Over time, though, my initially rosy feelings towards ORMs have begun to sour. I gradually realised I was spending a disproportionate amount of time trying to coax the ORM into doing my bidding - and when I succeeded, the results were often ugly, slow and needlessly opaque. Analysing the performance of some of the more complicated portions of my data access layer was often painful, and I spent cumulative hours poring over generated SQL, trying to figure out what the ORM was doing and why. Usually, improving performance involved side-stepping the ORM altogether. Recently, a particularly gnarly performance issue prompted me to ditch the ORM from a project altogether, with surprisingly pleasant results.
Impedance mismatch
Ask any programmer why they use an ORM, and the answer is likely to be "impedance mismatch". This is a lovely phrase from a rhetorical point of view - hovering at the edge of meaning, but nicely avoiding asserting anything that can actually be quantified. The usual hand-wave is that impedance mismatch arises from the tension between table-oriented relational data, and object oriented conceptual thinking. Your Bicycle class - a subclass, naturally, of Vehicle - might have to be reconstructed from data scattered across six different tables, and it's a distressing possibility that none of those tables might be called Bicycle, or indeed Vehicle. What we should aim for, the argument goes, is a programmer's Shangri-La where where we can transparently persist and restore our objects and have the storage taken care of by some magical plumbing. Whether or not the magical plumbing is worthwhile depends largely on how often the abstraction breaks down. The ORM approach does so frequently. Yes, I can use an ORM and think at the object level in the common case, but whenever I need to do anything remotely complicated - optimising a query, say - I'm back in the land of tables and foreign keys. In the end, the structure of data is something fundamental that can't be simplified or abstracted away. The ORM doesn't resolve the impedance mismatch, it just postpones it.
A lighter abstraction
So, if ORMs are at best a very partial solution to the ill-defined impedance mismatch problem, why do so many programmers swear by them? It's not that they're all fools, it's just that ORMs solve ANOTHER practical problem much more successfully. Most programmers who use ORMs do so simply to avoid re-writing endless nearly identical CRUD operations for every persistable object in their project. This isn't about any fundamental object-relational impedance mismatch - it's simply a problem of query generation. So, this brings me to my own difficult-to-quantify contribution to the miasma of fuzzy thinking that already surrounds this issue: 90% of the benefit most people derive from ORMs can be gained more simply and more transparently through unashamedly table-oriented query generation. All we need is a nice programmatic way to generate and manipulate SQL statements... Luckily we have just such a tool in the SQLAlchemy SQL expression language - a good, simple and nearly complete language for working with SQL expressions from Python.
Pursuing this line of thought, I've ditched the ORM from a few of my projects. Instead, I'm using a defter abstraction - a simple, lightweight framework that uses SQLAlchemy's SQL expression language to auto-generate most queries. This framework is unashamedly table-oriented, and exists to manipulate data at a relational level. It clocks in at less than 150 lines of code. The database schema is no longer defined by the ORM - instead, helper objects are built through schema reflection. The result has been satisfying - my data layers are better encapsulated, database interaction is more transparent, and the conceptual complexity is much reduced. Since nothing happens magically behind the scenes, it's easier to analyse performance, and since there is no session layer (few projects really need one) a whole chunk of complexity has gone away. Using reflection rather than defining the schema in code has made schema evolution much less of a chore. I also retain other benefits usually attributed to ORMs - the expression language abstracts away flavour differences between databases, so I can still, for example, run a large fraction of my unit tests against in-memory SQLite databases and deploy on PostgreSQL. I'm now gradually migrating all my projects to this way of working.Ottawa's new CFL team is set to begin playing in June of next year, but what will it be called?
For decades the city was defined in part by its football team — the Rough Riders — but the new team, set to debut in 2014, will have a new moniker.
The team's official shortlist includes, the Red Blacks, the Nationals, the Raftsmen, the Voyageurs and the Rush. Jeff Hunt, a partner in the CFL team, says the naming process has drawn in thousands of fans.
"What's interesting is the passion around a names, it's not like people throw out the name lightly," said Hunt. "They have great explanations and rationale and even ideas of what a logo could look like and that's been extremely encouraging."
Hunt said whatever the team is called, he understands that not everyone will like it — at first.
"Maybe in the beginning it's not going to roll off the tongue, but I think over time we're going to find a brand that the community will be proud of and support," he said.
For weeks now dozens of people have been involved in focus groups helping the team come up with a name that will be made official this spring.
Downstream, an American design and technology consultancy, is conducting the focus groups. Its creative director Alex Davidhazy says everything from history, language and political sensitivities were explored.
"I like to think of a name and brand as an empty glass," said Davidhazy. "It's a vessel that's going to be invested in and given meaning to over time...and you want to make sure that who you say you are, is in line with who you actually are."
On the streets of downtown Ottawa Thursday there was no clear majority, but just for fun, CBC's graphic artist came up with a few logo ideas — none of them official, but they do whet the appetite.The Parsi community gathers to celebrate Nowruz
Who would have thought that anyone could get a comprehensive taste of Zoroastrian culture in one day, in Melbourne? Food, song and dance performances, a history documentary, a cultural exhibition and, possibly, the entire Zoroastrian community in Victoria, were all on offer at Kingston City Hall in Moorabbin!
The Zoroastrian Association of Victoria (ZAV) showcased all that it had to the Victorian community on Sunday 28 August. With close to 500 people in attendance, the Zoroastrian community was proud to present and explain its ancient culture and religion that dates back some 3,500 years.
What was special about this occasion was the timing. Zoroastrians recently celebrated their Parsi New Year celebrations, Nowruz, the week before. The event also coincided with Khordad Sal, the birthday of our Prophet Zarathushtra (the founder of Zoroastrianism).
“We had a vision to showcase our community to Victoria and encourage the public to discover who we are, what we stand for and what place we take in history,” said the President of the ZAV, Kazween Boiko. Along with the ZAV committee, and the community at large, we were able to put on a fantastic and uplifting display.
Those who attended the event had the opportunity to browse items in a mini-exhibition consisting of religious and cultural artefacts, traditional clothing, books, informative posters and models, and ceremonial displays. Our local community, with the assistance from their relations back in India and Iran, sourced various items to provide visitors with a broad appreciation of our heritage.
There were also performances by the Shiamak Davar Dance Academy. The dance troupe combined traditional and modern routines to entertain the crowd of all ages. In addition, a singer, saxophonist and dancer represented the Australian Persian Arts Centre and presented traditional acts.
Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs Inga Peulich was impressed with the informative documentary ‘Zoroastrianism – An Enduring Legacy’. She noted it was “the best presentation” she had ever seen at any community group function that she had attended. She explained that this documentary is clearly the product of the Zoroastrians who are known for being entrepreneurial, resourceful and helpful.
Although the Zoroastrian community is very small, and shrinking, we are vibrant, diverse in our occupations and have contributed greatly to society over many centuries. The community is proud of its heritage. “Our community is going to hold more events in the future and continue to integrate with fellow Victorians in this wonderful multicultural society,” Kazween Boiko declared.
One attendee at the event was thrilled to learn about Zoroastrian culture and was impressed with the seven-course meal, lagan nu patra (traditional celebration feast severed on a banana leaf). Our resident community chef, Sarosh Khariwala, worked tirelessly prior to the event to prepare all the food with the help of the Parsiana Kitchen group from Perth. Famous dishes included dhanshak dal, tokri paneer, patra ni machi and sali margi.
Zoroastrians are determined to keep their culture alive and make other people more aware of the fundamental role Zoroastrians have played in shaping modern civilisation. The community appreciates the support it receives from government bodies and organisations and the ZAV would like to thank Vasan Srinivasan (Australian Multicultural Council Member), Mayor Tamsin Bearsley (City of Kingston) and Graham Watt (Victorian member for Burwood) for attending the event and meeting the community.
Keep an eye on the ZAV’s Facebook page to stay up-to-date with upcoming events.MILL CREEK, Wash. - A teenage boy was accidentally shot in the arm while he and his fiends were playing with a gun Friday afternoon, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department.
The shooting happened about 4:30 p.m. in a wooded area behind the Mill Creek Town Center.
Deputies said four teenage boys were in the woods playing with the gun when it accidentally discharged, hitting one of the boys in the arm.
The boy who was shot was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
The teen who handling the gun when it went off, dropped the weapon and ran into the woods.
Officers are now searching the area to locate the teen.
The Sheriff's Office is calling the shooting accidental. They're still investigating who owns the gone and how the teen got it.Walking barefoot and munching on a giant Toblerone, a homeless ex-serviceman who has walked 4,000 miles for charity crossed the Tay Bridge into Dundee.
Christian Nock, 39, has been on his epic journey around the UK coastline for a year raising more than £90,000 for Help for Heroes and made his entrance to Dundee with a reference to Alan Partridge.
A huge fan of the comedy character, Christian said he wanted to re-enact the scene from the I’m Alan Partridge series, where the eponymous hero has a breakdown and drives barefoot to Dundee, scoffing the triangular treat.
Despite his jokes, Christian’s journey has a serious message, as he walks to raise awareness for the plight of the homeless, around a third of whom are ex-forces.
“I lost everything when my business went under. I was shoplifting and sleeping rough. I decided if I was going to sleep in doorways, I might as well sleep in a different doorway each night.
“When I first started I didn’t care what happened. It has really been the last four months that the campaign has really taken off. I’ve had some mad times. I’ve driven Britain’s fastest lifeboat and slept on a beach with a local MP in Great Yarmouth. The council later bought a warehouse to help the homeless.”
When The Courier caught up with Christian halfway across the bridge, he was in the company of Mike McRitchie, 30, of Wormit, who offered to take the weary traveller for a pint in Dundee.
Mike said: “I saw on Facebook he was in Tayport and my house is about the same distance from the bridge so I just walked down, hoping to bump into him.
“I think it is great that he is raising awareness for homeless ex-forces people.”
Halfway across the bridge, Christian received a message that another £10,000 had been donated to his cause, which left him “buzzing” but he said he was grateful for every donation not matter how much.
He said the welcome into Dundee was “fantastic”.
Christian was heading to Monifieth but today will go and see Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa at the cinema with another supporter. He still has 3,500 miles to go on his journey and people can follow his progress on hisChristian Around Britain Facebook page.
You can donate at Christian’s bmycharity page.In this Friday, Oct. 27, 2017 photo, Westside Elementary School first grade students Dante Ketterhagen, left, and Jace Brown share a reading session with Daisy, a visiting collie owned by therapy dog handler Linda Ray at the school in Sun Prairie, Wis., (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP) The Associated Press
By KAREN RIVEDAL, Wisconsin State Journal
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Six-year-old Carol Dimitrijevich has been reading to Hannah, a 10-year-old golden retriever, for a while now — long enough to know the dog's preferences.
The first-grader at Westside Elementary School said she's finished three books since the start of the school year, when Hannah, a therapy dog, began making weekly hour-long visits to Carol's classroom to listen. The books Carol read when it was her turn, she said, were "10 Monsters in the Bed," ''Mud" and "Bump! Thump! Splat!"
"She liked 'Mud' best," Carol told the Wisconsin State Journal — adding, with a shrug, "Dogs love being dirty."
Part motivational tool, part security blanket, therapy dogs have been used in a variety of settings for many years, from nursing homes and hospitals to elementary schools, colleges and libraries more recently. The dogs are family pets that go through a little training with their owners to be certified, but mainly are just friendly and obedient enough to accept pats and hugs from strangers looking to de-stress during finals or to feel better despite being ill, said Dan Darmstadter, Hannah's owner and handler.
He estimated Hannah has visited patients at St. Mary's Hospital, where he is volunteer coordinator of the pet therapy program, about 400 times in the last eight years.
"It's very hard to go wrong walking into a room with a dog," Darmstadter said. "People love it. We often hear them say that it's the best part of their day."
In reading programs in elementary schools, the dogs' calming presence can focus attention and make students more motivated to practice reading aloud, teachers said.
"Even my most reluctant readers are willing to read orally to the dog," said Adrienne Pressman, a fifth-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Madison. Sue Weaver has been bringing her therapy dog, Jill, to read with Weaver's students weekly for more than seven years.
Weaver works with students at all reading levels, Pressman said, meeting with small groups who sit in a circle around the dog on beanbag chairs Weaver provided, each taking a turn reading from the same book and reaching out to pet the dog as they feel comfortable.
"It's often the ones who are high-risk kids that really bond with the dog," Pressman said, citing children with special needs, foster children and children who arrive mid-school year as being among those who tend to be most receptive to the dog. "They really work for that time to be able to read to the dog. It really turns around some sad kids."
Weaver's dog Jill has become such a steady and beloved presence at Lincoln Elementary that she's been in class pictures and was given her own library card, Pressman said. Her students write letters to the dog twice a year, including a birthday card, she said, and former students often look for Jill when they return to visit the school.
"They come back to check on Jill and see her, not me," Pressman said. "There is something really, really comforting and motivating about having that animal in the room."
Darmstadter started bringing Hannah to Westside Elementary for classroom reading programs last spring, in teacher Chelsea Roggenbauer's fourth-grade class, and switched to two first-grade classrooms in September taught by Roggenbauer and fellow teacher Megan Nelson.
"The theory behind it is if a child is reading to a dog without an adult correcting them, they'll be a lot more relaxed," Darmstadter said. "It's more of a reward or incentive. They want to do it. Not having the fear of being corrected makes reading more fun for them."
In Roggenbauer's class, a stir of surprised excitement sprinkled with a few gasps swept through the room after Hannah, a frequent visitor, was led into the room followed by Daisy, a collie they'd never seen before who was brought by owner and handler Linda Ray.
Ray and Darmstadter set up a space apart from each other on the carpeted floor, sitting down with their dogs beside them. As the students approached in pairs, carrying their books for their turn to read to the dogs for a few minutes, the dog handlers greeted them and asked each child a few questions, trying to make them feel comfortable — especially Ray, as the newcomer.
"She will be very gentle," Ray reassured one approaching pair, inviting each child to stroke the collie's delicate face and flowing coat. "She has a long nose, and lots of fur."
Some still preferred to stick with Hannah, though.
"We get to pet her and when we read, she listens," said Mason Cryderman, 6, in Roggenbauer's class Friday.
The Sun Prairie teachers said they valued the dogs' presence as a two-part teaching tool — boosting their students' confidence in their reading skills, while motivating them to try harder in more structured lessons throughout the week to win the right to read to the dogs.
"It's a nice little brain break," Nelson said about the fun sessions, "and they earned it over the past week."
"It's cool to see them open up," Roggenbauer said. "Some have had poor experiences with dogs before."
___
Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, http://www.madison.com/wsj
An AP Member Exchange shared by the Wisconsin State Journal.The next Batman movie won’t be a Christopher Nolan production. Instead, Lego Batman is to get his own movie, in a spinoff/crossover from the surprise hit The Lego Movie.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros, who own the movie rights to the Batman character and who also produced The Lego Movie, are set to go ahead with Lego Batman, and will prioritise it over The Lego Movie 2. Chris McKay, the Lego Movie animation supervisor who is down to direct the sequel, has instead been asked to take charge of Lego Batman, with a view to a 2017 release, with Lego 2 pushed back.
Will Arnett, who voiced the character in The Lego Movie, is due to take the role again. Arnett’s too-cool-for-school attitude and parody Christian Bale-esque drawl proved a hit with audiences. Seth Grahame-Smith, the writer of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is to take on script duties.
Lego Batman first appeared in toy form in 2006, as a licensed character in Lego construction kits, and swiftly became a successful video game. A full-length film, Lego Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite, was released in 2013 as a game spinoff. The Lego Movie took $480m (£301m) at the worldwide box office when it was released earlier this year.It is hard to find anyone over thirty who doesn't have at least one evil-boss story. Some people have many of them. It's hard to work under a person who doesn't get you, doesn't appreciate your talents or just treats you badly. It wears you out and makes you doubt yourself.
I've had a half-dozen horrendous bosses and I remember the sickening feeling in my stomach when one of them would call me on the carpet or tell me how to do my job -- a job they hadn't the slightest understanding of - while I had to stand there and take it. I understand completely why people like to swap tales about their awful managers.
There's only one problem, and that is the uncomfortable truth we don't want to talk about. Our evil bosses choose us, and we also choose them. In any situation where we end up working under someone we don't respect, somehow or other we put ourselves in that situation. The longer we stay in the job, the more we own it. We can say "I hate my job" and even "I hate my boss!" but at a certain point we have to take responsibility for our situation, too.
Responsibility is not the same as blame or shame. When you are beaten down and discouraged, the last thing you want to hear is "It sounds like you're in an awful situation at work, but then again, you chose it!" Those might be the most painful words you could possibly hear. "I chose it?!" you'll say, aghast and indignant. "I didn't choose this situation. I hate it. If I could change it, I would!"
We always know the names and descriptions of the barriers that stand before us. We are always ready to describe the chains and shackles that keep up in lousy situations. "You don't understand -- it's hard to get a job in my field!" you may think. "You don't know how hard I've got it," you might say. I don't blame you for feeling unequal to the challenge of changing your work situation. Everybody feels that way at times.
Sometimes it feels comforting to believe we don't have a choice -- that we are victims of circumstance, not to mention a victim of the evil boss. Being a victim means we are not responsible for the awful things we experience at the hands of our horrible manager.
One day you may get tired of being your boss's victim. You may wake up and say "If I really hate my boss that much, why am I still in this job?" The minute your viewpoint changes, you will begin to see a path out of the woods. You can job-hunt at night and on the weekends and land a better job before you quit the one you have now.
It can feel scary to make changes. When we feel nervous about stepping out of our comfort zone, the evil boss can serve as a handy scapegoat. The evil boss becomes the reason your career isn't going the way you hoped it would. The horrible manager is responsible for your unhappy work situation.
It's her fault! It's his fault!
When something clicks in your brain and heart and you realize that your awful boss is just an ordinary person, scared and unequal to his or her assignment and more to be pitied than feared, you might soften and stop giving your power away to a person who doesn't deserve it. It's very easy for us to lose sight of the fact that our evil bosses are seldom as dastardly or as powerful as we make them out to be.
We turn them from normal, cranky, bumbling supervisors into fire-breathing monsters for a reason: if the boss is truly evil, then of course we can't help ourselves! If the boss is a mixture of Cruella deVille and Lord Voldemort, no wonder our hands are tied!
We heard an evil-boss story from Margaret, who worked as a project manager for a tech firm in Silicon Valley. Margaret's boss Elizabeth was a classic bully. She raked Margaret over the coals at the slightest provocation. One Friday night, Elizabeth told Margaret to prepare some reports and show them to Elizabeth at six p.m. in Elizabeth's office.
Margaret brought the reports to her boss's office and laid them out. No one else was around -- the rest of the team had already gone home. Elizabeth immediately started criticizing Margaret's work. "This analysis is shoddy!" she fumed. "I thought you said you had an MBA!" On and on Elizabeth went, ripping Margaret on every bit of work she'd done. After an exhausting hour getting blasted by her manager, Margaret asked "Do you want me to resign?"
Elizabeth sat back in her chair and said "What? No! I don't want you to quit. I was just letting off steam!"
Margaret said "I'll look at the reports again this weekend." She packed up her stuff and went home. She told her boyfriend Garrett "Maybe I'll give notice on Monday. I can't take this abuse anymore. Maybe I should job-hunt full-time and cross my fingers I get hired soon. This is too hard."
Margaret went back to work on Monday. Elizabeth called her into Elizabeth's office. "Margaret," she said, "I had a horrible week last week. I won't bore you with the details, but I wanted you to know I wasn't myself." Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to say "I'm sorry."
Margaret said "That's no problem, but I want to reiterate that I can certainly move on and give notice if you don't feel I am a good fit for my job. Honestly Elizabeth, I've never had a manager or anyone else talk to me that way before. We have to get on a different footing if I am going to keep working here." Elizabeth gaped at her.
Both women were silent for a minute. Finally Elizabeth said "I know I go off sometimes. You can give it right back to me. That's probably the best thing."
"I will," said Margaret. "I need an employment agreement in that case. If you get mad enough to send me packing, I'll regret not having negotiated a severance package, so let's do it right now."
They did. Margaret never got fired. Elizabeth never freaked out at her again. Margaret and Elizabeth worked together for several years afterwards. What changed the tense dynamic between them? Margaret changed the energy by standing up to Elizabeth and speaking her truth.
Margaret didn't have money in the bank. She didn't have another job lined up. She didn |
of the Spring community, and will continue to contribute ideas”. Indeed, the momentum generated by Johnson over the past nine years should leave it in good stead.The beer world is full of funny names, one-off releases, and interbrewery collaborations. It's an industry that takes pride in its sometimes-whimsical nature.
Sometimes you just have to geek out, whether you're a sports geek, videogame geek, or beer geek (maybe all of the above?) to touch only the tip of the iceberg. Below, we've listed ten of the nerdiest, geekiest, and otherwise socially awkward beers. Let us know how many you've had.
See also:
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Alien Stout - Sierra Blanca Brewing, New Mexico
New Mexico is a pretty geeky state; after all, it's the home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the premiere sites in the country for science. But when the science is done, it's time to celebrate New Mexico's other famous nerd-event, the Roswell UFO crash of 1947, with the recently crowned Alien Stout from the Sierra Blanca Brewing Co.
Usually known for the lackluster Alien Amber Ale, Sierra Blanca pushed out this imperial stout with the alien branding to help win beer lovers over. Clocking in at 8.3 percent abv and with a roasted-coffee and chocolate taste, this deep-brown beer is getting much better press than its predecessor. It even won a silver medal at the 2012 New Mexico State Fair. Besides a better product, the alien skull logo really seals the deal.
TROOPER - Robinson's Brewing, UK
You drink my beer, but I'll drink yours too! Here's a beer for the those wanting a little more metal in their drink.
TROOPER is a British style amber ale developed by renowned Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. Featuring Eddie the Head on the label, the beer just recently hit production and shipments are making their way through Europe, with US distribution not far behind. Featuring Cascade, Goldings and Bobec (a variety of Styrian) hops, the beer should have a pleasant hoppiness that doesn't dominate the palate. "It pours a deep golden colour, so deep it verges on copper," says Marverine Cole, an accredited beer sommelier, and member of the Campaign for Real Ale. "Caramel, earthy/grassy notes and a hint of lemon citrus on the nose. All very subtle, but no real punch in terms of aroma...That subtlety translates into the flavour of a delicate sweetness, a light dry finish with no lingering bitterness: all-in-all, a well-balanced brewed beer... This is a "session" beer in the truest sense of the word."
Episode 13 - B. Nektar Strikes Back - B. Necktar Meadery, Michigan
There's no doubt that Star Wars themed anything is generally a hit, but this is mead with an AT-AT on the label! It may not be 'beer' in that it's made from malted barley, but it's a fermented beverage classified under the Beer Judge Certification Program's style guidelines as style categories 24 through 26, so I'm including it here. Also, mead is awesome.
"A long time ago, in basement not far from Detroit..." the label begins. "In an effort to strengthen their cause, the rebels sent out thousands of bottles across the galaxy."
It's a sweet honey mead that has been aged in bourbon barrels, cleverly depicted as an AT-AT made of wooden barrels on the bottle's label. Other amusing product names from this meadery include Necromangocon, a mango and black pepper honey wine, Apple Pi, made from fresh apple cider, honey, and pie spices, and Mead Love You Long Time, a mead with star anise flavor, white cardamom, juniper berries, orange zest and lime zest to imitate Vietnamese ice cream.
Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale - Black Sheep Brewery, UK
Whether delivered via laden swallows or found hidden away in the Castle Anthrax, Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale is one of the more famous geeky beers, and one that has surely crossed the gifting paths of any Python fan. Produced by Black Sheep Brewery in North Yorkshire, it is the official beer of Monty Python.
They are very open about its contents as well. "We brew Holy Grail with Maris Otter malt, an old and expensive variety that is renowned for the taste and the quality of the beer it produces," the brewery exclaims. "A mixture of old English Hop varieties including a touch of WGV hops gives Holy Grail its lovely fruity nose."
It is, by their accounts, a "proper Yorkshire beer" with just a hint of wheat added in to give it that extra body. It's not a bad brew either, and we'd consider drinking it even if we had no arms left, you stupid bastard.
Tallgrass 8-Bit Pale Ale - Tallgrass Brewing Company, Kansas
Those of us who grew up during the '80s hold a sacred nostalgia for practically anything to do with 8-bit gaming. Enter the 8-Bit Pale Ale from Tallgrass Brewing, it's a hop-rocketed American-style pale ale made from a foundation of 2 Row, Victory, Vienna and Munich malts and hopped on Magnum, Centennial and Cascade. For a final geeky touch, a Hop-Rocket infuses Australian Galaxy hops into the beer to bring out "a unique tropical, almost melon aroma in a classic American style."
Oh, and it's been named the official beer of retro gamers. So bring a case next time there's an arcade night, and show off your 8-bit style.
Game of Thrones Iron Throne Blonde Ale - Ommegang Brewing, New York
The beginning of a series of beers inspired by the hit television series Game of Thrones, Iron Throne is the adult equivalent of the Nintendo Cereal System of our youth; properly done commercial food tie in!
Iron Throne from Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, New York is a Belgian style pale ale, featuring grains of paradise and lemon zest, and hopped with Styrain Golding and Hallertau Spalter Select.
Phil Leinhart, brewmaster at the brewery makes his case with a heroic speech. "With a Lannister currently on the throne, it made sense to do a delicate, but piercing Golden Blonde Ale with Noble hops. Iron Throne is certainly fair in color and soft in appearance, yet it still possesses a complexity and bite to be on guard for."
Hopworks Galactic Imperial Red - Hopworks Urban Brewery, Oregon
Another beer on the list for retro gamers (hey, we were young and impressionable) is from Portland's own Hopworks Urban Brewery. The organic operation puts out a seasonal Galactic Imperial Red in a battle for your tastebuds... and the fate of the galaxy?
It's described as an American strong ale, with a big malt profile and a huge hop bill of Cascade and NW Centennial to keep the whole package working together. According to the brewery, this beer is available between March and May in both 22oz. bombers and on draft at local bars.
How many quarters will it take to finish this off? Just like at the arcade, it's not over until Game Over.
Also, check out other cool Oregon beers from the Oregon Beer Project.
Vulcan Ale Episode 2013 - Harvest Moon Brewing Company, Montana
Live long and drink good beer. Taking a cue from Romulan Ale, CBS has licensed a limited collectors series of Star Trek themed beer with Vulcan Ale. Brewed in Canada, this red ale is developed to be mild and sessionable; nothing too overpowering for the senses where you'd lose your logical thinking.
Spock might prefer brandy when he drinks (the few times he does), but we'd like to think that a race of logical beings would be pretty darned efficient in making a beer.
Duff Beer - Florida Beer Company, Florida
Homer and his pals down at Moe's Tavern aren't the only ones who will get to drink The Simpson's favorite drink of choice, Duff.
The most iconic animated brew makes it way to our physical reality in the form of a contract brew for Universal Studios upcoming Simpsons theme park expansion. It will be produced by nearby Florida Beer Company, the newly Cape Canaveral based brewery (they were previously in Melbourne) that currently puts out beers such as Swamp Ape and Key West Amber Ale.
Patrons can check it out at Universal, as Moe's tavern officially opened on June 1st.
Farking Wheaton w00tstout - Stone Brewing, California
It's not beer, it's FARK. The long running news-so-strange-it's-actually-real website's founder Drew Curtis is teaming up with all around celebrity nerd Wil Wheaton (also a homebrewer!) and Stone Brewing's Greg Koch to put together a beer packed full of flavor, drinking it will make you yell 'w00t!'
This collaboration is due out in July, so in the meantime, all we know about it is that, according to the brewery, "the beer will be partially barrel-aged with rye & wheat malt and pecans."
Did we leave your favorite nerdy beer off the list? Tell me on Twitter, or leave a comment below.
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In January’s issue of the Washingtonian magazine, Alex Ovechkin received, in my opinion, one of his greatest accolades. He was named, along with 12 others, Washingtonian Of The Year. But it wasn’t for what you might think.
Ovechkin’s a sure-fire hockey hall of famer. He’s also the most accomplished local athlete and broken multiple records this season, including the Russian NHL goal record previously held by former Capital Sergei Fedorov. But it was Ovechkin’s charity work and impact on Special Hockey that was highlighted.
Back in September 2014, Ovechkin hosted a private skate with 60 children with developmental disabilities. It was on that day Ovechkin met Ann Schaab, who confidently asked him out on a date. Ovechkin granted Ann’s request. Months later, the Russian machine won a car at the 2015 All-Star Game for Schaab’s special hockey team, the Washington Ice Dogs.
Ovechkin’s interactions haven’t ended there. He invited Ann to the locker room after the Capitals’ game seven win against the Islanders, which included this massive hug. He walked down the red carpet with Ann before the Caps’ 2015-16 home opener. He hosted another skate with special hockey and presented the organization $30,000 on behalf of the Capitals. He’s even given away tickets to special hockey players as part of Ovechkin’s Crazy 8’s program.
Via the Washingtonian’s article:
Rockville lawyer Dan Goldman’s son plays with the Cheetahs. “Just the chance to go out and play a sport like other kids is huge,” he says. “For my son, it was a connection to a bigger world — he got a high-five from Ovi, then we went to a Caps game, and saw Ovi in the middle of a packed Verizon Center.” Benzi Goldman felt like he’d scored.
That’s what it’s all about.
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The Facebook video is disturbing. A uniformed Minneapolis police officer is seen in the fenced backyard of a home in north Minneapolis.
Two dogs come out to see what’s going on. The officer shoots one dog, then the other.
As of Sunday afternoon, both dogs were alive but their owner, Jennifer LeMay, was facing thousands of dollars in bills for vet care and surgery.
Minneapolis police released a statement Sunday saying an investigation is underway and “at this time, there is no further information we can release.”
The incident happened about 9:15 p.m. Saturday in the 3800 block of Queen Avenue N. The episode was recorded on security video cameras in LeMay’s backyard.
On Sunday evening, a Minneapolis police officer visited LeMay’s home to extend condolences and discuss what happened.
LeMay and her four children own the dogs, Ciroc and Rocko. Both are Staffordshire terriers that the family has had since they were puppies. The dogs are physician-prescribed emotional support animals for LeMay’s two sons, who suffer from severe anxiety.
Police spokesman Corey Schmidt sent a one paragraph statement:
“We are aware of the recent incident involving MPD officers responding to an audible residential burglary alarm and while at this call an MPD officer discharged their firearm, striking two dogs belonging to the homeowner. Anytime an officer discharges their firearm in the line of duty there is an investigation. We are in the process of reviewing the video posted online, as well as the officer’s body camera video.”
LeMay told what she knows of the incident from her daughters and from her security camera video:
She and her family were camping in Wisconsin while a friend watched the dogs at LeMay’s home. LeMay’s daughters, ages 18 and 13, decided to come home early because the 18-year-old was supposed to work an early shift at a fast-food restaurant on Sunday morning.
The daughters arrived at the house at 8:50 p.m. Saturday. One of them accidentally triggered the alarm. LeMay said she phoned the security company and the alarm was deactivated at 8:54 p.m.
At 9:15 p.m., two officers arrived at the home. Neither knocked on the front door, Le May said, but one stayed in front while the other apparently scaled a 7-foot privacy fence to get into the backyard.
The video, with no audio, shows an officer standing in the yard. He approaches the house and goes out of camera range. A moment later, he steps back rapidly, his gun drawn.
Ciroc, a white and brown dog, trots toward the officer and stops about 10 feet away. The dog looks distracted but does not appear to be charging the officer. The officer fires, the dog falls and then scrambles to his feet and runs away. At the same time, a black dog runs into camera range. The officer shoots several times and the dog flees.
The officer appears to assess the scene briefly before he leaves the yard by climbing over the fence.
LeMay said her 13-year-old daughter saw the entire incident from her upstairs bedroom.
“He was wagging his tail,” LeMay said of Ciroc. “My dog wasn’t even moving, lunging toward him or anything.
“My dogs were doing their job on my property,” she said. “We have a right to be safe in our yard.”
After the dogs’ shooting, another officer knocked on the front door. The 18-year-old explained that she’d triggered the alarm and that it had been deactivated.
The family didn’t instantly take the dogs to the emergency vet because police told the family that “animal control” would be there in minutes to access the dogs’ medical needs. No one showed up, LeMay said.
When Lt. Derrick Barnes came to the house Sunday evening, he was “as genuine and compassionate as he could be, without overstepping his boundaries,” LeMay said.
Both dogs went to the emergency vet Saturday night. Ciroc was shot in the jaw, Rocko in the side, face and shoulder. So far, LeMay has paid $900 for Ciroc and brought him home; he still needs $5,000 to $7,000 worth of surgery at the University of Minnesota, she said. Rocko came home Sunday night. A GoFundMe page was established to help LeMay pay her vet bills.
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Pat Pheifer • 612-673-7252Please leave feedback on the overall quality and stability of the public test for update 0.6.15 here. Should your feedback concern the following topics, please leave your feedback in the dedicated thread. Operation Nagai New Campaign: "The Battle of the North Cape" Collection "New Year" New Campaign: "New Year's Celebration" Ship Horn Bugs Main Features: Operation Nagai A new operation for Tier VII ships has been added to the game. Special feature: You can complete the operation in two ways Defend the landing troops until their landing is successfully completed Destroy all enemy combat units. New Port Update 0.6.15 introduces a new port named 'Hamburg' that will be selected by default for all players when the update is released. The Port model was created on the basis of historical images. New Campaigns and Collections "The Battle of the North Cape", is dedicated to the same-name historical battle. Each mission of this campaign relates to a certain stage of said battle. The second campaign is about the New Year celebration. A collection inspired by the Battle of the North Cape for finishing the both campaigns. This will include ship elements, photographs, badges and coats of arms. The missions’ completion criteria will be much easier during the Public Test, we are looking for feedback on the mechanic rather than the mission criteria. New Year Ship Horns On the occasion of the forthcoming holiday, all the ships in the game will be able to give special New Year sound signals. Every time you start giving a sound signal, you spend its time resource (that is 4 seconds long). This time resource will begin restoring 15 seconds after you used the horn for the last time.Us, Today
website | bandcamp | facebook
Us, Today is a trio (drums, guitar, vibraphone/keyboard) based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Their style is best described as an avant-garde post-rock with a heavy emphasis on experimentation.
It all began with a conversation about Annie Clark…
Soon after, Joel and Kristin began meeting weekly in a basement, exchanging ideas, talking about what they’d always wanted to do but never been able to in a band. THAT was what they should play. After a few months of meetings, ideas became songs. “I think i know a drummer that would be into this.”, says Kristin. Jeff shows up to the basement, plays through a few tunes, and asks when “we” were practicing next. The duo is now officially a trio. The name was unintentional and agreed upon immediately.
Us is who we are. Today is most important.
Lovely Socialite
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Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps is a Madison-based experimental jazz/rock group. Socialite vacillates between tightly composed pieces and entirely free improvisation, combining aesthetics of modern jazz, hip-hop, and contemporary classical music. Instrumentation includes Trombone, Bass, Cello, Pipa, Vibraphone, and Drums (all amplified and effected with foot pedals and computers).7 Things You Can Learn From WeChat Product Development Casper Sermsuksan Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 31, 2017 We tend to think of Chinese companies as imitators rather than innovators, but is this fair? App developers and designers may look at other apps for inspiration on new features, but most only look to well-known apps like Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. Take Messenger for example. We got excited about its Snapchat-like Messenger Day, Venmo-like Payments, ride-requesting Transportation, and Event Reminder. These are useful features, they solve our day-to-day problems and make our life easier.
But there are numerous instances where Chinese companies have stolen a march on their Silicon Valley counterparts with the introduction of innovative new products. Alibaba’s Taobao is a competitor to eBay and launched Aliwangwang, an instant communication tool for buyers and sellers to interact in 2003. Chinese video-streaming platform YY.com nailed the concept of YouTube stars years ago by having young Chinese people pose, chat and sing in front of video cameras. One of the most innovative Chinese apps is WeChat, and for a long time it’s had a number of the features that Messenger has just recently launched. It has 889 million monthly active users, according to parent company Tencent. Its users spend an average of over 50+ minutes inside the app — about the same as the amount of time a user spends on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. It has changed the way Chinese people communicate and socialize online, and it has also changed the way they pay each other and pay for their groceries. Here are seven lessons product developers and designers can learn from WeChat product development: 1. Observe how products are used in ways you didn’t anticipate, and take advantage of those opportunities Enterprise WeChat (WeChat for Work) While not originally intended as a tool for professional communication, the platform has evolved to be the main communication channel for a lot of businesses. The reason behind this? The email adoption rate in China is not high. According to China Network Information Center, only 44% of Chinese internet users use an email application. The Chinese have found their own way to use the messaging platform. In China, work files are often shared on a work group chat, especially in the desktop version of WeChat. It is also very common to conduct business online with Chinese partners and clients via WeChat, in the same way that we might use Skype. Early last year, Enterprise WeChat (Qiye Weixin) was launched to target large companies. 2. Solve your own problems
WeChat Mobile Payment
WeChat has had a mobile payment option since August 2013. Mobile payments are popular in China, with the total number of people using mobile payments in China expected to hit 250 million, around 20% of its massive population by the end of 2017. This number is equivalent to about 80% of the US population. While Apple Pay only allows you to connect to your credit or debit cards to use its mobile payment, you don’t have to connect your WeChat Pay account to anything. Users can just start receiving money, and then pay for things with these amounts. They can also connect their bank accounts to WeChat and transfer money to each other just like Venmo, Snapcash or Payments on Messenger. Cash culture is prevalent in China as the Chinese in general have low credit scores and most people don’t have credit cards. The introduction of WeChat Pay and its barcode payments sidesteps this issue. Another plus of WeChat? It doesn’t matter if one is an iPhone user or Android user. 3. Extend the success of a feature by integrating with other companies WeChat Wallet + Third Party Integration The fast adoption rate of mobile payments gives a company like WeChat the opportunity to integrate its services with other companies. Chinese users have been able to book a taxi with ride-sharing and taxi-hailing service Didi since January 2014. Facebook made the same move two years later when it launched a feature to request Uber or Lyft. WeChat users can also buy movie tickets in advance and online, a service similar to US movie ticketing service Fandango. Let’s also not forget JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce site. The list goes on — this is Uber (and Lyft), Fandango, Amazon, Venmo and many more in one central app. 4. Attach a new product or feature to the things that people already do helps it go viral Online Red Envelope The virality of the red envelope feature occurred during Chinese New Year, when it is a tradition that people give each other a red packet (hong bao) containing money. WeChat took this tradition digital in 2014, with the release of its Red Packet delivery as an extension of its mobile payment. Users select how many red packets they want to send, they specify the amount, and write a personal note. WeChat also made this feature more interactive and fun with the option to randomize the amount. After the sender decides how much to put in the pool, the app determines how much each receiver gets as they open the envelope. This year over 14.2 billion red packets were sent during Chinese New Year. Maybe Messenger will do something innovative with Thanksgiving? 5. Be a platform other companies can benefit from, and you will get valuable insights
Official Accounts
In 2012, WeChat introduced the concept of official accounts for brands, where companies and individuals can create an official account to use for social media outreach AND for selling their product/service. From dining at Chef Yannick’s home to ordering food online, WeChat has transformed beyond simple texting. It allows businesses to communicate directly to their customers. For example, KFC has its virtual store and its entire menu on WeChat so users can order, pay and get food delivered in just a few clicks. It is just like UberEats (started August 2014) inside WeChat. All these activities — big or small — are very valuable to WeChat because it collects an immense amount of data on users. Tencent might know more about an individual than Google does. 6. Think about how you can incorporate your other products into your app
News ReadingThe calendar has finally flipped to 2017, but we all started thinking about the 2017 baseball season long ago.
Which teams will surprise? Which teams will disappoint? Which youngsters will, to use overused words, “break out” in 2017? Alex Reyes is almost certainly going to be a star for the Cardinals in 2016. Same with Andrew Benintendi (Red Sox) and Dansby Swanson (Braves) and Yoan Moncada (White Sox). But we’re not going to talk about those youngsters here, though, because they all still own their “rookie” status for 2017.
No, we’re going to talk about another crop of rising stars who could very well wind up making their first All-Star teams soon. These guys have big-league experience but have yet to experience full-season success in the majors, and the combination of talent and opportunity should give them that shot in 2017. Think about what guys like Adam Duvall (from eight total career homers to 33 last year) and Jonathan Villar — whom improved from a career-high 18 stolen bases to NL-best 62 — did in 2016, for the Reds and Brewers, respectively.
MORE: SN under-25 crop poised to be the next baseball legends
On to the list …
CF Byron Buxton, Twins
Sure, Buxton often looked a bit overwhelmed in the majors, but there’s a reason he was considered baseball’s best prospect for so long. In his final month of 2016, Buxton flashed that incredible talent, swatting nine homers, scoring 24 times, driving in 22 and posting a 1.011 OPS in 29 games. He’ll still be just 23 in 2017, with 138 big-league games of experience under his belt.
3B Alex Bregman, Astros
The 2015 first-round pick out of LSU rolled through Houston’s farm system, but his introduction to the majors must have felt like the coldest of cold showers — Bregman was just 2 for 38 in his first 10 contests for the Astros. Yikes, eh? Well, he figured it out quickly enough. In his final 39 games, Bregman hit.313 with eight homers and a.931 OPS.
OF Kyle Schwarber, Cubs
Hopefully, Schwarber stays healthy and we finally get to see what kind of numbers this guy’s capable of producing over a full season. It’s almost impossible for him to live up to the hype after he batted.412 in the World Series, but the Cubs are counting on a big season for the big lefty. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if he hits 30 homers with an on-base percentage near or above.380.
MORE: Relive the Cubs' World Series victory in these must-see images
SP Jameson Taillon, Pirates
The big right-hander made 18 starts last year, but with a pretty elite crop of rookies in the NL, Taillon didn’t receive a single vote in the Rookie of the Year race despite his 3.38 ERA and outstanding 5.0 K/BB ratio. Don’t be surprised if the former No. 2 overall pick (in the 2010 draft) makes up for that slight by earning an All-Star nod in 2017.
SP Julio Urias, Dodgers
No sugar-coating here: Urias’ first two big-league starts were rough. He didn’t make it out of the third inning in his debut, then gave up three dingers in his second outing. But, y’know, he was just 19 years old and he spent the rest of the season showing why he was considered baseball’s best pitching prospect. In his final 16 games (13 starts), the lefty fashioned a 2.73 ERA and struck out 77 in 69 1/3 innings while working with tight pitch limits.
LF David Dahl, Rockies
The 10th overall pick of the 2012 draft, Dahl hit.315 with seven homers and five stolen bases in his 63-game debut with the Rockies in 2016. His Coors Field numbers were outstanding, but the left-handed hitter still batted.291 with four homers an.833 OPS on the road. He’s next in the long line of feared Rockies hitters.
SP Jose Berrios, Twins
Forget about that ugly 8.02 ERA last year. Berrios has the stuff to be an All-Star pitcher in the bigs, and with an offseason to digest 2016’s whirlwind, he should be fine in 2017 if he finds the control that often eluded him in his rookie year. The right-hander doesn’t even turn 23 until late May.
MORE: Which team makes the most sense for Brian Dozier?
3B Ryon Healy, A’s
Healy’s rookie year was a bright spot in an otherwise frustrating season in Oakland. The 6-5 right-handed hitter joined the club after the All-Star break and proceeded to hit like he’d been in the majors for years; Healy batted.305 with 13 homers and an.861 OPS in 72 games. If he keeps that up this season, maybe folks outside the Bay Area will actually notice this rising star.
1B/DH Joey Gallo, Rangers
Yes, it feels like we’ve been waiting forever for this slugger — he has two seasons of at least 40 homers in the minors — to make his mark in the big leagues, and this just might be his sink-or-swim season. He’ll get an opportunity to earn at-bats in the majors in 2017, at either first base or designated hitter, but he has to show a better ability to make contact. In 25 at-bats with the Rangers last year, he struck out 19 times.This year, I took a hint from the Nobel committee and picked up Svetlana Alexievich’s oral histories of life in the Soviet Union. “Voices from Chernobyl” and “Boys in Zinc” were like nothing I’ve ever read, and they affected me in ways I find hard to describe. Alexievich’s interviews expanded my sense of what it’s possible to endure; they also made me feel the extreme narrowness of my own experiences and perceptions. They convinced me that I know nothing about people—that there are zones of emotion and thought as far from my mind as the moon is from the Earth. A mother from near Chernobyl, whose daughter was born with birth defects, asks, “Why won’t what happens to butterflies ever happen to her?” A man who’s gone back to live in the irradiated zone—to wander, alone, in a religious trance, as a kind of holy fool—explains his decision by saying, “The life of man is like grass: it blossoms, dries out, and then goes into the fire.”
I also found myself hypnotized by Leena Krohn, a Finnish writer whose collected stories and novels, rendered into English by many different translators, have just been published as a single volume, “Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction.” Broadly speaking, Krohn is a speculative writer; one of the novels in the collection, for example, consists of thirty letters written from an insect city. (“It is summer and one can look at the flowers face to face.”) Krohn writes like a fantastical Lydia Davis, in short chapters the length of prose poems. Her characters often have a noirish toughness; one, explaining her approach to philosophy, says that when she asks an existential question, “life answers. It is generally a long and thorough answer.”
Looking back, I realize that my favorite books this year were those that drew me away from the ordinary social world and into very different spaces. I don’t know why that was the dominant theme, but I know that these books transported me the furthest.
—Joshua Rothman
I only recently got around to reading Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption”—it was published last year—but in many ways 2015 was the right moment to pick it up. Our criminal-justice system received more attention this year than in a very long time. The number of police-violence videos ricocheting around the Internet spiked, and we learned countless names of people who’d lost their lives after encounters with law enforcement: Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald. But video footage tells only a sliver of the story of how broken our criminal-justice system is; Stevenson’s first-person account of his years representing poor people on death row in Alabama and elsewhere provides a fuller picture. I remember reading his book late at night, haunted, as Stevenson recounted what it was like to talk to a client after failing to stop his execution, knowing the man would soon be put to death. At times, I felt as if I were reading a book from another era, or at least wishing the injustices Stevenson described were a thing of the past. But Stevenson comes by his stories—and his insights—through many years spent representing the poorest and most powerless, and it’s this firsthand knowledge that makes his book so powerful, and so necessary.
—Jennifer Gonnerman
Two collections of stories mopped the floor with me this year. “A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me,” by David Gates, is brutal, viciously intelligent, and full of reckless, difficult love for its characters. These are gripping, sophisticated, gasp-inducing stories by the author of “Jernigan,” one of the angriest and most sorrowful novels around. “The Visiting Privilege,” by Joy Williams, is hard and bleak and somehow still bitingly funny, a kind of nihilistic long-form standup-comedy routine. Except you should sit down for it, and probably keep implements of self-harm out of reach.
Further in the category of Why Bother, Especially Since We Will All Die Soon is “The Sixth Extinction,” by the New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert, which reveals that the fate of civilization is a thin band of dust. Kolbert marshals staggering research to argue that the end isn’t nigh—it’s now.
In the category of novels unlike anything I’ve read before, satirical and moving and weird, there were three books that ambushed me and gave me faith. Miranda July’s “The First Bad Man,” Rachel B. Glaser’s “Paulina & Fran,” and Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout.”
“The Bed Moved,” a début collection of stories by Rebecca Schiff, won’t be out until April, but I’d like to watch the faces of people reading it as they shift between awe and admiration and shock. This writer is freaking good.
Finally, rumor has it that George Saunders is working on a novel. If only the N.S.A. had its priorities straight and could leak a few pages. I would give up a few personal liberties to get an early look.
—Ben Marcus
Dale Russakoff’s “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?” (part of which ran in this magazine) is enraging, heartbreaking, galvanizing. Russakoff, a veteran Washington Post reporter, chronicles the ambitious, misbegotten effort to reinvent public education in the city of Newark, sparked by a one-hundred-million-dollar donation from one celebrated power player—Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook—into the custody of two others, Cory Booker, then the charismatic mayor of the city, and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. Before the Zuckerberg-funded intervention, Newark’s schools were a picture of dysfunction and despair: more than half of the city’s children were failing to meet the expected standards, some failing drastically. The hope—the prize—was that, by applying the kind of ingenuity and resources readily available in the tech world to the demoralized, dilapidated educational institutions of Newark, a radical transformation could be executed upon the lives of the city’s most vulnerable: its children. It is no spoiler to reveal that arrogance, cowardice, and politics as usual prevail: by the end of the book, with Zuckerberg’s money spent, the city’s schools are still failing their children. Newark was to serve as a model for educational reform; instead, it stands as a signal example of reform’s misapplication. Russakoff’s book is, however, a model of its own form: her reporting is thorough, clear-eyed, and always compassionate. The heroes of her book are not crusading politicians or confident philanthropists but the teachers who dedicate themselves so thoroughly to their young charges, and those children and parents who struggle so valiantly to seize that which should be their right, not a prize to be won against the odds—an education.
Michel Houellebecq’s satirical novel “Submission” arrived with appalling timeliness; its publication in France, in January, coincided with the Charlie Hebdo massacre, while its American publication came less than a month before the Paris attacks, in November. Houellebecq imagines an Islamic France of the near future—the rationalist, secularist nation conquered not by radicals and their terrorist agents but by Muslim moderates. Houellebecq’s insight is to suggest how surprisingly congenial the new religious dictates prove to be for many among the Parisian intellectuals: there are comfortable salaries subsidized by the Gulf States and multiple compliant young wives for the male professors. The book is dark, and funny, moving, and vile; it should be read not for the gloss it provides on the headlines but for the light it sheds on the culture that gave rise to them.
—Rebecca Mead
For me, the best book of 2015 was Kent Russell’s essay collection “I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son,” an amalgamation of reported pieces and interstitial vignettes that form a skewering, breath-catching, wildly smart evocation of contemporary masculinity. Russell, who is not yet thirty, writes about hockey enforcers, a childhood buddy serving in Afghanistan, Juggalos, a man who lives alone on a desert island, Amish baseball players, and, most of all, his father, an irascible wit who serves as both source and foil. If the essay is an interrogation |
the ground," on the basis of Santa "always having been white in the Bible," and, "No, I refuse to believe that they went this far in trying to cater to the minorities, I thought the company had some backbone but I guess I was wrong."
The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate never said these things. We rated the claim Pants On Fire!
If you look closely enough, Politicono.com admits it makes things up. The site calls itself a "hybrid news/satire platform," taking real news hooks and building fake stories on top of them.
Every article has a "show facts" button to illuminate which parts of the story are real and those that are fabricated. Only the first paragraph about the mall hiring an African-American Santa Claus is real. (Palin was not too pleased about the parody.)
Politicono.com is not alone. It is part of an entire family of similar websites under the Newslo.com umbrella. Similar urls share reports like this one, including websites like Politicalo.com, Politicot.com, Religionlo.com and Politicops.com.
These are all registered to an administrator named Eli Sompo, who told us he creates sites for clients, but wouldn’t give us much more information than that. Newslo.com is registered in Thessaloniki, Greece, but most of the sister sites belong to an address in Jerusalem.
Being able to identify Sompo as the administrator is an exception, because learning who owns and operates these websites can be exasperatingly difficult. We can look up the owner of any website, but if the buyer has used a proxy service of some kind to buy the domain, there are precious few details about the true owner, or even from which country the site is operated.
That is especially true in the case of our next couple of categories.
News imposter sites
The website CNNews3.com ran this fake story about children being infected with HIV by tainted bananas.
Adding to the fog of fake news online, several websites appear to try to confuse readers into thinking they are the online outlets of traditional or mainstream media sources.
These sites attempt to trick readers into thinking they are newspapers or radio or television stations. Like many other fake news sites, it’s very difficult to see who owns them, thanks to private registrations.
We did see that some sites were based in far-flung global locations like Macedonia and Chile. But most imposters we’ve found so far have set up shop anonymously through domain services like GoDaddy.com.
One such site, CNNews3.com, not only used a web address similar to CNN, but its graphics also deliberately looked almost the same.
The website ran a story on Feb. 6, 2017, that carried the headline, "HIV virus detected in Walmart bananas after 10 year old boy contracts the virus." (The website was recently taken down, but there's an archived version of the story here.)
For the record, HIV can’t survive outside the human body, so it’s not possible for the virus to live in a fruit like a banana. The CNNews3.com story tries to cast doubt on this by noting researchers were puzzled by the banana-borne infections.
We learned this story was a variation of other fake stories of disease-ridden fruit, and this one sprung from a Facebook user posting photos of a malady called mokillo. Mokillo is more colorfully known as finger-tip rot, and can be a problem for banana growers. The disease doesn’t harm humans, but it does require banana growers to disinfect farming equipment.
We rated that statement Pants On Fire!
But while that story looked to instill fear to generate shares and clicks, some imposter websites appear to bank more on readers zeroing in on things they want to hear more about.
We found an entire family of sites that created different versions of posts keyed to town names, apparently to generate advertising revenue. These sites have official-sounding names like 16WMPO.com, KY12News.com, Local31News.com and more, posting various versions of stories that falsely claim an event has happened.
These posts, with only slight variations in details, say a celebrity’s car broke down in a particular place, that a celebrity is moving to a certain town or, say, that the next Star Wars movie is being filmed nearby.
The bulk of fake news websites, however, end up peddling their wares in a much more insidious manner.
Fake news sites
A fake news story that says former First Lady Michelle Obama's mother Marian Robinson was charged with fraud and grand larceny has appeared on several websites, including this example from FlashNewsCorner.com.
There's little consistency of content or style among fake news sites — the common thread appears to be that they distribute fabricated content, but the reasons aren’t always apparent.
We have found that almost all of them share or reblog a good deal of content from other sites, either with or without attribution, and much of it is from the sites in the first two categories. They also can potentially create their own false stories, or distribute larger conspiracy theories.
These sites can be based anywhere. While many of them mask their registry information, we’ve found outlets based across the United States, but also in Canada, Georgia, Ghana, Sri Lanka and, as previously mentioned, Macedonia — a country where teenagers turned fake news into a regular cottage industry during the 2016 election.
One website we’ve written about was UndergroundNewsReport.com, a fake news site that was started as a joke by an American living in Costa Rica. James McDaniel of Clearwater, Fla., wanted to fool Donald Trump’s supporters, so he attempted to cook up the most outrageous manufactured headlines he could think up.
Instead of fading away into obscurity, the site gained 1 million views in less than two weeks. McDaniel eventually shut the site down once a fake story about Whoopi Goldberg insulting the wife of a slain Navy SEAL drew too much ire from readers who were fooled.
Another prime example of a story that spread across fake news sites was one that said "first grandma" Marian Robinson will be getting a $160,000 annual pension after President Barack Obama and his family moved out of the White House.
Bloggers on the websites USPostman.com and ENHLive.com both posted articles around December 2016 that said Robinson will get paid the money for "services rendered as full-time/in-home caregiver" for watching granddaughters Sasha and Malia.
Of course, there are no such provisions for a first grandmother, and Robinson received nothing. We rated it Pants On Fire!
The original story appeared on BostonTribune.com, a parody site that no longer appears to be working, and found its way to other sites.
The migration shows how joke stories can cause harm even if they are originally labeled as fabricated. Other websites steal them to grind out page views, omitting indications the stories are made up.
Most of these sites join services like Content.ad or RevContent.com that allow them to post a collection of provocative ads to make money off clicks. All the sites really need is content to keep the page views rolling in. While elaborate conspiracy theories and mindless clickbait show up on the pages, completely made up posts work just as well.
A bogus story like the one concerning Robinson highlighted several ingredients essential to making a fake news story draw readers and go viral: Outrageous claims, partisan rancor, government mechanisms, tax money and the president’s family (President Barack Obama, in this case).
Fake news doesn’t easily die, either, instead morphing into new stories and propagating its own lies.
Many websites later ran a follow-up about Robinson originally posted on TheLastLineOfDefense.org, an outlet that started as an elaborate ruse in which liberals trolled conservatives with wild, made-up posts looking to inflame the political right.
Fake news sites have flocked to TheLastLineOfDefense.org, appropriating its stories to serve as repurposed content. One story said Robinson was arrested and charged with larceny and fraud for attempting to collect the mythical pension propagated by BostonTribune.com.
That story also was made up, for the record.
Sites that contain some fake news
A 2016 post on UrbanImageMagazine.com using this image had been shared on Facebook more than 178,000 times, but is based on a fake news story.
Finally, some websites appear to get duped like the rest of us.
We have checked statements from sites that appear to carry real content, but contained one or more fake news stories. We don’t know whether this is intentional or accidental, but it happens.
One statement we checked was a Feb. 15, 2016, post on UrbanImageMagazine.com, a lifestyle and culture website, that declared that "300,000 pounds of rat meat sold as chicken wings across America." We found other instances of the same story elsewhere, too.
The fake story said the Food and Drug Administration was issuing a warning about rodents being sold as chicken wings after several shipping containers of rat meat were impounded coming into San Francisco from China. The rat meat was allegedly filtering into the food system to deal with a shortage of poultry leading up to the Super Bowl.
We rated the statement Pants On Fire! UrbanImageMagazine.com later told us they "had no idea" the story was fake.
The story actually came from WorldNewsDailyReport.net, a known peddler of fake articles. The site admits as much in its disclaimer, referring to "the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content."
Sometimes it’s not even the editors of a site that are reposting the fake stuff. Outlets with user-generated content often fall victim, as well.
An example is a post dated Dec. 8, 2015, headlined "Jimmy Carter: ‘Medical marijuana cured my cancer,’ " from CannaSOS.com. The site says it is a social media platform where "cannabis enthusiasts" can discuss information related to marijuana.
The story said Carter credited marijuana for curing his cancer, but the fake story appears to have originated from a Dec. 7, 2015, post on a site called SatiraTribune.com. The post even credited the opening line from The Toyes’ 1983 weed anthem "Smoke Two Joints" to Carter.
There’s no disclaimer on the site, but their Facebook page notes that SatiraTribune.com publishes "satirical and futuristic news."
We rated this one Pants On Fire!
We had asked CannaSOS.com if they had been aware the story was fiction. An administrator eventually told us that the post was a reader submission, and they were aware it was fake.
But as of this writing, both the CannaSOS.com and UrbanImageMagazine.com posts are still online.
Ryann Welch contributed to researching this report.(Reuters) - The threat to its survival may have passed but the euro zone faces electoral and economic crosswinds this year which could push it to break policy taboos while challenging its ability to do so.
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi speaks during the monthly ECB news conference in Frankfurt February 6, 2014. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski
The threat of deflation is stalking the currency area and increasing pressure on the European Central bank to act.
Anti-euro parties look set to perform well at elections to the European parliament in May and could hamper the bloc’s ability to enact measures to bind its member states together more closely.
Euro zone leaders are still struggling to generate solid economic growth that can eat away at unemployment rates running at 25 percent and more in the hardest hit countries, and efforts to create a banking union to prevent a future financial crisis are widely viewed as having fallen short.
The bloc will also try to get Portugal and Greece back on their feet after Ireland successfully exited its EU/IMF bailout. Athens is likely to need more help to do so.
Italy remains a potential flashpoint. Efforts to reform its electoral law to allow for a more stable government in future, one that can push through much-needed economic reforms, will be critical for it and the euro zone this year.
French President Francois Hollande’s ability to push through his own labour and pension reforms in the face of rock-bottom popularity ratings is also a focus.
Then there is the question of Britain’s place in the EU. Prime Minister David Cameron has promised an in-out referendum in 2017 and is seeking to renegotiate Britain’s terms of membership first. There is little sign that his EU partners are willing to play ball.
All this and more will be addressed at the annual Reuters euro zone summit, from February 10-13, which features a host of finance ministers, prime ministers, central bankers and Brussels-based policymakers.
The latest threat to the euro zone is the evaporation of inflation. Japan’s lost decade is a vivid reminder of what could be at stake and that the only cure may be printing money, a difficult pill for the ECB to swallow.
The ECB left rates at a record low 0.25 percent last week but President Mario Draghi signalled that its next meeting in March might be a different matter. By then, it will have fresh forecasts for growth and inflation and if they are lowered, action could follow.
Draghi insists deflation is not in prospect but if the latest bout of emerging market turmoil persists, that could well push the euro higher and exert further downward pressure on prices.
“More aggressive actions aimed at addressing deflationary risks may eventually come. But this would entail a shift in the ECB’s macroeconomic outlook,” said Huw Pill, chief European economist at Goldman Sachs. “Such a shift requires time, both to accumulate evidence and to build consensus around a new view.”
ELECTORAL TEST
High unemployment, austerity fatigue and paltry growth offer the perfect backdrop for fringe parties to prosper at the EU elections in May.
Some pundits predict a group of anti-euro parties including the National Front in France, Britain’s UKIP and the Dutch Freedom Party, along with Greece’s anti-austerity party Syriza, could capture 20 percent or more of the seats.
That could pressure the European Union’s main party groups to tack right and challenge Europe’s ability to integrate further, given new powers the parliament will have to rule on the majority of EU legislation.
The electoral arithmetic may well turn out to be different and it is true that these parties disagree on much more than they agree. But the experience of political gridlock in the United States looms large.
“Just think of how the Tea Party has made governance difficult in the U.S.,” Axel Weber, UBS chairman and former Bundesbank president, told the Davos forum late last month.
One of the fringe parties that could benefit is Britain’s UKIP which wants nothing less than EU withdrawal, a view that chimes with some in Cameron’s ruling Conservative party.
Related Coverage Factbox: Speakers at Reuters euro zone summit
The British government is intent on opting out of parts of its EU obligations and then have a case to stay in. Only with that can Cameron hope to unite his party behind him - and maybe not even then.
When the euro debt crisis was raging, there was an acceptance that the EU Treaty might need to be changed to build in new bulwarks to keep the bloc together. Within that process, London spied an opportunity to obtain concessions of its own.
But now the appetite for complex treaty renegotiation has faded. French President Francois Hollande told Cameron bluntly last month that it was no longer a priority.In this week’s episode of “Political Gabfest,” a political-commentary podcast released by Slate, a pro-Hillary guest host unleashes a several minute long criticism of the Clinton Foundation and its:
“performance of very public charity.”
To hear Adam Davidson, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, describe a Clinton Foundation event and his take on the organization’s charitable work, begin listening at the 24:55 minute mark in the audio below.
“I’ve spent a decent amount of time at the Clinton Global Initiative,” Davidson begins:
“I sort of fell into this thing, which — what I’m about to say means I’m probably going to fall out of this thing.”
Davidson, who has “spent a lot of time reporting in Haiti,” often moderates the organization’s annual Haiti panel and attends its sessions and events:
“And there is a real creepy vibe, to me, personally, at the Clinton Global Initiative. “It seems, to me, that it is all about buying access. It is incredibly expensive just to go to the thing … and there are sort-of these explicit ways in which you get access. You pay more money to get more access to political leaders and to really rich people and to big corporate leaders. “There’s this kinda creepy theatre that happens where you have the CEO of Coca-Cola or IBM or whatever or GE up there with President Clinton and they’re just bathing each other in love over how generous and wonderful they are and how much they care about the world and all these earnest people applauding and thrilled.”
Even their charitable work is mediocre, comments Davidson. “If you talk to development professionals,” he said, “it is not in the top tier:”
“I have seen their work in Haiti up close in person. There are some very good people who work there, but they are — Haiti is one of their singular focuses. It is a very small country. They have not had a major impact on Haiti. “It’s more the performance of very public charity, not the actual intervention in deep and meaningful ways.”
Celebrities, Davidson suggests, come with the price of admission:
“And then every hour or so they parade — Angelina Jolie is hustled through a room and she doesn’t stop to talk to anyone or hang out but you get to say that you were with Angelina Jolie that morning. “It just feels like the worst version of an elite selling access to the aspirational, creating this theatre of doing good, but it’s all about something else. It really feels gross.”
Later, Davidson distinguishes between the Clinton Foundation — which aims to connect donors and advise them on how to best spend their resources — and the Clinton Global Initiative, an arm of the foundation that is an annual conference of world leaders and influencers.
Davidson moderated panels for the Clinton Global Initiative and its organizers, he said, “would really want a good event.” “They wanted a good hour of conversation where people disagree.”
But the Clinton Foundation is, by contrast:
“Just a bunch of people congratulating each other on how awesome they are. “And here’s a head of state of a foreign government who needs to be on that panel even though they literally have nothing to say but we promised him a slot. “Yes! It’s disgusting.”
Does any of this change Davidson’s opinion about Clinton?
“Obviously, I fully support Hillary Clinton,” he said in the podcast few minutes later, after calling the Democratic presidential nominee “gross” on the issue of rent-seeking, the economic term for when a company or individual lobbies a government for special benefits.
“I can’t wait to vote for her,” Davidson said. “If I had time I’d go move to Missouri or Ohio or somewhere so my vote could actually count.”NEW YORK -- When the phone rang, Zack Greinke let it go -- he didn't recognize the number. Only after listening to the voice mail did he call back and find out he'd won the American League Cy Young Award.
The Kansas City Royals ace easily beat out Felix Hernandez for the honor Tuesday after a spectacular season short on wins but long on domination. Winning left the extremely shy Greinke with mixed emotions.
"Back in Orlando, I haven't really got a whole lot of attention from people, which has been nice," he said. "So I hope it doesn't get that way, where everyone is like, 'Oh, hey, Zack, hi.'"
He'd prefer to remain anonymous when he's not on the mound. He's not looking forward to being introduced at banquets as "Cy Young Award winner Zack Greinke" for the rest of his life.
"In that way, it's kind of like a negative for me," he said.
It's been quite a turnaround for Greinke, who led the AL in losses in 2005 and quit baseball for six weeks the following year after being diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder.
Greinke went 16-8 with a major league-low 2.16 ERA this season and received 25 of 28 first-place votes and three seconds for 134 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Hernandez, 19-5 with a 2.49 ERA for the Seattle Mariners, drew two firsts, 23 seconds and one third for 80 points.
"I thought it was going to be real close between the two of us," Greinke said.
Detroit's Justin Verlander was third with the remaining first-place vote and 14 points, followed by the Yankees' CC Sabathia (13) and Toronto's Roy Halladay (11).
"Greinke deserved it. Before the season was over, I said my vote was for him," Hernandez said in Venezuela.
"This has taught me that I need to be perfect, I will prepare myself to be stronger next season. I will need a superb year because just a good one, it's not enough," he said.
The NL winner will be announced Thursday.
Despite what he's overcome, Greinke doesn't view himself as a role model.
"I really don't like having a bunch of attention, so even if I did see myself in that light, I don't do anything about it," he said. "I'm real uncomfortable doing stuff like that, to be around people and doing stuff like that," he said.WWDC 2017 Update: Significant Updates to Location Permissions Coming With iOS 11
John Coombs Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 8, 2017
At WWDC today, Apple provided some updates that have significant implications for developers and app publishers working with location-based marketing and attribution. These changes fundamentally alter the way iOS developers and app publishers will be able to access differing levels of location permissions for their mobile apps.
This is how ‘Request Always’ appears in iOS 10
Until these recent updates (which will be coming with iOS 11 in September 2017), app publishers had the option of requesting a user to opt-in to location permissions as ‘always’, where the app publisher always has access to a user’s location or ‘when in use’, where an app publisher only has visibility to a user’s location when the app is open, or running in the foreground. Developers could choose which permission set they wanted to request and were not obligated to offer both.
This meant that publishers could effectively force users into granting ‘always’ permissions by not providing the option of ‘when in use’, rendering apps that rely on location (Uber, Lyft) effectively useless without the ‘always’ permission level.
In addition to the Uber-style use case, ‘always on’ permissions are a requisite to delivering beacon and geo-fence based push notifications. These types of notifications essentially ‘wake’ a sleeping app when it is in the background, prompting the user to open the app with a notification when they come in range of a beacon, or enter a geofence that the app is monitoring for in the background. Without the ‘always on’ permission level, location-based notifications aren’t possible.
What’s Coming With iOS 11
If you request ‘always on’ with these new location-permission rules, users will automatically be given all three options when they open an app requesting location for the first time. Unlike in previous iOS versions where developers could choose which permissions they wanted to request, all options must appear. These mandatory location permission options are: Never, When in Use, and Always. This forces app publishers in to providing users with all choices, rather than just the always-or-nothing scenario described above.This is a very interesting and worthwhile project, and I'll contribute my initial thoughts in an attempt to encourage and inspire you to do more (and share code if possible, sounds fun to tinker with).
\*... Simple exposition of public data has always been a powerful tool of Marxists and the workers' movement. Malcolm X once said that in our revolutionary epoch, "truth is on the side of the oppressed" - of course this is not a rigid formula but an expression of the material truth that information is a powerful weapon for the workers. This is a part of the method that produced works like Marx's Capital Lenin's Imperialism, and this outstanding marxist analysis of public facts *...
\* (but of course old debates about the soviet union shouldn't be at issue when opposing fascism - I propose a united front among any communist/socialist or anti-fascist users!)
Presentation issues
I think exposing this data not in the fashion you did in your post (which I understand, comes from the urge to just 'export something' to show a proof of concept, and which no doubt carries with it lots of informal, not-noted post-checking or hand-tuning), but in a more open fashion which potentially allows users themselves to explore the connections, would have the most impact as compared to simply publishing
Method of Analysis
In the end, it may be quite difficult, unless using stylographic analysis of text, to even demonstrate the link between well-separated sock-puppets or alts, especially since we don't have access to server logs potentially showing the IP address of the connections or activities associated with the accounts.
More in line with this discussion of analyzing comment text, I think it would be worthwhile to even include text analysis of comments into the deeper profile of a given mod or prominent user. It should be possible to write some basic regular expressions (later, more complex tests) which could match enough comments that would, if properly presented, demonstrate to a reasonable reader the character of the mod or prominent user in question. This would obviously be better at detecting a sexist or racist, a fascist perhaps, than detecting a right-wing free market libertarian. But then subreddit association would help with this.
Reflecting on the Problem in a Wider Sense
The open nature of reddit comments and history and activity tends to allow a bare minimum of democratic accountability in a certain sense, but this is easily circumvented as we know. Issues clearly arise due to the mod system's structure itself at times (I'm thinking vaguely of the actual hierarchies of ACLs on various parts of the subreddit, the lack of any election system, and other issues). This is also combined with the potential for mod status to simply be wielded in an oppressive manner, even when this is not a structurally-necessitated symptom of the mod system itself.
We could say the reactionary ideological tendencies on reddit, even online in general, are reflective of the structure of the capitalist society in which they're embedded, so the seemingly "accidental" or contingent ideological stances of various reactionary redditors are in fact structurally-conditioned by our capitalist form of society, with people like reactionary powermod X just playing their role (this is not to turn people into dumb automatons of "bourgoeis-" or "proletarian-culture", however).
In light of the above paragraph's discussion, this is why I really feel it's all to the good, and a clever way to make programming into an aid in the class struggle, to fully investigate and expose any subreddit mods or prominent users who are legitimately (or within reasonable analysis, with full transparency of data gathered) associated with, defending, or promoting reactionary, oppressive, right-wing, fascist, sexist, racist, anti-union etc. sentiment. If we see that they're a representative of a class power, and we oppose that power, it's a natural conclusion to oppose them. I really look forward to the results of any effort in this direction.
For the same reason as above, I also must remind at the end of this exciting discussion that there's no replacement for combating those real, structural, capitalist-society causes for reactionary online activity, and we have to keep a sense of proportion for the two very different tasks. For this reason, I can't give up much free time to this project based on my split of real-life activity commitment, study, work time, and minor leisure and rest, but I hope this discussion has helped and I look forward to maybe finding some odd hours to tinker with the API in this direction as well! Great idea comrade :)You asked for it and here it is! My idea of what The Dark Knight Rises would have been like if it had been released in 1927. (You can see my poster for The Dark Knight here)
John Gilbert returns as Bruce Wayne/Batman, of course, but there is a whole cast of supporting players new to the film.
(I guess I’m kinda spoiling the talkie but I figure most everyone has seen it already. In any case, stop reading now if you want to be surprised.)
After my Dark Knight poster, I got a lot suggestions for Catwoman and they all revolved around the same name: Louise Brooks. Much though I hate to disagree with such a large number of my readers, I have to say that, to me, Miss Brooks just didn’t seem quite right for the part. So, I went on the great Catwoman hunt. Then I remembered Lupe Velez. Perfect! She has just the right feral quality that I felt was essential to the character. Plus, she is an extremely physical performer. Plus, look at her!
I had similar trouble casting Blake, the Robin-ish character in the film. Then I remembered Gilbert Roland. John Gilbert, my Batman, was one of those actors who had trouble putting a wall between his real life and his reel life. Casting Gilbert Roland would actually take advantage of that. You see, he took his stage name as a tribute to his favorite actor… John Gilbert. Ideal for the mentor relationship! And their physical resemblance can be played up for plot purposes! At only 22 and 30 years old, the interaction between the Gilberts should be fraternal.
Musidora is Miranda. No further explanation is needed, I think.
George Bancroft is Bane (in a period gas mask) because he has the acting chops and the burly build to pull off the role. I was going to make a blurry intertitle to poke a little fun at the infamous Bane voice but, truth be told, I didn’t have trouble understanding him. I just thought he sounded like a villain on DuckTales or some other Disney Afternoon selection.
Hope everyone enjoys!
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Like this: Like Loading...The Washington Post is reporting that Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia admits he implied he would deliver a federal judgeship to Phil Puckett's daughter in exchange for Puckett, a Democrat, reversing his decision to resign from the state Senate:
The son of a former Virginia state senator has told federal investigators that U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner discussed the possibility of several jobs, including a federal judgeship, for the senator’s daughter in an effort to dissuade him from quitting the evenly divided state Senate.
Warner was part of a string of high-powered Virginia Democrats who in early June pressed then-state senator Phillip P. Puckett not to go through with plans to give up his seat in the middle of a bitterly partisan battle over health care.
A Warner spokesman acknowledged Friday that the conversation occurred, but he emphasized that the senator had made no explicit job offer.
Unfortunately for Warner, the law does not require the job offer be explicit for it to be criminal. Indeed, even an indirect suggestion of an official act (like a federal judicial nomination) in exchange for political activity is illegal, per 18 U.S.C. § 600:
Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
Even if Warner’s job offer was less than explicit, it seems clear that he admitted to at least indirectly promising special consideration for a federal judgeship (possible only by an Act of Congress) as reward for political activity – in this case Puckett reversing his announced resignation.
Not coincidentally, former longtime Mark Warner communication director Paul Reagan also attempted to deny making the same type of offer – until he was caught on tape by the Washington Post.
George Mason University School of Law Assistant Dean Richard Kelsey explained that this is no minor infraction:
The buying and selling of political seats and appoints is usually a ticket to the penitentiary.
For most moral lay people, this type of offer is the essence of a bribe. Unfortunately, politicians see this as business as usual. The perks of political power belong to those in power, and they view the right to hand out political plumb jobs as a political entitlement. Perhaps entitlement reform should start here. If you want to understand why our government does work as well as we wish, perhaps it is because this is how we choose people to head agencies or administer justice.
Kelsey was talking about the actions of Paul Reagan, the former Warner staffer, but Senator Warner himself appears to have done the same thing Reagan was caught doing.
Reagan issued a statement trying to justify his shameful actions, saying: “In the fight to expand health care to uninsured Virginians, I was overzealous and acted with poor judgment.”
He was referring to the Medicaid expansion Warner voted for in Obamacare, which entails adding hundreds of thousands of able-bodied, childless adults (over a third of whom are ex-felons) to the welfare rolls and giving them preferential treatment over the truly needy.
Whether or not Warner is ever prosecuted, his adoption of hardball tactics in this incident is more proof that the bipartisan Governor Warner is long-gone, replaced with an ultrapartisan, liberal Democratic Senator Warner who will stop at nothing to advance Obamacare and the rest of President Obama’s liberal agenda.Michael Parks starred in five episodes of Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks actor Michael Parks has died at the age of 77.
The veteran character actor, who starred in films including Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2, Argo and Red State, died on Tuesday morning, his agent Jane Schulman said.
Parks worked alongside directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith on the big screen.
But he is perhaps best known for his role as Canadian drug runner Jean Renault in David Lynch's 1990s cult TV series Twin Peaks.
Image: Parks (C) with producer Dino de Laurentiis and director John Huston while filming the 1966 epic The Bible: In the Beginning
Parks' death comes just weeks before a Twin Peaks reboot, set 25 years after the original, is aired on Showtime in the US and on Sky Atlantic in UK. Parks did not appear in the new series.
Smith, who was a close friend, described him as "the best actor I've ever known".
Writing on Instagram, he added: "He was, hands-down, the most incredible thespian I ever had the pleasure to watch perform."
Ms Schulman described him as the "greatest living actor".
Image: Parks starring as Adam in The Bible: In the Beginning
Parks was born in April 1940 in Corona, California, the son of a baseball player.
He played roles in TV shows including Perry Mason and Dynasty, and later enjoyed a number of film parts in From Dusk Till Dawn, Red State and Tusk.
He is survived by his wife, Oriana, and son James.Media coverage of these leaks tends to carry a whiff of hope that exposure will somehow lead to reform. But, as the new leak makes plain, a year and a half after the last big leak—and multiple years after governments around the world have launched pro-transparency legal initiatives—little has changed in the intricate, hemisphere-spanning networks of lawyers and consultants who specialize in tax avoidance.
This is not to downplay the far-reaching consequences of the Panama Papers. “On the micro level, for individuals, things changed tremendously,” says Jake Bernstein, an investigative reporter who worked on the Panama Papers and has written a forthcoming book about them called Secrecy World. “Things have changed for the prime minister of Pakistan, the prime minister of Iceland, the minister of industry of Spain”—three prominent leaders who stepped down after their names appeared in the leak.
But while some wealthy and powerful individuals suffered personally, the system itself remains perfectly intact. “I don’t know that anything has changed as a result of the Panama Papers, and I don’t really expect anything will change as a result of the Paradise Papers,” says Brooke Harrington, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School who has studied the wealth-management industry (and written about it for The Atlantic).
Harrington notes that governments and organizations have put out a handful of fixes in recent years, but in general she finds them lacking. There is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which kicked in a few years ago and requires foreign banks to tell the IRS about accounts they have that are held by Americans. There is an initiative by the OECD, an organization of developed countries, that asks its members to share information from their financial institutions with each other. And after the Panama Papers, there was talk of requiring American banks to determine the true owners of shell companies, but little headway has been made on that.
The problem, Harrington says, is that wealth-management firms “have 24/7/365 to do nothing but find ways around whatever laws you think up.” (Indeed, Harrington, who trained as a wealth manager as part of her academic study of the profession, has attended a class on how to get around that very OECD initiative.) She says that trying to figure out the right laws to implement misses the point. It’s not just that rich people and companies will sidestep them, but also that, in order to work, they require all countries to cooperate completely, a near impossibility as long as smaller countries can break ranks and build (or at least attempt to build) their economies around being tax havens.
Harrington says there are other, more effective things that governments and politicians could do. Though leaking may not directly lead to systemic change, it can serve to deter some wrongdoing, and to that extent, she says it’s important to make sure potential whistle-blowers feel they can conceal their identities. She described many of the wealth managers she’d interviewed for her research, many of whom felt bad about their work: “They’re middle-aged people. They’re locked into a fairly lucrative career. They have mortgages to pay and kids to support.” Risking their jobs isn’t an attractive option. One important thing that enabled the Panama Papers leaker or leakers, then, was that they felt secure that they would remain anonymous. “[The leaker], for all we know, is still working as a wealth manager somewhere,” Harrington says.Some might look at the 95-67 Rangers, who only scored eight more runs than they allowed, or the 84-78 Yankees, who were outscored by 22 runs, and call these teams lucky. That’s a fair opinion and one that’s backed up by the Pythagorean Theorem of Baseball. But it’s not definitive, and |
coincidence that those who go along with Furuta’s regime are the traditionally non masculine, Juuzou who is prepubscent, Mutsuki, Ui who is remarked upon as being femine several times and unlike Take and Arima thinks often with his emotions rather than his head, and the literal children.
Hajime literally says that only cool men can fight him. The ones who rebelled against Furuta’s regime within the CCG were the traditionalists and the traditionally masculine, the old boys club.
The CCG is returned to it’s old status by Marude’s hands. However, Marude represents the same toxic masculinity that Furuta was exaggerating in the first place. Marude does absolutely nothing at all to distinguish himself from Furuta or even change his ways. Urie even says this literally, that Marude is the type of person who will even use old women to succeed.
If Marude has an arc, it’s that his masculinity and bravado have always prevented him from saying what he really feels, and that is completely unchanged in Marude.
The one thing Marude says pre-hide is that there’s no reward for meaningless death. His issue with the Washuu seems to primarily about how they manipulated investigators into phantom conflicts.
Yet we see in the current arc, none of that bravado is dropped at all. The same bravado that leads Marude to command men to their deaths rather than admit weakness. Rather than admit to it or worry, Marude remains cocky. His response to men dying under his orders once again is to double down on the bravado rather than look honestly at the loss.
You cant’ say that Marude isn’t a participant in the patriarchy that corrupts the CCG, especially since half of the fandom now calls him “Marudad.” They wouldn’t if there wasn’t something distinctly authoritative and masculine in the character.
So Furuta is excised, the Hegemonic masculinity is restored and this time Urie is on the side of the CCG. He picks Hegemonic masculinity because he’s finally accepted into it, however, on the other hand Mutsuki cannot be accepted. This is why Urie’s argument fails to reach Mutsuki entirely.
Urie’s argument to convince Mutuski is once again rooted in the hegemonic masculinity structure of authority. “It’s right because the higher ups told us it’s right.” Juuzou is simply told it’s okay to choose for himself by Marude. Everybody cooperates with the ghouls because Juuzou tells them it’s okay. The ghouls are cooperated with not because it’s determined they have a right to live, but it’s proven they are “useful.” The logic that strips people down into resources and objectifies them in a top down fashion is still there. Even Kimi’s and by extension Kanou’s method of saving ghoul kind was not to prove that they are sentient and that it’s a net wrong to exterminate and genocide sentient lives that are capable of feeling emotion and pain (ala Ender’s game, or the speaker of the dead trilogy, of Phillip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream fo Electric Sheep), but rather to convince the CCG that they are useful. To reduce them once more down into parts, and Kimi quite literally is so utiliatarian she doesn’t care about a body count in the thousands as she strip mined both humans and ghouls for research material.
“If I can convince people that ghouls have medical use, if I can convince other people of their use, they’ll be accepted into society.” That’s her logic, to appease once again rather than tear down the system that renders people into uses and objects.
After all how is Juuzou’s complex arc simply resolved by Marude just telling him to make his own decisions. Damn, if only somebody had just TOLD Shinji to get in the robot, the entirety of evangelion would have been solved so easily. So Mutsuki is told by the system that has told him repeatedly, to forget about his own personal problems and focus at the situation at hand, the system that has systematically exploited him again and again to once more simply shut up and cooperate and Mutsuki rejects that.
If Mutsuki and Aura’s problems are rooted in their own inability to try as they might, to fit into the hegemonic system of masculinity. At the inferiority they feel for doing so, because Aura is sensitive and childish, and Mutsuki is passive and conflict avoidant. If their response is to try to build up their own strength at the expense of others in order to make themselves more secure… if what’s wrong is that they are afraid of their own weakness that they’ve been taught to see weakness as a bad thing… then how is calling them a wimp the proper response?
Mutsuki and Aura were both created by slipping through the cracks in flaws of hegemonic masculinity, but because Saiko, Urie, Hisao, and Higemaru all still wish to conform to that system, they’re all completely unable to reach out or come up with any kind of argument in order to stop Mutsuki or Aura.
The same way that the system failed Mutsuki every step of the way, Urie and Saiko also deliberately failed to confront Mutsuki at every step too. Urie says this quite clearly as to why… it’s because he didn’t want the perfect of image he carried of Mutsuki in his head to be ruined. He wanted to objectify the same Mutsuki he wished to save and come home. The Mutsuki who placated him.
So when Mutsuki says this line. It’s actually a callback to this.
Touka’s affection for Kaneki is rooted in the fact that he gave her life value, sos he no longer had to give it to herself. So Touka herself would never have to love herself or assign value to her own life, because Kaneki would do it for her.
This is something that’s literally never been addressed in Touka’s arc, her own self loathing and self harm, and the fact that she’s still doing it. (Eating human food again just like Arata, just like Yoriko, wandering straight into danger while still pregnant.) She’s never had to confront it because she still has the Kaneki bandage. Kaneki will see her as beautiful in her place, and of course that’s not a bad thing as all, but Touka should still learn to love herself on her own. She deserves to love herself and be free of her own self loathing. The point is however, that Mutsuki’s kagune is drawing exact visual parallels to Touka here a few chapters after it’s brought up.
Mutsuki’s line here is a rejection, the complete and utter opposite of that sentiment. Mutsuki does not want to exist to give Urie’s life value and meaning. They do not under any circumstances want to become an object.
Therefore because of that, Urie and Saiko are going to fail entirely. They’re weaker than Mutsuki is, because the place they’re trying to convince Mutsuki to go to is to simply conform again and cooperate for the greater good. To repress everything like they are.
Except if what makes the Q’s strong is their suppression, than Mutsuki is several levels ahead of Saiko and Urie. Mutsuki so effectively compartmentalizes that both their RC Count stays entirely low in their blood and they pass as human despite being the most ghoul like and having the most ghoul like qualities of the Q’s, but also that Mutsuki compartmentalizes so effectively that he can literally change his own personality and flip like a light switch.
Which is why I love this one scene so much. Saiko’s magic kagune that saved Urie before, is countered effortlessly.
If Saiko’s strength comes from natural talent. If she’s able to maintain an extremely high level kagune, but with a low rc count and therefore does not pay the price that most ghouls pay for acquiring such power (loneliness, psychological damage, mass slaughter, rejection from society), if Saiko is able to maintain a kagune without any of those
Then she has to invoke some kind of consequence for the narrative to be balanced. Arima is the strongest ghoul investigator but he hates killing, has almost no agency, and is slowly dying. Kaneki becomes the strongest ghoul but he starts hyper aging, and then can’t bring himself to eat or be violent properly against humans. Here is Saiko’s weak point, when it comes to confronting Mutsuki her massive kagune control is essentially useless, because Mutsuki is better at conforming than her. Mutsuki has a pathological need to conform. Mutsuki’s kagune control therefore, is 800 times stronger.
Mutsuki is copying! The same way Kaneki already has. Mutsuki seeks conformity the same way Kaneki always wanted to.
Urie and Saiko are not going to beat Mutsuki with the approach of telling him to calm down and conform, and overpower them, because they are not as good at conforming and hiding parts of themselves as Mutsuki is. The same way nobody was ever going to be Furuta by conforming to the regime and the system, because Furuta simply plays the system and dehumanizes himself better than anybody else in the manga.
It’s not even a matter of “Mutsuki should be told he’s loved because he deserves to be part of the Quinx family” anymore. Urie and Saiko’s strategy is simply not going to work because they cannot overcome the antagonist in this situation. They literally never even overcame Furuta… he just… gave up and walked off after he got what he wanted.
Which is where I reach my final point, chapter 153 is named “One piece of trash.” Chapter 90, the fight where the Seidou, AKira and Amon confrontation finally began is called trash.
What exactly is trash? It’s thrown away. Seidou and Mutsuki’s point of resentment is that they fell through the cracks, and were abandoned by the same people who say they will save everyone. Amon says he came here to save Seidou, but also let Houji nearly kill him and only interfered when Akira was in danger.
The chapter beforehand, Takizawa is told that Houji was being kind by trying to kill him and that he’s terrible for insisting he still wants to live. That the proper response would have been to simply shut up and die.
It’s also important to notice that while Seidou managed to salvage it partway, this situation went horribly wrong. Amon started his attempt to save Seidou by ripping his arm off, in a direct parallel to the same kind of pain Kanou inflicted on him.
At the time I made this meta saying this conflict was going to go horribly wrong, precisely because Amon insisted on fighting it out rather than simply trying to talk to Seidou to begin with. Especially since Seidou was quite clearly begging for some small amount of acknowledgement. [1, 2]. I think everybody who read this scene is conveniently forgetting that this entire scene is a screaming hellfire disaster of miscommunication. It ends with Akira half dead, Amon berserk as a kakuja, and Takizawa clinging to the barely alive Akira.
Takizawa paractically begs Akira to just tell him with her words that his life is worthwhile, that he should live. All she had to do was say something, but she waits until the last possible moment and then decides she suddenly can’t stand to see Takizawa die, even though she followed Houji’s order to exterminate him earlier and told him himself he should have lied down and died four chapters ago.
Akira literally waited until things were life or death, and then reaction to Mutsuki’s aggression to finally do something. All because these characters are just so terrible at feelings. Almost dying, being whipped on a kagune repeatedly, murdering your own former friend in cold blood (remember Takizawa didn’t attack Houji and Akira then he saved them from Tatara and Houji gave the extermination order), apparently all of that is easier than just directly saying that she feels guilty over Takizawa’s death.
These characters have proven time and time again that they would quite literally rather die than talk about their feelings. This is how conformed they are and how much they repress.
If there is one point that is made again and again in the arc post 143 is that things did not have to turn out this way. “Things didn’t have to get this bad, we could have saved them earlier. If only I had done something different.”
Mutsuki is a clear case of that. Urie and Saiko are not going to be rewarded for literally letting it get this bad, for letting Mutsuki slip this far and then going “Oh, okay now we have to stop Mutsuki because it’s directly interfering with the mission.” For forgetting and not caring about Mutsuki until suddenly he got in the way of things.
Of course I believe the Q’s are going to recnocile, but just like Takizawa, Akira and Amon the fact that they’ve chosen to go directly to fighting rather than talking, is telling about how much they’re going to talk about their feelings in this situation.
I’m not saying Mutsuki is irredeemable, or that the Q’s are never going to be whole again. I’m saying that this approach they’re using right now won’t work, and it’ll get far far worse before it gets better. That once again we’re going to see another screaming hellfire explosion of feelings like we did on Rueshima.
That not only that but you should keep in mind when reading this scene that both Urie and Saiko waited until literally the worst moment possible to finally confront Mutsuki. That they decided to finally have this conversation on the BACK OF GODZILLA. That while Mutsuki is responsible for his own actions ultimately, the same way that Sasaki deliberately chose to make himself out to be the parental figure of the Q’s and then dodged that responsbility the second it became too hard and inconvenient, Saiko and Urie themselves were completely obsessed with saving Urie and CHOSE THAT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEMSELVES only to suddenly forget about it when it became too hard and Mutsuki did not comply to their own narrative.
It’s not that Mutsuki is obligated to be saved. It’s that Urie and Saiko both literally chose to take that responsibility and then half assed it and gave up entirely on it. It’s important for Saiko and Urie’s characters, because they have to work towards the goals they set for themselves, and both of them have consistent patterns of behavior of completely giving up and losing focus of their reason to fight. (They are Kaneki-lite after all). So it’s important to Saiko and Urie’s characters to resolve this conflict, because this is the goal they set for themselves, they are the ones who wanted to save Mutsuki. Not because it is owed to Mutsuki, but because they themselves set themselves up on this path.
If Urie wants the Q’s to be a family, he has to treat them, open up to them, and view them as a family not a military brigade. My point is that if the Q’s want to stop Mutsuki the strategy that they’re using right now is doomed to failure, because as we’ve said before several times all of these characters would rather die than admit their true feelings and motivations.
Mutsuki himself would rather die than face who he really is. Which is utlimately what I suspect Mutsuki’s true motivation in this line is as well.
It’s a lie, Mutsuki is a liar, their tell has always been tugging on their own clothes around the waste. Mutsuki is baiting Urie into killing him, because as he said he doesn’t care anymore. He’s given up. That’s the kind of ending Urie is going to get if he keeps going down this route.
The answer doesn’t lie in fighting, but rather in feelings. Except this is Tokyo Ghoul and feelings are rather incendiary so it’s probably going to explode and get 100 times worse.Los Angeles Lakers point guard Steve Blake has been dealing with a hyper-extended right elbow, as reported by Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times.
There is no word yet how long the injury has been bothering him, but Blake has shot 9-for-24 (38 percent) over his last three games. With their next game not coming until Friday against the Sacramento Kings, the Lakers will monitor how Blake performs in practice this week, via Mark Medina of the L.A. Daily News.
Silver Screen and Roll: Who changes most with a returning Kobe?
This couldn't come at a worse time for Los Angeles, as starting point guard Steve Nash has been rehabbing his back in Vancouver and Jordan Farmer, who had been Blake's backup, just tore his hamstring. Nash will return to practice with the team on Tuesday, but it's unknown when he'll be back on the court.
Blake is averaging 10.0 points, 7.7 assists and 3.2 rebounds in 31 minutes per game this year. He's started every game this season.
In other Lakers injury news, big man Pau Gasol had an MRI on Monday and it confirmed he has a mildly sprained right ankle. At least Kobe Bryant should be back shortly.
More from SB Nation NBA:
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• The NBA's best shooter is... Wes Matthews?(Audio contains a slightly sweary natural reaction.)
In a U-15 match between Hauppauge "Brazil" and Dix Hills "Heat" on Long Island, New York, Dix Hills' Nkosi Burgess put on a lovely display of coordination that's going to get him a bit of attention.
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[More soccer: Big paychecks could lure top footballers to play in Europe's most dangerous city]
Burgess was on the receiving end of a free kick into the box, which he backheeled over his head to set himself up for a little overhead volley for the goal. This elicited a stunned "wow" from one spectator who obviously didn't expect to see such an impressive goal at a local youth match.
Burgess' goal speaks for itself, so just watch and enjoy.
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• Y! News video: Check out the world's tallest dogCrossposted on MSNBC
Four years ago this week, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowed unlimited political spending by corporations and unions, leading to an explosion of outside money in elections. Now, those invested in the symbiotic relationship between politicians and their biggest donors are using the aftermath of Citizens United as an excuse to weaken campaign finance laws even further. For the sake of our democracy, we can’t let that happen.
Citizens United depended on faulty logic about independent expenditures. The Court reasoned that while a direct contribution can corrupt because the candidate can spend it as he or she wishes, outside spending cannot corrupt because the candidate ostensibly has no control over how it is spent. But this ignored common sense. Clearly, a nine-figure expenditure supporting a candidate’s election can buy a lot of political influence if and when the candidate makes it into office.
Certainly, big donors seem to believe their donations can buy influence. Thanks to Citizens United, outside spending skyrocketed in 2012 to more than $1 billion, including $400 million from dark money groups that don’t disclose their donors.
Legislators targeted by the outside negative ads are concerned. Some have used the specter of massive outside spending to argue that they need more direct contributions for their re-election campaigns in order to ‘weaken’ the influence of outside money. Eight states have increased the dollar amounts that donors can give directly to candidates, and similar legislation has advanced in several others. Alabama eliminated its $500 limit on corporate donations, allowing corporations to give unlimited amounts of money directly to candidates. Limits in other states, like Florida, are now several times higher.
Now the same justices whose Citizens United ruling created the outside expenditure quandary are arguing that it necessitates weakening limits on direct contributions. In oral argument for McCutcheon v. FEC, a case challenging limits on the total amount individuals can donate directly to all federal candidates, the court’s conservative justices seem to contradict the reasoning they used to justify their 2010 decision. Justice Scalia said there is no real distinction between the gratitude a candidate would feel toward a contributor on the one hand and a major independent spender on the other. He added, “The thing is, you can’t give [unlimited contributions] to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but you can start your own PAC…. I’m not sure that that’s a benefit to our political system.”
In any case, the idea that raising contribution limits will take the moxie out of outside spending is ludicrous. As long as it is possible to spend secretly and without accountability, there will be moneyed interests who do so. Dark money groups, with elaborate networks to spread money while concealing its source, encourage donations by promising to never reveal donors’ names. Big donors “double dip” by giving the maximum contribution to a candidate and then giving millions to a Super PAC dedicated to the same candidate.
One of the biggest independent spenders is conservative Super PAC American Crossroads, along with its affiliated dark money group Crossroads GPS. In early 2012 the Super PAC, which is required to report its donors, raised only 20% of the affiliated organizations’ donations. GPS, the dark money arm permitted to keep its donors’ identities secret, raised the other 80%. The same pattern–donors preferring dark money’s anonymity–holds for liberal dark money group Patriot Majority USA and its affiliated Super PAC. Raising contribution limits, then, is unlikely to eliminate or significantly slow outside spending on political campaigns. It would likely lead instead to donors taking advantage of the higher limits while continuing their independent spending. Higher limits will only increase the ability of moneyed interests to dictate policy, while further limiting average voters’ influence over their elected officials.
The best way to protect democracy from the post-Citizens United torrent of independent spending is comprehensive reforms that empower candidates to run without relying on the biggest donors. That starts with maintaining reasonable contribution limits. But the most powerful reform would be a system of public financing that matches small donations. This would reward candidates who build broad support among the mass of average voters, rather than candidates who depend on big, special interest money.
Four years after Citizens United, one thing is clear: the answer to big money in elections is not more big money. It’s finding a way to put voters back in charge of our democracy.
(Photo: Thinkstock)From Linus Torvalds <> Date Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:38:42 -0700 Subject Linux 3.6 When I did the -rc7 announcement a week ago, I said I might have to do
an -rc8, but a week passed, and things have been calm, and I honestly
cannot see a major reason to do another rc.
So here it is, 3.6 final. Sure, I'd have been happier with even fewer
changes, but that just never happens. And holding off the release
until people get too bored to send me the small stuff just makes the
next merge window more painful.
The changes that got merged this week were generally pretty tiny, but
more importantly, they tend to be small or very unlikely/special
things. Famous last words.
The shortlog below is obviously just the log since -rc7, the changes
in 3.6 since 3.5 are too many to list. There haven't been any huge new
architectures or filesystems, it's all "solid progress". That may not
sound all that exciting, but the devil is in the details, and there's
a lot of small fixes all over.
Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 3.7 is open,
and on that subject I do want to note that I'm going to travel much of
this merge window. Let's see how much that impacts my merging, but I
hope that it won't be *that* noticeable. But in case it results in any
problems, I'll just give a heads-up, and if worst comes to worst I'll
just extend the merge window to give myself more time for merging. I
aim to avoid it, but I'll note it here just in case it happens.
Steven Rothwell already noted during the -rc7 release that people
should have the stuff for 3.7 in linux-next, and I hope that is true.
Guys and gals, please behave, ok?
Linus
---
Al Viro (6):
do_add_mount()/umount -l races
close the race in nlmsvc_free_block()
um: take cleaning singlestep to start_thread()
um: don't leak floating point state and segment registers on execve()
um: let signal_delivered() do SIGTRAP on singlestepping into handler
um: kill thread->forking
Alan Stern (1):
USB: Fix race condition when removing host controllers
Alex Elder (2):
rbd: drop dev reference on error in rbd_open()
libceph: only kunmap kmapped pages
Alex Williamson (3):
vfio: Trivial Documentation correction
vfio: Fix virqfd release race
iommu: static inline iommu group stub functions
Andrea Arcangeli (1):
thp: avoid VM_BUG_ON page_count(page) false positives in
__collapse_huge_page_copy
Andrei Emeltchenko (1):
Bluetooth: Fix freeing uninitialized delayed works
Andrew Lunn (1):
ARM: Orion5x: Fix too small coherent pool.
Andrzej Kaczmarek (2):
Bluetooth: mgmt: Fix enabling SSP while powered off
Bluetooth: mgmt: Fix enabling LE while powered off
Ben Skeggs (3):
drm/nouveau: silence a debug message triggered by newer userspace
drm/nvc0/ltcg: mask off intr 0x10
drm/nvc0/fifo: ignore bits in PFIFO_INTR that aren't set in PFIFO_INTR_EN
Chris Metcalf (1):
tile: gxio iorpc numbering change for TRIO interface
Dan Carpenter (2):
NVMe: handle allocation failure in nvme_map_user_pages()
vmwgfx: corruption in vmw_event_fence_action_create()
Daniel Mack (1):
ALSA: snd-usb: fix next_packet_size calls for pause case
Dave Airlie (1):
drm/udl: limit modes to the sku pixel limits.
Dave Jiang (1):
MAINTAINERS: update Intel C600 SAS driver maintainers
Def (1):
batman-adv: Fix change mac address of soft iface.
Emmanuel Grumbach (1):
iwlwifi: don't double free the interrupt in failure path
Eric Dumazet (4):
ipv4: raw: fix icmp_filter()
net: guard tcp_set_keepalive() to tcp sockets
ipv6: raw: fix icmpv6_filter()
ipv6: mip6: fix mip6_mh_filter()
Geert Uytterhoeven (1):
um: Preinclude include/linux/kern_levels.h
Heiko Carstens (1):
checksyscalls: fix "here document" handling
J. Bruce Fields (1):
trivial select_parent documentation fix
Jan Engelhardt (1):
netfilter: xt_limit: have r->cost!= 0 case work
Jan Kara (1):
lib/flex_proportions.c: fix corruption of denominator in
flexible proportions
Jiri Pirko (1):
team: send port changed when added
Joachim Eastwood (1):
USB: ohci-at91: fix null pointer in ohci_hcd_at91_overcurrent_irq
Joerg Roedel (1):
iommu/amd: Fix wrong assumption in iommu-group specific code
Keith Busch (7):
NVMe: Set request queue logical block size
NVMe: Fix nvme module init when nvme_major is set
NVMe: replace nvme_ns with nvme_dev for user admin
NVMe: use namespace id for nvme_get_features
NVMe: Set block queue max sectors
NVMe: Do not set IO queue depth beyond device max
NVMe: Fix uninitialized iod compiler warning
Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk (1):
xen/boot: Disable NUMA for PV guests.
Linus Lüssing (1):
batman-adv: Fix symmetry check / route flapping in multi interface setups
Linus Torvalds (2):
mtdchar: fix offset overflow detection
Linux 3.6
Luis R. Rodriguez (1):
cfg80211: fix possible circular lock on reg_regdb_search()
Marek Vasut (4):
phy/micrel: Implement support for KSZ8021
phy/micrel: Rename KS80xx to KSZ80xx
phy/micrel: Add missing header to micrel_phy.h
net: phy: smsc: Implement PHY config_init for LAN87xx
Mark Brown (1):
ASoC: wm2000: Correct register size
Mark Salter (3):
c6x: use asm-generic/barrier.h
c/r: prctl: fix build error for no-MMU case
syscalls: add __NR_kcmp syscall to generic unistd.h
Matthew Wilcox (3):
NVMe: Fix whitespace damage in nvme_init
NVMe: Free admin queue memory on initialisation failure
NVMe: Cancel outstanding IOs on queue deletion
Mauro Carvalho Chehab (3):
i3200_edac: Fix memory rank size
i5000: Fix the memory size calculation with 2R memories
sb_edac: Avoid overflow errors at memory size calculation
Mike Snitzer (6):
dm thin: do not set discard_zeroes_data
dm mpath: only retry ioctl when no paths if queue_if_no_path set
dm: handle requests beyond end of device instead of using BUG_ON
dm: retain table limits when swapping to new table with no devices
dm thin: tidy discard support
dm thin: fix discard support for data devices
Miklos Szeredi (1):
vfs: dcache: fix deadlock in tree traversal
Mikulas Patocka (1):
dm verity: fix overflow check
Milan Broz (1):
dm table: clear add_random unless all devices have it set
Narendra K (1):
qlcnic: Fix scheduling while atomic bug
Neil Horman (1):
bnx2: Clean up remaining iounmap
NeilBrown (2):
md/raid5: add missing spin_lock_init.
md/raid10: fix "enough" function for detecting if array is failed.
Nicolas Dichtel (1):
inetpeer: fix token initialization
Paul Mundt (1):
sh: pfc: Fix up GPIO mux type reconfig case.
Peter Hüwe (1):
net/phy/bcm87xx: Add MODULE_LICENSE("GPL") to GPL driver
Quoc-Son Anh (1):
NVMe: Use ida for nvme device instance
Richard Weinberger (1):
um: Fix IPC on um
Roland Stigge (1):
gpio-lpc32xx: Fix value handling of gpio_direction_output()
Sachin Kamat (1):
ARM: dma-mapping: Fix potential memory leak in atomic_pool_init()
Steve Glendinning (1):
smsc75xx: fix resume after device reset
Thierry Reding (1):
pwm-backlight: take over maintenance
Vinicius Costa Gomes (1):
Bluetooth: Fix not removing power_off delayed work
Wei Yongjun (4):
l2tp: fix return value check
team: fix return value check
netdev: pasemi: fix return value check in pasemi_mac_phy_init()
netdev: octeon: fix return value check in octeon_mgmt_init_phy()
Xiaodong Xu (1):
pppoe: drop PPPOX_ZOMBIEs in pppoe_release
--
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Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/Many young people ran for Vermont Legislature in this year's primary contests. Several say they were inspired by Bernie Sanders' run for president.
Nick Clark was one of them. Before this year, the 28 year old had never voted, at least not in a major election. Then Bernie Sanders ran for president.
“The first time I voted in my life was March 1 for Bernie in Vermont in the primary,” he said. “So [Bernie Sanders] turned around my belief in government and he turned around the path my life was going on.”
Clark started putting signs all over the Upper Valley and ran for one of two contested seats for state representative from Norwich, Thetford, Strafford and Sharon.
On Tuesday, primary Election Day, holding a sign in the hot sun outside the Norwich Town Hall Nick said after campaigning for Sanders in New Hampshire, he started looking at local issues.
“I saw that a lot of young adults were either leaving the state or staying here and struggling to make it and on the very bad end of that they were self-medicating.”
He continued: “So I decided to run for state representative as a way to sort of make government more accessible to a demographic that felt very disconnected.”
Clark didn't quite get the votes he needed to win the election.
But, on the day after his first political loss, Nick Clark says he's here to stay one way or another.
“It's hard to predict if I will run again the day after a primary looking out two years, but as Bernie said it's better to show up than to give up,” he told VPR over the phone. “And the issues haven't changed at all so there's more work to do. Even if I had won there would still be more work to do.”
Clark was just one of a handful of younger candidates in Vermont's elections this year.
Ashley Andreas was another. She is a 23 year old living in Wilder who ran for House of Representatives, in the Windsor 4-2 District. She was also inspired by the Sanders' campaign.
“To ask young people, to ask ordinary people to stand up and run it felt he was talking to me because I had always been so interested in politics and passionate,” she explained.
"To ask young people, to ask ordinary people to stand up and run it felt [Bernie Sanders] was talking to me because I had always been so interested in politics and passionate." — Ashley Andreas, 23
Andreas fell short by just 40 votes. But for her, the political revolution lives on.
“Being a state representative is a great honor and way to serve the public and community,” she said. “But there are lots of other avenues for change and lots of other things you can do politically that can benefit your community.”
So will the trend of young people entering politics galvanized by Bernie Sanders continue? Or is this a pop culture blip on the political radar?
Eric Davis, a professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, says it's too soon to tell:
“In this year's presidential cycle, Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has certainly inspired many young people to get involved in politics,” Davis said. “The question I have, and I believe it's too early to provide an answer to this question, is whether these impacts of the Sanders' campaign are going to continue beyond the end of 2016.”
Long term, Davis thinks whether the trend sticks or not depends on the outcome of the November election.
“If the young people who've been supporting Bernie Sanders this year see some examples of concrete policy either with the Clinton Administration or with Sanders in the Senate Committee Chair as a result from this movement, then I think there could be continued involvement and interest in politics," Davis says. “If nothing happens, then you have to worry about lack of motivation, cynicism returning and all those sorts of things.”
But for those young people who ran because of Sanders and did not win this time: It is worth remembering that a younger Bernie Sanders took several tries before he won his first election.Vibrio vulnificus is a bacterium responsible for severe gastroenteritis, sepsis and wound infections. Gastroenteritis and sepsis are commonly associated with the consumption of raw oysters, whereas wound infection is often associated with the handling of contaminated fish. Although classical virulence factors of this emerging pathogen are well characterised, there remains a paucity of knowledge regarding the general biology of this species. To investigate the presence of previously unreported virulence factors, we applied whole genome sequencing to a panel of ten V. vulnificus strains with varying virulence potentials. This identified two novel type 6 secretion systems (T6SSs), systems that are known to have a role in bacterial virulence and population dynamics. By utilising a range of molecular techniques and assays we have demonstrated the functionality of one of these T6SSs. Furthermore, we have shown that this system is subject to thermoregulation and is negatively regulated by increasing salinity concentrations. This secretion system was also shown to be involved in the killing of V. vulnificus strains that did not possess this system and a model is proposed as to how this interaction may contribute to population dynamics within V. vulnificus strains. In addition to this intra-species killing, this system also contributes to the killing of inter bacterial species and may have a role in the general composition of Vibrio species in the environment.
To study the role of the T6SS in affecting the population dynamics of Vibrio spp. this study employed co-culturing assays. These assays demonstrated that the T6SS present in V. vulnificus can play an important role in bacterial population composition through anti-bacterial activity. Furthermore, we present a hypothesis describing how the T6SS may provide an explanation for the limited number of serious human infections attributed to V. vulnificus given the high abundance of this bacterium in the environment.
The T6SS is found in approximately 25% of all sequenced Gram negative bacterial genomes, and is made up of 13 conserved proteins [ 8 ]. These 13 proteins are hypothesised to form a macromolecular structure similar to the contractile tail of bacteriophage [ 9 ]. |
:
+ */
+ if (requeue_pi && match_futex(&key1, &key2)) {
+ ret = -EINVAL;
+ goto out_put_keys;
+ }
+
hb1 = hash_futex(&key1);
hb2 = hash_futex(&key2);
@@ -2525,6 +2541,15 @@ static int futex_wait_requeue_pi(u32 __user *uaddr, unsigned int flags,
if (ret)
goto out_key2;
+ /*
+ * The check above which compares uaddrs is not sufficient for
+ * shared futexes. We need to compare the keys:
+ */
+ if (match_futex(&q.key, &key2)) {
+ ret = -EINVAL;
+ goto out_put_keys;
+ }
+
/* Queue the futex_q, drop the hb lock, wait for wakeup. */
futex_wait_queue_me(hb, &q, to);In fact, U.S. support for interventionism abroad in places like Kosovo, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq all garnered more backing from Americans than the proposed military strikes against Syria currently being debated in Washington and across the country. But the question is: Are the People’s Representatives listening?
Americans' support for the United States' taking military action against the Syrian government for its suspected use of chemical weapons is on track to be among the lowest for any intervention Gallup has asked about in the last 20 years. Thirty-six percent of Americans favor the U.S. taking military action in order to reduce Syria's ability to use chemical weapons. The majority -- 51% -- oppose such action, while 13% are unsure.
Public opinion, of course, isn't the only reason not to launch military air strikes against the Assad regime (and there are some valid arguments for why we should). But here are a few of my concerns: First, what does the United States hope to accomplish in Syria? Obviously Washington wants to bring some semblance of stability to the region -- and prevent Assad from using chemical weapons again on his own people. Fair enough. However, as Guy previously noted, a bombing campaign against Assad’s government would undoubtedly help the Syrian rebels. Question: Is this a wise decision given some of the rebel leaders’ reputation for lawlessness and barbarism? There are no doubt elements of the (crumbling?) opposition that are pro-western -- but some are clearly sworn enemies of the United States. So are we really comfortable taking sides? On the other hand, if the end-game is regime change -- as Secretary Kerry seems to suggest -- how on earth can we accomplish this without committing endless supplies of resources to the region and eventually putting boots-on-the-ground? Isn’t the phenomenon known as “mission creep” inevitable if that’s the stated goal? Air strikes aren’t going to cut it, after all. And by the way, what if the new regime that comes to power after Assad’s downfall is even more lawless and evil than the previous government? Recent history shows us that this does happen. What do we do then?
Second, how are we going to pay for all of this? I realize I sound like a broken record but Mark Steyn is correct when he notes dryly that the United States of America is the “Brokest Nation in History.” So how will we finance yet another war when we’re already spending one trillion more dollars every year than we take in? We can’t keep this up indefinitely.
And finally, as noted above, the public stands firmly against intervention. Yes, the United States’ reputation and credibility is on the line (thanks in part to the president’s “red-line” proclamation) but the Commander-in-Chief and members of Congress work for us, remember? Shouldn’t the American people’s opinions at least count for something?
There are no easy answers here. But, at the very least, there are things to consider and weigh before we march headlong into a bombing campaign against Syria. And while this might not be war in the “classic” sense, it’s war nonetheless. And America would do well to tread carefully.Topics: dean's note
In a previous Dean’s Note, I commented on the role of cities in producing health, and I presented some data about health in Boston. I thought I would elaborate on that a bit today, but do so a bit differently: pictorially.
First, by way of setting, Massachusetts has about 315 doctors per 100,000 people, more than 10 percent higher than the next closest state (Maryland). Much of this is due to a remarkable density of physicians and trainees in Boston itself. The state also spends more on healthcare than any other state and has the lowest percentage of residents without health insurance (4.4 percent). All of this might suggest that Boston would be a tremendously healthy city, a paragon of urban health. And, in many ways, it is. We have some of the highest life expectancy of any US city (about 81 years). But, like many US cities, Boston also has some extraordinary differences, both in health indicators and in the drivers of those indicators within its borders. Health disparities, or health inequalities, have long been part of the public health conversation, appropriately so. I will write about health inequalities in a future Dean’s Note.
Today though, I present a different type of note, aiming to represent visually the geography of Boston health and its determinants. To do so, I thought I would consider the health of Boston through a simple device: the T. Suppose we are riding the T and stopping at various stops: What does health look like at these stops, and what do the drivers of health look like? To illustrate this question, I pick below a few representative T stops that can summarize what we see throughout the city.
We can start with a core health indicator: premature death rates per 1,000. The T map below shows that premature death rate in the area around the Arlington stop, for example, is more than 50 percent lower than at Dudley Square station.
This is linked, in no small part, to health indicators like violence, with the map below showing how the homicide rate around the Dudley Square stop is eight times the rate around Arlington, and the rate at the Mattapan stop is almost six times the rate at Fenway. These differences extend well beyond health indicators among adults to other core indicators such as low birth weight, a marker for a substantial burden of poor health and disability later in life. In this case, the health differences are in the order of 25 percent when comparing Arlington and Fenway to Mattapan and Dudley.
It is then not surprising that there are similar differences, of similar magnitudes, for adult non-communicable disease indicators such as diabetes, as shown in the map below.
These health indicators are inexorably linked to a broad range of social indicators that are unevenly distributed across the city. Poverty is a frequently used summary indicator of socioeconomic position, well established as a marker of a broad range of other adversities. It is then not surprising, given the maps above, that poverty rates in some parts of Boston are four to eight times higher than those surrounding the healthier stops on the T.
Other measures of socioeconomic position, such as education, track accordingly, with a graduate education being three or more times more common around the Arlington and Fenway stops than it is around Dudley Square, Mattapan or Maverick stations.
And, these differences are associated with commensurately poor health behaviors, such as physical activity that is substantially lower on the Red Line at Mattapan than it is on the Green Line at Fenway, for example. The question of whether socioeconomic differences in health is attributed in part, or at all, to differences in health behavior is, in and of itself, a difficult and complex question, and I would refer the reader to conflicting papers on the topic. I will comment about the contribution of lifestyle versus more foundational factors to the production of health in a future Dean’s Note.
Inured as are to inequalities in health, we might well shrug off these health differences as ones between far-apart worlds. But are they? In fact, the geographic space we are talking about here is remarkably small. We are dealing with geographic differences of roughly four miles, or about an hour’s walk. In many respects, it is remarkable that areas so close to one another should have such dramatically different health indicators—“health worlds apart” that are simply down the street from one another.
Rounding this out perhaps brings us back to the fundamental condition of Boston that we discussed earlier—the incredible density of physicians and hospitals throughout the city. It is therefore not surprising that none of the T stops we are discussing are particularly far from medical facilities. Clearly, medical centers differ in terms of populations served and variations in availability of care, but as the map below shows (and as can be verified through much more thorough analysis), there are negligible differences in physical distance of these neighborhoods to quality medical care.
This, then, tells a story of a city richly characterized by top-of-the-line medical resources and overall health indicators that are enviably good, but that has, within it, substantial heterogeneity in those same health indicators, associated in large part with variation in the fundamental socioeconomic circumstances that produce health in populations. The challenge to public health is apparent and vivid—how do we contribute to the generation of knowledge that can bridge these health gaps, and to the creation of conditions that produce health not just for some but for all, across a city like Boston?
I hope everyone has a terrific week. Until next week.
Warm regards,
Sandro
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
@sandrogalea
Acknowledgement: I would like to acknowledge the help of Laura Sampson with the creation of the figures in this Dean’s Note, and that of Meaghan Agnew and Michael Saunders for critical reading and suggestions on content.
Previous Dean’s Notes are archived at: https://www.bu.edu/sph/category/news/deans-notes/José Roberto Wright, who took charge of England’s semi-final against West Germany in 1990, speaks for the first time about Gascoigne’s tears, Waddle’s hair and why he really wanted England to win
José Roberto Wright, the referee of England’s World Cup semi-final against West Germany in 1990, has told the Guardian about his role in provoking Gazza’s tears, how Chris Waddle’s penalty miss still rankles and why he wanted England to win.
In the first interview he has given to a British newspaper, Wright, whose surname betrays his English roots, said: “It was a world football derby, a game full of history. I had to be really sharp but I must confess that somewhere in my mind I was hoping England could win. Not because my great-grandfather was English, I swear. Only with England in the final could I have a chance to referee that game. The Germans would never want a Brazilian referee again after losing in two finals refereed by my fellow countrymen [in 1982 and 1986]. England almost did it but that fella with the funny hair [Chris Waddle] sent his penalty almost outside the stadium and the Germans went through.”
Though there was a strangely muted penalty appeal when Waddle was brought down in the first half, the most discussed decision that day involved Paul Gascoigne, who was booked for a foul on Thomas Berthold in extra time. “Listen, there was no controversy,” says Wright. “The lad tackled an opponent from behind and nowadays he could even have been sent off. It was none of my business if Gascoigne already had a yellow card. My job was to apply the laws of the game. If I hadn’t cautioned him, I would have lost control of the game.
“I didn’t see him crying or all that commotion. Only later I saw images of the game and noticed how upset he was. Years later I read that Gascoigne’s tears were some kind of watershed moment in English football, that people fell in love again with the game. In a way I was happy to be part of such a historical occasion and I don’t think Gazza has a problem either. A few months ago somebody from England called me asking if I could donate a memento of that game for a Gascoigne museum. I might actually give them the yellow card I used. Yeah, I still have it.”
Wright remembers being dismayed at the fitness level of the other referees when they met before the tournament. “They seemed to be just going for strolls while I was doing proper aerobic exercises. Some of them might not have considered me Mr Nice Guy but in the end I was the first referee to take charge of four games in one World Cup.
“And they all took place without major incidents. My first match was Italy v Austria and I remember a packed stadium turning against me when Toto Schilacci tried to win a penalty. I also refereed USSR v Cameroon in the group stage and Ireland v Romania in the round of 16. That game also went to a penalty shootout and I can still remember how happy the Irish were when they went through.”
Wright admits to just one significant regret about his time in Italy: “The semi-final was a cracking game, the kind every referee wants to be involved in and the biggest occasion of my career,” he says. “I’m still annoyed with the English guy with the funny hair, though. Because of his horrendous penalty I couldn’t even keep the match ball.”So I was queued up at the university train-ticket shop. A middle-aged man was sitting on a sofa while his wife was buying tickets to some destination. Bound by my old habit of starting conversations with total strangers, true to form and tradition, I started a conversation with him. After the initial hi-hello, he asked me, “So what you are you doing here?” “I am a computer science researcher”, I said happily. “And what do you do?” “I am the Chief Economist of the World Bank.” Haha. Just like that! I was taken aback for a moment at the way he said it (quite diffidently). He was Kaushik Basu, the chief economist and vice president of the World Bank, from the buzzing land of Bengal, India. After overcoming my momentary surprise, I ventured to needle him a bit (again true to form and tradition :P), asking a shamelessly rhetorical question: “So has the world bank changed its policies during the last few years, having realized that they have been disastrous for the poor of our world?”
But surprising me, nodding his head, he replied: “Yes, indeed, lots of mistakes have been made. And yes, they are trying to change. For example, previously, they would never have appointed an Indian man as the chief economist of the world bank”. And then we talked about the similarities between Karachi and Mumbai, and Lahore and Delhi; how Mumbai and Karachi were twin cities and so too were Lahore and Delhi. His wife got the tickets, our chat ended and we shook hands.
So what are these “mistakes” that Mr Basu refered to? Putting it simply, the world bank encourages loans to third world elites and inspires them to borrow ever greater sums of money (often the borrowers are corrupt dictators). Subsequently, the Bank together with the IMF, forces the countries to follow the infamous Structural Adjustment Programs to repay the loans. And this causes the poor people of the country, who didn’t borrow the money in the first place, to suffer in repaying these debts. These policies do create a tiny sector of rich elites in third world countries, while leaving the masses in the lurch. Consider:
In 1998, following the Structural Adjustment Programs, India opened up its seed market to global agri-giants. The results have been disastrous. Quoting Indian activist Vandana Shiva, “Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved. Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtedness.”
Arguably the greatest Indian movie ever, Mother India, tackled the problem of loan-sharks and the way poor farmers in India had to suffer all their lives in repaying huge interests on small loans. In this day and age, World Bank and IMF serve as loan-sharks, while Indian farmers commit suicide every 30 minutes due to indebtedness, caused by programs initiated by these august bodies. Many farmers commit suicide by consuming the very pesticides that they were forced to buy…
And this is just one story, in one country. One hopes Mr Basu is right, and the World Bank ends up doing some good as opposed to the wretched horror it has wrought upon the poor of the world for so many years. Of course, in order to do that, the dominant model, the dominant ideology of the economists who fanatically believe in the neo-liberal agenda, the free-market ‘religion’; has to change.Director of Midwifery at Mary's Center Mindy Greenside monitors the heartbeat of Elsa Mendez's unborn daughter so that Mendez's mother, Elsa Arana, visiting from Guatemala, can hear on Wednesday. (Katherine Frey/THE WASHINGTON POST)
The U.S. birthrate plunged last year to a record low, with the decline being led by immigrant women hit hard by the recession, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.
The overall birthrate decreased by 8 percent between 2007 and 2010, with a much bigger drop of 14 percent among foreign-born women. The overall birthrate is at its lowest since 1920, the earliest year with reliable records. The 2011 figures don’t have breakdowns for immigrants yet, but the preliminary findings indicate that they will follow the same trend.
The decline could have far-reaching implications for U.S. economic and social policy. A continuing decrease could challenge long-held assumptions that births to immigrants will help maintain the U.S. population and create the taxpaying workforce needed to support the aging baby-boom generation.
The U.S. birthrate — 63.2 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age — has fallen to a little more than half of its peak, which was in 1957. The rate among foreign-born women, who have tended to have bigger families, has also been declining in recent decades, although more slowly, according to the report.
But after 2007, as the worst recession in decades dried up jobs and economic prospects across the nation, the birthrate for immigrant women plunged. One of the most dramatic drops was among Mexican immigrants — 23 percent.
View Graphic Fewer births in the U.S.
The fall didn’t occur because there are fewer immigrant women of childbearing age but because of a change in their behavior, said D’Vera Cohn, an author of the report, which uses data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. Cohn added that “the economic downturn seems to play a pretty large role in the drop in the fertility rate.”
Although the declining U.S. birthrate has not created the kind of stark imbalances found in graying countries such as Japan or Italy, it should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers, said Roberto Suro, a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California.
“We’ve been assuming that when the baby-boomer population gets most expensive, that there are going to be immigrants and their children who are going to be paying into [programs for the elderly], but in the wake of what’s happened in the last five years, we have to reexamine those assumptions,” he said. “When you think of things like the solvency of Social Security, for example... relatively small increases in the dependency ratio can have a huge effect.”
The average number of children a U.S. woman is predicted to have in her lifetime is 1.9, slightly less than the 2.1 children required to maintain current population levels.
The falling birthrate mirrors what has happened during other recessions. A Pew study last year found that the current decline in U.S. fertility rates was closely linked to hard times, particularly among Hispanics.
“The economy can have an impact on these long-term trends, and even the immigrants that we have been counting on to boost our population growth can dip in a poor economy,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. He noted that Hispanic women, who led the decline, occupy one of the country’s most economically vulnerable groups.
Historically, once the economy rebounds after a recession, so does the birthrate, Cohn said.
But other factors may also be affecting the decline and may not change much once the economy recovers.
Almost half of all immigrants to the United States are of Hispanic origin. But in recent years, immigration from Mexico, the biggest contributing country, has dried up; for the first time since the Great Depression, the net migration from Mexico has been zero.
Latino immigrants who have been here longer tend to adopt U.S. attitudes and behavior, including having smaller families, Suro said. He added that the decline in the birthrate among Mexican immigrants is probably so sharp because the rate was so high that there was more room for it to fall.
Although the Hispanic birthrate may never return to its highest levels, immigrants who have babies will probably continue to boost overall fertility rates, said Frey, who considers the current decline a “short-term blip.” Immigrants from Asia, he said, continue to move to the United States, although their birthrates are not likely to approach that of Hispanic immigrants at their peak.
The recent birthrate decline among Latino women may also be related to enhanced access to emergency contraception and better sex education in recent years, said Kimberly Inez McGuire, a senior policy analyst at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.
At Mary’s Center, an organization in the District that provides social services to low-income people, the waiting room on a recent morning was filled with immigrants, many with swollen bellies. But not all were planning large families.
Elsa Mendez, 22, a single Guatemalan immigrant who lives in Petworth, is set to give birth to her first child in December, but she said that after this one, she plans to go on birth control because she wants a better life.
“Sometimes [Hispanic] people — they have a lot of kids, and no talk about family planning,” she said. “I have neighbors who have nine kids — they come from El Salvador and are all together in the same room.”
But Mendez, a sales clerk, said she sees American families with fewer children and wants to emulate them. “I want to have more money for her,” she said, referring to her unborn child.
Mindy Greenside, director of midwifery at Mary’s Center, said many more immigrant women are asking about contraception than did so five years ago.
One of them is Elizabeth Rosa, 37, a Salvadoran who lives in Langley Park. Pregnant with her third child, she said it will be her last.
“To have more babies, it costs more,” she said as her 2-year-old son Emanuel played nearby.
Pointing to her belly, she said she plans to have her tubes tied after giving birth. “The factory is closing,” she said with a smile.Share. Filmmaker points to Man of Steel and Iron Man 3 as abusers of 3D. Filmmaker points to Man of Steel and Iron Man 3 as abusers of 3D.
In James Cameron's opinion, Hollywood is abusing 3D in movies -- and he's got two summer blockbuster examples to back it up!
"Man of Steel, Iron Man 3 and all those movies should not necessarily be in 3D," the filmmaker explained at the Tag DF technology forum last week in Mexico City. "If you spend $150 million on visual effects, the film is already going to be spectacular, perfect."
Cameron continued, "[It's] one thing [to shoot] in 3D and another to convert to 3D," noting that it's a matter of studios "[trying] to make money" and "pushing 3D to directors who are not comfortable or do not like 3D."
Right now, Cameron is penning the scripts for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3. Time will tell if the director can "more effectively" utilize the 3D format once again.
Exit Theatre Mode
Via Vulture
Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.Among Friday's cuts, was Eagles linebacker Keenan Clayton. Clayton tweeted today that he has signed with the Raiders.
Clayton is expected to help with the depth issues the Raiders have at linebacker as well as special teams. He played two seasons for the Eagles after he was chosen in the fourth round out of Oklahoma in the 2010 draft.
He played mostly special teams over those two seasons appearing in 21 games with one start.
The 6-2. 230 pound linebacker played four seasons at Oklahoma, starting nearly every game his junior and senior season. He was named All-Big 12 second team by Phil Steele and honorable mention by Ap and coaches following his senior year.
The Raiders currently have just one weak side linebacker on the team in rookie Miles Burris. Aaron Curry was placed on the physically unable to perform list with a knee injury which means he can return after week six of the season if he is ready by that time.Not many novelists cum creative-writing teachers are as zealous about their second job as Scarlett Thomas. Having written eight novels, and lectured for eight years at the University of Kent, she has developed a fascination with the way that she thinks "beginning writers" go about becoming good ones. This book refines her teaching into a cogent programme – with exercises, charts, the lot. "Once you have read it," she says, "you will, I hope, know how to construct a good sentence, a good metaphor, a good scene, a good plot and a good character."
And actually she does a splendid job. True, there are a lot of venerable nostrums in her advice: show, don't tell; write what you know; keep a taut chain of causation; wince over your adjectives and adverbs. But Thomas explains the reasons for these precepts clearly, with backing quotations from the greats, and shows us plenty of exceptions. She also eschews the self-flagellating ethic of some courses by preaching tolerance for fancy prose style, and exhorts her readers to be ambitious and "ask important questions" with their fiction, an admirable stand.
She offers new things, too, and is particularly good on creativity, where she recommends completing matrixes (not matrices) with details of your life and personality. The idea is that these become reservoirs of material that make it easier for stories to begin to flow. I bet it works. Indeed, again and again, I found myself reading and agreeing with Thomas, however much I blenched at the idea of making novels out of "superobjectives", "thematic questions" and "seed words".
There is a problem, though, and it is serious. I also agree with Thomas's advice to use good clear words, so I'll just come out with it: her book is boring. At least it was to me. This was a surprise because an obsession with the machinery of novels would certainly feature on my personality matrix. Usually it's me who does the boring. The book's chatty style was one factor – 480 pages is a lot of time to spend with prose that's so relentlessly OK. Worse, though, was what the words said. As novelists go, I'm only a junior practitioner next to Thomas, but so much of what she has to say seems rather basic, or well known, or redundant, or obvious in some other way that you have to wonder who this book is for.
For example, having heard that there are plot shapes called "Stranger Comes to Town" and "Rags to Riches", do we also need to read several pages on what happens in them? (You'll never guess.) In a discussion of Stanislavski, we hear that people are driven by complex sequences of motivation. Indeed they are, but if this book is where you found that out I'm worried about your novel. "One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain," Thomas says, describing fiction. It's true in other areas as well.
Perhaps some absolutely embryonic novelists will see things differently and enjoy the book. But I still question what they'll get from it. The gap between knowing how to do something and being able to, in this area, is wide. Novels are easy to write, but difficult to write skilfully, and skill comes from practice, but practice is difficult to get because bad writing lowers morale: as a reader, I want novelists to suffer in that feedback loop. It's where they learn the idiosyncratic tricks and calibrations that make greatness, from time to time. By comparison, Monkeys With Typewriters feels like an escape hatch. For stuck hobbyists, or just the extremely green, it may well be a reliable guide down one path towards the Shangri-La of adequacy. Excellence, however, and as always, lies just as many years away.
Leo Benedictus is the author of The Afterparty (Vintage)Jarret Stoll's status still unclear on eve of West finals
Stoll, wearing a purple jersey, centered on Friday for Dwight King and Trevor Lewis, who had been his linemates before the injury. However, winger Tyler Toffoli also wore a purple jersey and joined in some rushes with King and Lewis as the Kings skated in a rink in Bensenville, a suburb west of Chicago.
The NHL does not require teams to disclose injury information, and most are secretive on the subject for fear of giving opponents a possible edge. That secrecy is even tighter during the playoffs.
However, Stoll did not absorb any contact — the next step in concussion recovery before returning to action — and it's not clear whether he will play in Game 1. Kings Coach Darryl Sutter declined to provide an update on Stoll’s condition when asked Friday at a pre-series news conference held at a hotel near O’Hare Airport.
CHICAGO — Center Jarret Stoll, who has been out of the Kings’ lineup since he suffered a concussion in the opener of the team’s second-round playoff series against San Jose, practiced for a while on a regular line Friday as the Kings prepared to open the Western Conference finals Saturday against the Chicago Blackhawks at the United Center.
Judging by the lines Sutter deployed in practice, it appears that Dustin Brown will rejoin Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams on the left side of what had been the team’s top line. Brown had been replaced by Kyle Clifford and had moved to the third line with King and Lewis.
Clifford was in a yellow jersey, as were Jordan Nolan and Brad Richardson. The line of Dustin Penner-Mike Richards-Jeff Carter remained intact.
Brown said the line combinations are less important than the final score.
“At the end of the day it’s about giving ourselves as a team the best chance to win. It’s not about where the individuals play or who you’re playing with. It’s about giving the team the best opportunity to win,” he said.
“I went down to the third line with Kinger and Lewie and obviously the big hole’s there with Stollie being out. I thought we were really effective against the San Jose third line and put a lot of pressure on them, and I think we were pretty effective in the two games I played down there. And it’s just a matter of finding that balance, getting guys going on different aspects of their game. I thought it was a good change at the time. It kind of gave the Sharks a different look, something to think about.
“At the end of the day we had some wins we needed to win the series. Again, it’s about the best possible lineup for any particular game.”
General Manager Dean Lombardi said Brown's acceptance of different roles — and different positions — sets a good example for the team.
"When your captain is willing to do anything he's asked — left wing, right wing — it sends a huge message about winning," Lombardi said. "It's not about, 'What's for me?'"
The defense pairs appeared to be the same as they have been lately, with Rob Scuderi paired with Slava Voynov, Jake Muzzin with Matt Greene, and newly re-signed Robyn Regehr with Drew Doughty.
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Marquez-Bradley date changed because of Mayweather-Alvarez fightAre the Crew still looking to make a play for the soon to be out of contract Mix Diskerud? The plugged in Greg Seltzer reports that the Crew recently sent a scout to watch him play for Rosenborg.
The Crew tried to make him a capstone signing during the summer transfer window in August before talks broke down at the last minute, but now Diskerud wouldn't require a transfer fee. The team would still have to work a deal through MLS's seemingly byzantine player acquisition rules.
The Crew recently used the top allocation slot to bring in Kei Kamara on a free transfer for the 2015 season, but the order gets reshuffled at the end of the season. Diskerud may fall into the Designated Player allocation order. The team is reportedly 4th on that list.
It's been clear that Gregg Berhalter and staff have been keeping an eye on 2015 even as the team approached the playoffs. They've made three signings for next season in Kamara, Mohammed Saeid,and homegrown player Ben Swanson. It seems like the team still has eyes for Diskerud.This is a straight copy and paste from notes posted in a senior SeneGence upline's group, about advice imparted by Patty Winter in a training video.
A moment's silence for the tragic emoji abuse... not to mention the actual contents, which may make your eyes bleed. Sorry about that.
The 'Ignorance on fire' quote is a small section of a quote, which in full reads:
“Ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice. But there's nothing more powerful than knowledge on fire.” (attributed to Ivan Misner or Greg Olsen, but who knows 🤷🏻♀️)
Ignorance on fire — is your typical MLM devotee, and what the MLMs want you to be like.
... is better than knowledge on ice. — ie those who watch, analyse and think, but might not do anything.
And the end of the quote, which MLMs never mention: But there’s nothing more powerful than knowledge on fire. (ie knowledge and action).
Ignorance wins every time, in MLM land.
Your Crownless Princesses
Notes from watching Patty Winter like 1,000 times!!! Feel free and use for your teams! 👸🏻🔥😱😱😱😱‼️‼️‼️‼️ Group link to vid is in comments❤️
👑Ignorance on FIRE 💙Senegence is Home 🙌🏻There’s no MLM school where you sit in classes and learn tidbits of things here and there for 8 you’re a day 5 days a week” “JIM RHON” <—— look him up! 🚨🚨Be relentless in your pursuit of what you want!! NOTHING WILL STOP YOU! 💥The grass isn’t greener on the other side! It doesn’t matter what company you’re with! It doesn’t matter what product you sell! Ultimately it’s up to YOU what you do with it! 💥We are basically schooled to be good little employees! There was nothing in school about Entrepunership. We all grew up with an employee mindset. Once I discovered Network Marketing, I never looked back. 🚨🚨The harder you work, the more you get paid!!! Actually doing the INCOME PRODUCING ACTIVITIES! 🚨🚨We decide what we get paid! If you’re looking to your upline to get paid, STOP IT! You’re not an employee! You are business owners 💙We have something REALLY unique here in Senegence 👌🏻We live in an instant gratification world! 📈STATS!! 💥 📌The average invest for a business is $6,500 📌80% will fail in the first 5 Year’s 📌90% fail in first 10 Year’s 🤷🏻♀️Why don’t people get it? 👉🏻Low investment, the harder you work the more you get paid! People think like an employee! 📌70% of our downline will be consumers 📌20% will be social enrollees 📌5% will be retailers 📌3% will recruit 6 or more recruits 📌2% will be super recruiters with 10 or more recruits and they will bring in 70% or your downline. Spend time with these people! 😱90% of people who sign up for a home based business will quit in the FIRST YEAR!😱 👉🏻Why? 👈🏻 😱People quit because they have UNREALISTIC Expectations! 💥It’s called NetWORK marking for a reason! It’s simple! Small things CONSISTENTLY over time. 💥How you DO something is how you DO everything!! 🚨People who complain about their upline/employer or complain about their product have an EMPLOYEE MINDSET! Don’t complain about something you got involved in! 🚨 🙌🏻You can not chase TWO rabbits 👑What we do in this is we BUILD PEOPLE UP!!! No other job will be like this where you show up to BUILD PEOPLE UP👑 Stick and stay and make it pay! 💥 What you put into it is what you get out of it!! 💥 💁🏻♀️If you are a MOTHER.... you are in SALES! 💁🏻♀️If you’re watching Netflix... you are in SALES! 🚨🚨Show up! BUT You have to APPLY what you’re learning!!! TRUST, that the rest of the road will guide you! You put into place one foot in at a time! 🚨🚨 🙌🏻It’s going to take you ONE YEAR to become competent and to learn the skills needed to do this business. 🙌🏻It takes 3 years to go and create a full time or part time income! 🙌🏻It takes 5 years to become a HIGH INCOME EARNER 🙌🏻It takes 7 years to |
Senate could hash out an agreement. Leaders are betting Republican senators who defected on other votes this week would feel enough pressure at that point to support whatever the final measure looks like. Kaiser Family Foundation senior vice president Larry Levitt noted that it could look very different from "skinny repeal:"
Of course, if “skinny repeal” is just an effort to get to a conference committee, who knows what ultimately comes out of that process. — Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) July 26, 2017
It would be awfully hard for Republicans and President Trump to avoid completely owning the insurance market if "skinny repeal" became law. — Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) July 26, 2017
But if Senate Republicans voted for this skinny repeal today or tomorrow, they'd be backing policy that would undermine the already shaky individual insurance market, result in fewer covered Americans and drive up premiums.
Here's what is likely to happen under the "skinny repeal" approach: Without the individual mandate to buy coverage, some people -- disproportionately healthy ones -- would opt out of health coverage, worsening the risk pools and driving up premiums. According to new Congressional Budget Office estimates released last night by Senate Democrats, 16 million fewer Americans would have health insurance next year compared to current law, and individual market premiums would increase 20 percent on average (although the proposal would save the government money because fewer people would be enrolling and accessing subsidies).
"You're talking about cutting one leg off a three-legged stool," Linda Blumberg, a senior health-policy fellow at the Urban Institute, told me. "Keeping the subsidies in place, the stool may be able to rest on the stump and not completely fall over, but you are going to see the effects of that by significantly higher premiums."
Granted, Obamacare's individual mandate hasn't worked as well as everyone originally thought. Many analysts concluded the penalty for failing to buy coverage is just too small, set at either $695 or 2.5 percent of one's income, whichever is higher. That's much less than most people would pay in monthly premiums over the course of a year. Plus, the government has few tools for collecting the penalty -- it can't garnish peoples' wages or have them arrested, for example. It can only draw the penalty from a taxpayer's tax refund, if they have one.
But here's the irony: Republicans say it's essential that they repeal Obamacare because it's destroying the individual insurance market -- but this "skinny repeal" approach wouldn't fix the marketplaces and would probably make them quite a bit worse. Insurers would still be subject to the ACA's sweeping coverage requirements that they offer specific benefits and cover even the sickest, most expensive patients (called "guaranteed issue" and "community rating"), but without the promise the healthy must sign up too.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Capitol Hill. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
The irony gets even deeper when you consider that the bare-bones bill would cause premiums to rise, even though Republicans have made lowering premiums a central demand in their quest to repeal the ACA. That's actually why three Senate conservatives -- Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida -- said they opposed a repeal bill the House passed in 2015.
Like the potential "skinny repeal" for which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is currently gauging support, the 2015 House bill would have ditched only a few parts of the ACA -- including its individual and employer mandates, medical device tax, prevention fund and a few other provisions. At the time, Cruz, Lee and Rubio said the House bill didn't go nearly far enough.
“This simply isn’t good enough," the trio said in a joint statement. "Each of us campaigned on a promise to fully repeal Obamacare and a reconciliation bill is the best way to send such legislation to President Obama’s desk. If this bill cannot be amended so that it fully repeals Obamacare pursuant to Senate rules, we cannot support this bill. With millions of Americans now getting health premium increase notices in the mail, we owe our constituents nothing less.”
Indeed, most Republicans do understand the need for an incentive for people to buy coverage to create a functional insurance market. Both versions of the House and Senate bills to replace the ACA contained penalties for those who didn't maintain continuous coverage -- violators would have to pay higher premiums under the House bill and they'd have to wait six months to enroll under the Senate version. And a bill proposed in 2015 by Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) also required people to maintain continuous coverage if they wanted protection against being denied coverage or being charged higher premiums based on their health status.
A group of Senate Republicans -- including 27 members still holding office -- submitted a brief to the Supreme Court back in 2012 when the ACA was being challenged as unconstitutional. In it, they argued that the individual mandate is the "heart" of the health-care law, and without it, both the number of uninsured Americans and premiums would skyrocket (Yale's Abbe Gluck explains more here).
And many conservative health policy experts agree repealing only the individual mandate is a crummy idea.
"Having guaranteed issue and community rating without some sort of mandate is structurally a rather dangerous thing to do," Robert Graboyes, a health-care scholar at the Mercatus Center. "It's an invitation to a death spiral."
As for insurers, they're terrified that Republicans are considering "skinny repeal" as a possibility. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association came out yesterday against "skinny repeal," saying it's "critical" for a health-care bill to include strong incentives for people to obtain health insurance and keep it year-round.
"A system that allows people to purchase coverage only when they need it drives up costs for everyone," BCBS said in a statement.
Democrats, who are mostly standing on the sidelines as Republicans undergo 20 hours of health-care debate this week, are firing hard at the "skinny repeal" idea:
House Budget Dems:
GOP's "skinny" repeal idea => bloated premiums for you and your family. https://t.co/ujswGXCYhp — House Budget Dems (@HouseBudgetDems) July 26, 2017
From Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.):
"Skinny repeal" should be called "gut it and run." Voting to destroy insurance markets and kick millions off health care remains immoral. pic.twitter.com/D8N1Jlk6tD — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 26, 2017
If the Senate passes "skinny repeal" – which guts the marketplace – premiums will skyrocket. Insurers will quit. — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 26, 2017
From Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
.@SenateGOP, let’s be clear: voting yes on a “skinny repeal" is giving the Freedom Caucus full rein to destroy our health care system. — Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) July 27, 2017
House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.):
The Senate has rejected repeal & replace & straight repeal. It's time to work together to improve ACA. https://t.co/dtuZX376sI — Steny Hoyer (@WhipHoyer) July 27, 2017
AHH, OOF and OUCH
Senate Republican leaders leave the chamber on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. (Photo by Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)
AHH: The Senate is on its third day of health-care debate. Late Tuesday, senators voted down an Obamacare repeal-replace bill. Yesterday, they defeated, in a 45 to 55 vote, a repeal-and-delay bill offered as an amendment by Sen. Paul. Today, members are gearing up for a loooong vote-a-rama starting possibly this afternoon, in which dozens of amendments can be offered. Want to understand how this all works? My colleague Kelsey Snell has a super-duper helpful explainer here. And here's a tracker from The Post's Kim Soffen:
Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader, at his new office at Morelis, an investment bank. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
OOF: Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader who was ousted in 2014, admits he never believed Republicans would follow through on their many promises to repeal Obamacare, in a candid interview with the Washingtonian. Cantor played a huge role in driving Obamacare repeal as a core GOP message in the years just after the health-care law was enacted. Asked whether he feels partly responsible for his party's current predicament, Cantor responded "Oh, 100 percent."
“To give the impression that if Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, that we could do that when Obama was still in office....” Cantor said, shaking his head. “I never believed it.”
Cantor also said he wasn’t the only one aware of the charade. “We sort of all got what was going on, that there was this disconnect in terms of communication, because no one wanted to take the time out in the general public to even think about ‘Wait a minute—that can’t happen,'" Cantor said. But he added this: “If you’ve got that anger working for you, you’re gonna let it be.”
"It’s a stunning admission from a former member of the party leadership—that the linchpin of GOP electoral strategy for the better part of a decade was a fantasy, a flame continually fanned solely because, when it came to midterm elections, it worked," Elaina Plott writes.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
OUCH: Tom Price, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, is being candid too. Yesterday, Price told CNBC that Senate Republicans need to aim for the "lowest common denominator" to keep the quest for an ACA repeal bill alive.
"What gets us to 50 votes so that we can move forward on a health-care reform legislation... that's what needs to happen. And that status quo isn't working out for folks out there in the real world," Price said. "Legislation is one step at a time. And so we'll see what the next step is and move on from there."
TRUMP TEMPERATURE
President Trump delivers remarks to the American Legion Boys Nation and the American Legion Auxiliary Girls Nation at the White House on Wednesday. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
President Trump is glued to the health-care scene unfolding in the Senate chamber. His tweet this morning:
Come on Republican Senators, you can do it on Healthcare. After 7 years, this is your chance to shine! Don't let the American people down! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2017
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is followed by reporters as she arrives to vote on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. (Photo by Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)
--The administration is reportedly making threats to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of two moderate Republicans who voted against even starting health-care debate. According to a report from the Alaska Dispatch News, Murkowski's office -- and the office of Dan Sullivan, Alaska's other senator -- received phone calls yesterday afternoon from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke letting them know the vote had put Alaska's future with the administration in jeopardy.
Sullivan called the call from Zinke a "troubling message." "I'm not going to go into the details, but I fear that the strong economic growth, pro-energy, pro-mining, pro-jobs and personnel from Alaska who are part of those policies are going to stop," Sullivan told the Dispatch News.
"I tried to push back on behalf of all Alaskans," he added. "We're facing some difficult times and there's a lot of enthusiasm for the policies that Secretary Zinke and the president have been talking about with regard to our economy. But the message was pretty clear."
Trump had blasted Murkowski in a tweet earlier on Wednesday:
Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
--Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) aimed some crude language at Murkowski yesterday, saying on MSNBC that someone needs to go to the Senate and “snatch a knot in their a**.”
“I think it’s perfectly fair," Carter said, defending Trump's criticisms of the Alaska Republican.
"Let me tell you, somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their a**," Carter said in response to a question from Ali Velshi. "I’m telling you, it has gotten to the point where how can you say I voted for this last year, but I’m not going to vote for it this year.”
The clip, from MSNBC's Kyle Griffin:
Here it is: GOP Rep. Carter, asked about Murkowski: "Somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass." @MSNBC pic.twitter.com/1CVcENn9Kq — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 26, 2017
A helpful definition of "snatch a knot," for those of us who never heard the term before:
For everyone, like me, who has never heard this expression in their lives https://t.co/VQDQswmA8W pic.twitter.com/Ig2XQ0FrT3 — Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) July 26, 2017
HEALTH ON THE HILL
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
--Senate Republican leaders have little room to navigate as they try to craft a skinny bill, as just three defections within their ranks would deprive them of the 50 votes they need to pass legislation (assuming a tiebreaking vote by Vice President Pence). In each of the two most important votes the Senate has cast since taking up the bill, at least 13 percent of Republicans defected to join Democrats in opposition.
“This certainly won’t be easy. Hardly anything in this process has been,” McConnell said on the Senate floor yesterday.
"In an effort to muster enough votes for a narrow bill, GOP leaders suggested that even some proposals that have died in the Senate could come up again once they enter negotiations with the House," my stellar colleagues write. "Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said proposals offered by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) that were rejected Tuesday as part of a broader rewrite measure could resurface."
Sen. Graham said that a scaled-back bill “is not a solution to the problem” but there did not appear to be another option. He appears willing to go along with "skinny repeal" — but only if he is assured that another plan he has offered along with Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana would be reconsidered.
Cassidy has been earnestly touting that plan:
On with @CNN shortly to discuss health care. The Graham-Cassidy amendment is the best way forward to take care of patients. — Bill Cassidy (@BillCassidy) July 26, 2017
--Seven (seven!) Republicans voted yesterday against a repeal-only bill -- even though nearly all of them voted for the same bill back in 2015, when it was assured President Obama would veto it. The defectors included: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine (she was the "no" vote previously), Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Dean Heller of Nevada, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rob Portman of Ohio.
Alexander's reasoning, per HuffPost's Jennifer Bendery:
"Pilots like to know where they’re going to land when they take off & we should too." -Sen. Alexander, who opposed O-care repeal-w/o-replace — Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) July 26, 2017
--Senate Democrats will reject an amendment offered by GOP Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) designed to smoke out support for a single-payer system, my colleague Dave Weigel reports. A spokesman for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called it a "sham."
The Daines amendment, which the Montana senator has admitted he won’t actually vote for, will propose the text of a House “Medicare for All” bill. Democrats view it as a ploy to get some of the party’s more vulnerable senators to vote “against single payer,” angering the party’s base.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
--Meanwhile, this emerging "skinny repeal" strategy faces serious headwinds in the House, with lawmakers already skeptical differences between the two chambers can ever be bridged, my colleague Mike DeBonis reports.
"House Republicans who fought tooth and nail over the course of months earlier this year to expand the scope of the repeal legislation are saying 'fat chance' to the skinny repeal — including key members on the conservative and moderate ends of the GOP — and say it is difficult to see what legislative product could span the divide between the chambers," Mike writes.
“I don’t think it’s going to be very well received,” said Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. The group with dozens of members met Wednesday and had a “fairly negative” reaction to the skinny-repeal plan, Walker said.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and a key player in the negotiations that produced the House bill, told reporters in recent days that a skinny bill would be “dead on arrival” in the House and that a conference committee would have to be convened to work out a compromise:
Per Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur:
.@RepMarkMeadows just said there’s “zero” chance the House would pass a skinny repeal of ACA. Then he made a hand-signal that read zero. — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) July 26, 2017
A few more reads from the Post and beyond:
Trey Gowdy demands opioid strategy from Office of National Drug Control Policy Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said Wednesday that the Office of National Drug Control Policy has failed to produce a strategy or a budget plan to address the growing opioid epidemic across the United States. Washington Examiner
MEDICAL MISSIVES
Rep. Scalise discharged from hospital weeks after shooting, to begin rehabilitation The Republican congressman suffered a life-threatening gunshot wound in June when a man opened fire at a baseball field in Alexandria. Dana Hedgpeth
STATE SCAN
How Obamacare saved Detroit The city is the health law’s quiet urban success story — with the uninsured rate falling from 22 percent to 7.4 in just three years. Vox
DAYBOOK
Grassroots activists, health care advocates, and concerned voters, rally on the Capitol Hill grounds against the Republican healthcare bill in Washington.(Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Coming Up
A health-care rally is planned for Saturday in Washington, D.C.
SUGAR RUSH
Republicans and Democrats make their cases during Senate health-care debate:
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on health-care debate: ‘What kind of process is this?’
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) are introducing a health-care amendment that would maintain taxes on the wealthy established under Obamacare:Meg Lanker-Simons, who I”ll presume hyphenates her surname to prove she’s not beholden to the patriarchy, is a bespectacled female wildebeest who grazes the campus of the University of Wyoming, always on the lookout for sexual harassment but never quite able to find it.
On Thursday she will appear in court to face misdemeanor charges that she interfered with a police investigation by fabricating an online male identity who claimed he wanted to “hatefuck” her and thus transform her into a “good Republican bitch.” After this initial”and, according to police, self-generated”post on April 24, Lanker-Simons responded by saying, “I”m left to wonder if there’s someone out there with a violent fantasy about me….”
I”ll bet she wonders that a lot. Or maybe “hopes” is a more apt choice of words.
Simons, a blogger that received kudos from Think Progress and is also chums with terrorist bomber Bill Ayers, appeared to bask like a whale shark in the odd sort of attention that only modern-day victims, real or imagined, seem to enjoy. That is, until a warrant for her arrest was issued.
Rather than upbraiding her for wasting public resources and staining the school’s reputation, the University of Wyoming issued a statement that Meg’s arrest should not be remembered as an example of third-wave feminism gone psycho, but it should be honored in that it “sparked an important discussion” about how the school has “no tolerance for sexual violence,” even if, well, a mentally unbalanced woman is simply imagining it.
I”ve seen bumper stickers that say feminism is the radical idea that women are people. But in practice, it seems more like the pseudo-religious delusion that women are innocent.
Twisted misogynist that I am, I actually do see women as human and thus fully capable of malice and deceit in order to achieve their ends.
“I”ve seen bumper stickers that say feminism is the radical idea that women are people. But in practice, it seems more like the pseudo-religious delusion that women are innocent.”
But don”t try telling a modern radical feminist that women sometimes lie, especially about the unpardonable sins of rape and sexual assault. She”ll call you a slut-shaming, patriarchy-supporting, dickless scumbag rape apologist who denies we live in a “rape culture” that constantly sends out loud messages that rape is cool and groovy and ginchy and happenin”.
Feminist author Catharine MacKinnon and her wrinkly, desiccated vagina once wrote that “feminism is built on believing women’s accounts of sexual use and abuse by men.”
If so, feminism is built on a shaky house made of soft tampons.
Depending on whose stats you believe, false rape accusations comprise anywhere from 1% to 90% of all rape accusations.
It’s not as if women have ever been caught fabricating rape accusations as a form of revenge against their lovers. They”ve never concocted stories to get their ex-husbands nor their ex-boyfriends jailed. They”ve never cried rape to get rid of a current husband, either. It’s not as if adult women cheat on their partners and then try to cover it by crying rape. This never happens. Never. No, not even once. It’s not as if teenage girls do this, either. Mistresses never cry rape, either. It’s not as if a woman has ever lodged a false rape complaint merely because a man forgot her name after a one-night stand. And it’s certainly not as if false rape accusations motivated by a thirst for romantic vengeance have happened again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
Modern feminism also teaches that it is the supremely evil patriarchy whose hairy, talon-tipped hands have molded a society that makes women feel ashamed of their sexuality. Therefore, it is impossible that women sometimes genuinely feel ashamed for engaging in consensual sex and then deal with their guilt by falsely accusing men of raping them. It’s not as if they feel guilty for having consensual sex with strangers and then turn around to falsely accuse them of rape. It’s not as if they sometimes consent to sex with multiple partners simultaneously and then claim they were gang-raped. It’s not as if they feel guilty for one-night stands and subsequently cry rape, so get that thought out of your mind, no matter what you read in the papers.
Pay to Play - Put your money where your mouth is and subscribe for an ad-free experience and to join the world famous Takimag comment board.Here’s what’s being added to Final Fantasy XV’s Chapter 13
Final Fantasy XV‘s notorious Chapter 13 will see some changes this month. Along with balancing adjustments, the team at Square Enix has been at work on a number of other enhancements based on user feedback.
Speaking with Game Informer, producer Haruyoshi Sawatari gave a run down on what we can expect when the new patch launches on March 28.
“So before, obviously, it was just Noctis by himself, kind of alone without the powers of his weapon summoning abilities,” said Sawatari. “But what we’ve done for Chapter 13, is we’ve added a separate route for Gladio and Ignis after they get split off from Noctis, so you actually get to play as Gladio, and see what happened from their side of things until they reunited with Noctis.
“You’ll see some additional cutscenes [that] just show you what took place while Noctis was kind of on his own. You’ll get some actual gameplay with the party of Gladio and Ignis together. You’ll see what happened to Emperor Aldercapt and [Ravus], and where they ended up being during the whole time.
“These are just the supplementary scenes that were added into Chapter 13, and that’s just for Chapter 13. But aside from that, we’re overhauling the ring magic, so the three spells that you could use with the Ring of the Lucii – those are completely powerful now, like super powerful now.”
Sawatari also commented on the upcoming Episode Gladiolus DLC saying it should take players around two hours to complete the whole thing. Those who do complete it can dive into additional modes that offer more replay value and other challenges.The Holy War Against the Dornish Heresy (1985-1980)
As with so many other incidents in the history of the Great Game, in order to achieve his triumph at the Great Council of Eternal Peace, the High Spider had turned on his former allies, made false promises and broken them as easily as other men breathed, called in every debt and every favor, so that by the end of it, he had enemies in every corner of the South. Thus, following the Great Council, his enemies (seeing for the first time who they all were and how numerous they were) began to work against him.
It began slowly. One by one, the Storm King, the King of the Rock, and the King of the Mountain and Vale began to withhold their tithes from the Starry Sept, claiming that the Faith had become excessively interested in secular matters and that a period of spiritual cleansing and austerity was needed. With his bills from the completion of the Starry Sept’s renovation and the construction of the Crystal Palace beginning to come in, the High Spider turned to his old patron in Highgarden. But for once, his customary charm failed him, as Gwayne VII was still wroth that his conquests of the Riverlands had been stolen from him.
In a maneuver that Precocious records the High Spider blaming on Alton Manderly and Lucamore Lannister, Gwayne VII began to receive petitions calling upon him as “the greatest warrior-king of the Faith” to lead a “Holy War against the Dornish Heresy,” (as these petitions named the Dornish Rite), and so Gwayne refused to provide his customary subvention to the Faith until such time as the High Spider declared a Holy War in Dorne. However, later scholars argue that Gwayne’s conversion to the cause was ultimately less motivated by piety and more by the desire for conquest and a fear of the growing power of the Yronwood Kings, who in that time had succeeded in forcing the Lords of the Wells to pay tribute and were engaged in a campaign to seize the mouth of the Greenblood and so lay claim to the whole of the river.
This proved particularly politically difficult within the Faith, as in the wake of the High Spider’s pronouncement, the Moderate plurality (their ranks swollen by those former Exclusionists looking for a new home for their ideas) had begun to demand even-handed treatment in matters of orthodoxy, and even some of the Spider’s allies within the Heptarian movement were looking to show that their theological position was distinct from outright heresy. Stories began to circulate among the Councils of Faith that the Dornish worshipped foreign gods in the place of the Seven, with the Vulture standing in for the Stranger[1], the Rhoyne standing in for the Mother (at least among the Orphans of the Greenblood, always a recusant minority in that kingdom), the Father holding a tortoise instead of his usual scales of justice, and other wild rumors.
The cruel irony in all of this is that it was the High Spider’s very closeness to Dorne – his mistress Septa Sibyl, his patronage of Septon Mulciber (formerly of House Dryland), even his fondness for Dornish silks – that made him uniquely vulnerable to this pressure pouring in from all corners. It is said that the only voice in Oldtown that spoke against the Holy War was his sister Lady Maris, whose astrological calculations foretold disaster. After a series of fruitless attempts to head off this pressure through a Holy Commission that would investigate the truth of such allegations, or through financial support from Volantene merchant-bankers (according to Precocious, the High Spider even offered to put up his crystal crown as collateral), the prelate was forced to bow to pressure.
And so the High Spider began to play his last trick, sending coded messages sewn into the binding of holy texts gifted to septs across Dorne. Most prominently, the Qorgyles, Ullers, and Drylands, who had only reluctantly bent the knee to the Bloodroyal, were offered their independence, and according to Precocious, an exchange of seven highborn maidens from each side to ensure that the Reachermen would not betray their new allies should the Lords of the Wells rise up against their sovereign king, and vice versa.[2] Precocious writes likewise of secret meetings with the reaving clans of the mountains where vast bribes of gold and silver were paid to ensure safe passage through the Prince’s Pass. On the other side of the Red Mountains, the Carons of Nightsong were offered the title of Defender of the Marches if they would join the Holy War (most to the displeasure of House Tarly, who believed that title to be theirs by right, and to the Storm Kings, who viewed the title as a bribe meant to win the Carons back to the Kingdom of the Reach after their many aeons service to Storm’s End).[3]
Yet even as the High Spider worked to divide his enemies, the host that began to gather at Highgarden was surprisingly understrength. In his climb to power, Septon Lewys had offended many of the ancient Houses of the Reach, and so Houses Redwyne, Manderly, and Rowan sent only excuses to Highgarden, claiming that a need to gather in the harvest in order to provide enough supplies for their men had delayed their forces; the Tarlys likewise claimed that rumors of a Dornish surprise attack on Horn Hill required their forces be kept at home. Moreover, the Westerlands, Stormlands, and the Vale, who had been so strident in their calls for the Holy War, sent only untrained levies largely made up of criminals, vagrants, and cripples. Most embarrassingly, Lady Maris Hightower mustered all of her forces and put them on a defensive footing in case of an attack by the Daynes. To make up the difference and further assuage the anger of Gwayne VII, the High Spider called forth virtually the entirety of the Warrior’s Sons from every chapterhouse on the continent, and called upon his kin of House Peake to call out every sword they could muster.
The Holy War’s High Tide
Despite these initial difficulties, the Holy War was initially astonishingly successful. At the northern entrance to the Wide Way the combined forces of the Reach and the Faith advanced slowly up the pass against a hail of spears, arrows, and rocks hurled by the forces of House Condor, who fought in the very shadow of the royal seat of Vulture’s Roost. At the outset, the Vulture King Deinochys IV was remarkably confident despite having but three thousand against ten times that number, telling his men to “dig your fortifications into the very mountains and no army of any size shall overcome you”– and indeed, the Dornish threw back a number of frontal assaults. However, their courage turned to ashes in their mouth when they saw Caron banners on the heights to their east – for the canny Marcher lords had mounted a mixed force of archers and spearmen on mules and sent them on a perilous flanking route around the entire Dornish army – and arrows began to fall like rain from on high. Even as his men scrambled for whatever cover they could find, Deinochys rode his horse through the deadly shower without a care, reassuring his men that his “leal cousins” would soon be arriving to relieve them. It was then that the rider he had sent to summon his cadet branch to his defense returned, a mutilated corpse lashed to the saddle and draped in the black and yellow of House Blackmont.[4]
With their enemy thrown into disarray, the Holy War threw itself forwards with the High Septon (issuing promises of expiation of all sin with a seven-flanged mace in hand) leading the Peake infantry over boulders to seize the eastern flank and link up with House Caron, and Gwayne VII and Uthor Sevenflowers leading a mailed fist of mostly dismounted men-at-arms up through the center, slowly but surely fracturing the defensive line of their enemy. Seeing the Caron foot advancing down the slopes to cut off his retreat, Deinochys the Last knew himself to be lost and rallied his personal guard together for a suicidal charge. Precocious claims that as he rode, the Vulture King called down a blood curse on his traitor kinsmen, and while there is no corroboration for this account, the Condors certainly paid the price in blood, for in the melee that ensued, Gwayne VII slew the Crown Prince of House Condor and Uthor Sevenflowers his grief-maddened father, ending the line of House Condor in a stroke.
Pursuing their fleeing enemies like hunters after hares, the victors charged up the slope toward the doomed castle. Storming over the walls “like men granted wings,” the Holy War cleansed the Vulture’s Roost, putting to the sword all inside. Afterwards, Gwayne VII ordered the castle put to the torch and its walls put down – perhaps to forestall the High Spider from claiming this holdfast for the Faith Militant – although he was gracious enough to divide the lands of House Condor between the Peakes and the Condors as rewards for their doughty service.
After their victory at the Battle of Vulture’s Roost, the Holy War found the Wide Way open to them and their supply trains unmolested by the Blackmonts. As they advanced down the pass, ravens arrived bearing word that the High Spider’s gambit had born fruit. Lord Apollyon Dryland and his vassals Lord Malebranch and Lord Acheron, as well as his former rivals from Houses Uller and Qorgyle, rose up against High King Yorick II, routing his garrisons and staking his tax collectors and satraps out on the dunes to perish. The only thing standing in between the Holy War and their Dornish allies were the forces of House Fowler and their Manwoody vassals, who had seized full advance of the chance to raise their full fighting force.
However, unlike the narrow mouth at either end of the pass, the valley floor of the Wide Way was eponymously broad, allowing the forces of the Holy War to advance in a broad formation that allowed the commanders to bring their greater numbers to bear. Most importantly, the relatively level ground allowed the heavy cavalry to operate freely.
The Battle of the Wide Way that followed was a chaotic affair: at the first, the Dornish had the advantage, as the canny King of Stone and Sky refused to meet his enemies in fixed defensive line but relied instead on the traditional hit-and-run tactics that had made his ancestors feared across the Marches. Fowler horse archers and Manwoody light lancers refused to come to blows with the heavier cavalry of the Holy War, time and again making feigned retreats to draw them away from the slow-moving infantry so that the Dornish could wheel and shower the footmen with arrow and javelin, looking for a weakness in the line that their lancers could exploit. The battle turned when the infantry in the center seemed to break and opened a hole in the line, and King Gyr the Elder ordered his men to charge. The Dornish lancers broke through…
Only to find themselves caught in the High Spider’s web. Far from breaking, the Holy War’s infantry reformed into two disciplined schiltrons, with spearmen at the front defending archers in the center who poured on volleys from close range. And once the Dornish host was clear of the schiltrons, they found a reserve of heavy cavalry under Lord Archibald Caron just large enough to pin them in place while the main force under Gwayne VII raced back towards them. What ensued was a bloody melee, which saw Gyr the Elder fall to Gwayne VII’s blade, although not before Lord Hugh Manwoody dealt the Gardener king a grievous wound under the arm. Unlike at the Vulture’s Roost, however, the wide-open territory allowed the remains of the Dornish host to retreat in good order under the command of Gyr the Younger and Lord Hugh Manwoody.
The Holy War had paid the cost in blood both highborn and low, but were masters of the southern entrance to the Wide Way – all of Dorne lay before them.
With the King receiving care from his maesters, the Holy War paused to take a council of war. This council divided badly, between those favoring Lord Caron’s argument that the Holy War should first reduce the fortresses of the Fowlers and the Manwoodys to guard their rear, and those favoring Uthor Sevenflowers’ argument that the Holy War should push on to link up with their Dornish allies. In this moment, the High Spider held the balance of power. Uncharacteristically, the gambler threw his weight behind the more cautious approach, perhaps fearing that without the Gardener king by his side, he could not fully control |
across from them rather than right next to them – the next paragraph will go some way to explaining why and was another reason I found labels handy.
Longer Arms One Day?
When I was looking around at the various options for quads, the larger the arms and therefore props, the better the lift capacity including batteries and therefore longer flight times. Rather than cut my cables precisely to length, I decided to leave an extra bit of slack there in case I decided to put longer arms and larger props on my quad at a later stage. Luckily, this could still be done in a tidy way by creating loops protruding from the front and back of the frame. A few cable ties and it doesn’t get in the way or look bad (the picture below is before the ties went on). Not necessary, but might be handy later…
More good information on motor direction/setup can be found at the following links:
Ardupilot Wiki
Black Tie Aerial
Finishing Up
With the motors connected to the ESCs, the top (or bottom depending on how you look at it) plate of the dirty frame can be added and the landing gear attached. Don’t forget the threadlocker and keep things tidy with a few cable ties for the motor cables (get the really thin ones – every gram counts!).
As always, if you have any questions, please leave a comment.He wanted one last trip to Margaritaville before spending the next three decades in prison.
One of three black men who wore Hollywood-grade masks to make them look white in a 2010 stickup begged a Brooklyn federal court judge for a stiff one before getting sentenced.
“Do I get a last wish?” Akeem Monsalvatge asked Judge Raymond Dearie. “I feel like it’s an execution. Do I get a last meal? Can I get a Patrón margarita?”
But happy hour was over for Monsalvatge, Edward Byam and Derrick Dunkley, each of whom Dearie hit with the mandatory minimum sentence of 32 years.
The judge suggested the terms were harsh but blasted the men for their outrageous robbery of a Queens check-cashing store.
“Each of you showed great potential,” he said. “You had the benefit of youth, which will be squandered behind bars.”
Inspired by the 2010 Ben Affleck flick “The Town,” the men paid nearly $3,000 for three masks and dressed up as cops during the $200,000 heist.
Afterward, the childhood pals set out on a shopping spree from Manhattan to Beverly Hills, buying such luxury items as $1,600 Christian Louboutin shoes and $600 Louis Vuitton belts.
But they made a series of missteps that led to their arrest and a conviction last August.
During the heist, the men flashed an employee a photo of her house to intimidate her. Cops found the picture at the scene and traced it to a nearby Walgreen’s, where surveillance footage showed one of the men buying a printout of the image.
And Byam e-mailed an effusive thank-you to the mask maker.
Prosecutors showed jurors pictures of the men cavorting in high-end clothes in hotels and nightclubs across the country.
One showed Monsalvatge in a T-shirt from “The Town.”
Aping the crooks in the film, the men wore masks and splashed the scene with bleach.
“They used masks and costumes to elude law enforcement, but as they have learned today, their disguises could not shield them from justice,” said Brooklyn US Attorney Loretta Lynch.
The men plan to appeal.My relationship with my kitchen is, well, complicated.
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As a millennial, I came of age in the era of the farmer’s market, so I have a deep appreciation for a nice locally sourced carrot or a slightly imperfect organic pear. I dutifully read Mark Bittman’s columns and Michael Pollan’s books, so I am well aware that I will live a sad, sub-par, probably bloated life if I refuse to eat at home and choose, instead, to consume the processed junk peddled by America’s industrial food complex. I admit to occasionally binge-watching MasterChef. But this love of food hasn’t translated into a love of cooking. My mother is a fantastic cook, but she worked full time and in the rush to get dinner on the table by 7, she often relied on semi-prepared foods, like pre-marinated meats or curry mixes. From where I sat, cooking seemed like a drag, something that took time and effort in the midst of an already overcrowded schedule. To quote Krishnendu Ray, the chair of the food studies program at New York University: “Caregiving comes at a cost. Whenever there is a labor of love, there is also a labor of resentment.” Advertisement When I moved into my first apartment years later, my stovetop seemed foreign and intimidating. At one point during graduate school, in a particularly tiny Bay Area apartment, I used my oven as a filing cabinet. Now, at age 32, after three years of marriage, my husband and I find ourselves wanting to sit down to a nice home-cooked dinner at the end of the day. But we’re too busy and too inexperienced in the kitchen to make that happen. We eat out a lot, often hitting up Chipotle or our local Vietnamese place on the way home from work, behavior fairly typical of our demographic. Millennials spend more on food outside the home than any other generation, averaging $50.75 a week. As the two of us consider starting a family, we worry about how our culinary ineptitude will impact our future children. We are beginning to wonder whether we even have what it takes to put a proper, nutritious dinner on the table for our little ones. While we do not have much choice over the meals we receive, our box is slowly helping us to acclimate to our kitchen (for purposes other than document storage, that is). Enter the meal kit, our partial solution to getting ourselves fed healthily. Every Sunday, we receive a box full of individually wrapped and labeled ingredients for five dinners complete with detailed–and, fortunately for me, idiot-proof–recipes. Just Add Cooking, the service we use, exclusively serves the Boston area and uses largely local produce; it saves us time planning meals and shopping for groceries, an especially gruesome task during winters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While we do not have much choice over the meals we receive, our box is slowly helping us to acclimate to our kitchen (for purposes other than document storage, that is). Although my mother laments that we are paying far more for each meal than she ever spent on groceries for our family, we’ve calculated that we spend slightly less than we would if we were eating out for those meals. And I’m hardly alone. Technomic, a food-industry consulting firm, predicts that the meal-kit service segment of the market will grow to between $3 billion-$5 billion over the next 10 years based on current adoption rates. People like me are the reason venture capitalists are fire-hosing money at the space in a fairly spectacular fashion: Since boxed-meal startups Blue Apron and Plated launched in 2012, they have raised $58 million and $21.6 million, respectively; the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Blue Apron is in talks to raise a huge new round from investors that would value the company at $2 billion. And HelloFresh, a European meal-kit company founded in 2011 and backed by notoriously competitive startup copycat Rocket Internet, just closed $126 million in Series E funding with the goal of making incursions in the U.S. market. Blue Apron delivers more than two million meals a month, and HelloFresh claims it’s already doing twice that volume.
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U.S. consumers have a plethora of other meal kits to choose from, each with a slightly different gimmick: ChefDay offers step-by-step videos so you can cook along with chefs (though the company recently announced it would temporarily suspend deliveries for a “crucial phase of transition”); Din cuts up some of the ingredients for you; Peach Dish brings you Southern-inspired cuisine, and smaller, regional companies are popping up around the country like so many shiitake mushrooms. With all these companies duking it out for the boxed-meal consumer, the question remains: Just how many are there of us to go around, anyway?
Given that restaurants and grocery stores sell $1.2 trillion of food every year, even in the most optimistic scenario meal kits currently constitute one quarter of one percent of food sales–and some think they will remain an extremely specialized solution for a sliver of the population. “I have a hard time believing that this is the way we will eat every single day,” says Darren Seifer, food and beverage analyst at the consumer research company NPD Group. “This is a very niche option that is barely even showing up in the data.” I have a hard time believing that this is the way we will eat every single day. Advertisement Brian Todd, president of the food intelligence nonprofit The Food Institute, says that even if the boxed-meal industry does hit the $5 billion mark, it’s still, relatively, peanuts. “It’s important to keep the numbers in perspective,” he says. “Even if meal kits grow to that level–which strikes me as extremely rapid growth in one category–it’s such a small portion of the overall food business.” Some food scholars are skeptical as well. “I’m betting that much of this hype is investor-led,” says Nina Ichikawa, the policy director at the Berkeley Food Institute. “Basic everyday food is not as profitable as luxury take-out. Investors are excited that there’s now a higher-margin item on the horizon. But that doesn’t mean there will be an avalanche of customers. I certainly can’t afford this stuff.” But investors are betting big that the naysayers are wrong. They are wagering hundreds of millions of dollars that these companies can triumph, in part, by playing on Americans’ nostalgic ideas about home and hearth–even if it means higher price tags, packaging waste, and convincing a generation to overcome any qualms it may have about this new way of putting dinner together.
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The meal kit is a relatively recent innovation. It was born in Stockholm, Sweden, when Kicki Theander, a mother of three, observed that many families wanted to eat home-cooked dinners but struggled to manage the logistics of meal planning, purchasing, and cooking. In 2007, she launched Middagsfrid (roughly translated: “dinner time bliss”), a service that brought bags of groceries to people’s doors. It was an instant hit. Theander’s brand quickly spread to Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, and spawned a range of competing companies. At least 10 different meal-kit companies now operate in Sweden alone, and the country’s population is under 10 million people. In the U.S., boxed-meal services were initially adopted by millennial urbanites. “These are people with more expendable income who are looking for convenience and perhaps do not know how to cook on their own,” Todd says. Plated, Blue Apron, and HelloFresh are all headquartered in New York and although they are available nationwide, they tend to do particularly well in cities like New York and San Francisco where grocery shopping can be a challenge because many people don’t have cars. “Our customers are primarily living in and around major metro areas,” Nick Taranto, Plated’s co-CEO and cofounder tells Fast Company. “They are largely college-educated, dual-income families with no kids.” Nicole Marshall, a marketing professional in her early thirties, first started using Blue Apron when she was living in New York City, but found it less appealing when she moved to Denver. “The idea of cooking at home in New York is a pain because you’re hauling groceries all over town,” she says. “But in Denver, I pass by three grocery stores on the drive home from work, and there’s a thriving farmer’s market scene on the weekends. None of my colleagues here had ever heard of these boxes.” Will boeuf bourguignon and seafood paella go down well with the toddler set? Big-city dwellers are also used to spending a lot of money on food, since the cost of living tends to be high where they live. This is another reason they might be more amenable to boxed meals, which are an expensive proposition. Taranto says that his target demographic is what he describes as the “evolved eater,” which is, according to Plated’s proprietary research, a 31 million strong segment of the American population that cares deeply about the quality of their food and has enough disposable income to invest in eating well. Taranto says that while $12 a meal is a costly dinnertime time option for many, it is a reasonable expense to a segment of consumers whose alternative options include eating out, either at fast casual chains like Panera Bread or at fine dining establishments, or buying groceries from upmarket grocery stores like Whole Foods. “We’ve been very deliberate about going after the high end first,” he says. “As our logistical network expands we will be able to deliver at lower price points to more and more people.” Of course, the urban, dual-income, no-kids demographic is a limited and fleeting one–when my husband and I have kids and a mortgage, for instance, will our weekly box still seem like a worthwhile expense? Will boeuf bourguignon and seafood paella go down well with the toddler set? Advertisement This is something the boxed-meal companies are thinking about, too. In December 2014, Blue Apron announced it was offering a Family Plan that would feature kid-friendly dishes designed to serve four people at a cost of $8.74 a person, or $34.96 per meal. In its press release, it announced that this new product would allow it to start “doubling its addressable market.” Given that the average American family spends $151 on groceries for the whole week, or $21 for an entire day, Blue Apron’s program is over many families’ budgets. Still, Matt Salzberg, Blue Apron’s founder and CEO, says that the family plan has quickly become a sizable proportion of the company’s overall business, although he declined to provide hard numbers. He also insists that the box offers customers good value. “It’s very affordable,” he tells me. “Try to go shopping for our recipes at Whole Foods or at any other grocery store. Besides not being able to find many of the ingredients, it would cost you 60% more.” (This may well be true, but the products at a supermarket would almost certainly come in larger sizes and could be used for multiple meals, and one could shop for recipes requiring simpler and more affordable ingredients.)
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For some upper-middle-class families who are already shopping at premium grocery stores like Whole Foods or eating out a lot, though, meal boxes are a viable option. Take Stella Loven, a working mom in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her job as the president of the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce in New England keeps her days full, but when she comes home, she wants to create nutritious meals for her four-year-old daughter and six-year-old son. “The pressure is on: you want to be a good mom, you want to lose the baby weight, you want to be a good wife, all while being super fun. It’s just very hard,” she tells me. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t read all those books about what processed food does for your body: It just adds more anxiety when I come home and need to prepare dinner for my kids.” Sometimes I wish I hadn’t read all those books about what processed food does for your body: it just adds more anxiety when I come home and need to prepare dinner for my kids. Loven’s stresses are fairly typical: according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, working women spend more than twice as long as working men cooking meals and cleaning up afterwards. Loven’s weekly meal box cuts down on time spent meal planning and grocery shopping, although there’s still the prep time of 30 minutes, give or take 15 minutes, a meal. She tried Blue Apron for a while and eventually settled on Just Add Cooking. Every week, she spends $139 for five four-person dinners, which translates to $6.95 per person per meal, or $27.80 for each dinner. Jan Leife, Just Add Cooking’s co-founder and managing partner, says that family boxes represent 60% of the company’s sales. As boxed-meal companies grapple each other for control of the American dinner plate, it is worth asking just how, exactly, they may be changing our relationship with food. After all, food is not just about nutrition: it is also about culture, community, family traditions. My conversations with the founders of meal-kit companies demonstrate these companies are not just thinking about the practical needs of their clients, but also the emotion tied to preparing food and gathering around the table to eat it. While Americans may feel nostalgic for the romance of the family dinner depicted in Norman Rockwell paintings, many don’t feel equipped to cook due to lack of time or skill. “Part of why this is such a big idea is because we’re connecting our aspiration to cook and share food to the reality of a busy modern life,” says Taranto of Plated. “We have this primal desire to eat food together. But a lot of people in our parents’ generation did not learn how to cook, so many of us did not have the opportunity to learn from them. In some ways, the family dinner stopped with our grandparents.” A lot of people in our parents’ generation did not learn how to cook, so many of us did not have the opportunity to learn from them. Taranto is pointing to a shift that has been gradually happening over the last 50 years, as more women started working outside the home and corporations began churning out TV dinners, fast food, and easy takeout options–we’re looking at you, Seamless–reducing the labor required to put food on the table. Blue Apron, for its part, says it is explicitly committed to the idea of culinary education. “Chefs around the world wear blue aprons when they are learning to cook and for us, it’s a symbol of lifelong learning in cooking,” says founder Salzberg. The Evolution Of
American Dinner 1916: The Self-Service Grocery Store 1921: The Birth Of Fast Food 1933: Cake Mix (Eggs Required) 1954: The TV Dinner 1963: The Original Celebrity Chef 1967: Nuking It 1993: 24-Hour Food TV 1998: Fast Casual Dining 2000: The Rise of Online Grocers 2005: Dinner On Demand Cake Mix Photo: Flickr user Jamie Of course, this depends to an extent on how you define “cooking.” Is selecting or thinking about the dishes you want to make for your family, and then choosing the right cut of meat or the best seasonal vegetables an integral part of the process? Or is the act of combining ingredients that someone else has chosen, measured, possibly chopped, and packaged, to create recipes they have curated for you, enough? It is a subtle distinction, but one that suddenly became clear to me when I started cooking dinners straight out of a box.
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Last month, I was preparing the next meal in our kit, a vegetarian dish of shredded carrot patties with a side of mashed potato, celery, and leek. After 40 minutes of peeling vegetables and pureeing them in our barely-used industrial-sized Kitchenaid mixer (a wedding present from Aunt Jewell), I was proud of my accomplishment. I plated the food with all the earnestness of a MasterChef contestant, artfully sprinkling sesame seeds here and sprigs of fresh tarragon there. The food tasted great. My husband was impressed, but existential questions nagged me as I considered the plate: “Did I really cook this? Or did I just assemble it? Would I be able to replicate that meal without the help of the meal kit? Can you credibly claim to be a good cook if you cannot locate ingredients in a grocery store or know how to combine them on your own?” I was not particularly good company that evening. This is not the first time that corporations have toyed with the meaning of cooking. In the 1950s, cake-mix companies, following a slump in sales, believed that American women did not feel like they were cooking if they simply added water to the cake powder. Marketers were convinced that changing the mix formula to require users to add an egg gave them a sense of ownership over the cake they had made. While the boxed meal requires more involvement than Betty Crocker did with her Devil’s Food, these companies are still cutting out parts of the cooking process that many would argue are integral to idea of actually learning to cook. What is lost when families are not involved in selecting the dishes they cook? For one thing, it means that they are not sharing food drawn from their own store of recipes, their heritage, or even regional specialties. I was born to an Indian father and a Chinese mother, but spent my childhood around the world because of my father’s job in the airline industry. The only time I really felt connected to my culture was at dinner every night, eating rice with chicken curry, fried noodles, vegetables in soy sauce, or coconut chutney with dosa (a kind of Indian crepe). My husband, for his part, felt a link to his Jewish heritage when he was eating his grandmother’s matzo ball soup, brisket, or Saturday-morning bagels and lox. If the two of us don’t move past the meal kits, there is a distinct possibility that many of our family’s food traditions will end with us and instead will be decided by a well-meaning executive chef in an industrial kitchen. Krishnendu Ray, of NYU’s food studies program, points out that this transmission of food culture has been shifting slowly over the last century. “Knowledge about food was once conveyed in close proximity from mother to daughter or grandmother to grandchild,” he says. “Now we have to learn this from a company or the mass media. But we shouldn’t over-sentimentalize the past: American women have been learning about food from companies since the industrial revolution. For two generations, women have been learning recipes from the back of food packaging–think about the popularity of Jell-O molds or chocolate pound cake.” So I’m mourning a loss of culture and tradition that has already begun eroding. The meal-kit industry is only just beginning to consider the cultural or regional resonance of food. The big national brands like Plated, Blue Apron, and HelloFresh offer menus with a global bent, providing customers an educational experience in which they can discover new cuisines, unfamiliar spices, and new cooking techniques. However, a range of smaller brands have recently entered the scene offering a regionally specific cooking experience. Peach Dish, which ships nationally, offers “Southern-infused” recipes. And Boston-based Just Add Cooking’s entire goal is to keep things local, rather than expanding nationally, which its founders believe will also help to preserve regional cuisine. “There is a definite connection between local ingredients and local recipes,” says Jan Leife of Just Add Cooking. “It’s something we try to leverage in our meal boxes.” Leife is also wedded to the local model because he believes it is more environmentally sound; shipping nationally requires food to be kept chilled and packaged to avoid damage. When Just Add Cooking expands to a new region, Leife will set up a new hub in order to keep sourcing and menu planning local. “The big companies are very smart, of course, by grabbing land and expanding,” Leife says. “But in the long run, our model is definitely more sustainable and environmentally friendly. We’ve found that there is a market for our product among people who care about the waste involved.”
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And that’s another hurdle all boxed-meal companies must consider: waste, and consumer perception of it, a complicated but nonetheless crucial issue for meal kits as they try to take market share from grocery stores. Since the vast majority of meal-kit companies are not local, they face the complex supply chain logistics of transporting food from farms and manufacturing plants to locations across the country, while keeping everything at the right temperature. This is a hugely energy intensive process. Meal kits use large quantities of packaging to contain small amounts of spices or cheese or balsamic vinegar. This is something that Plated’s Taranto constantly wrestles with; his goal is to make the company 100% carbon neutral. As a step in that direction, Plated began shipping meals out using packaging made of jute, a recycled and renewable plant based fiber, starting June 1. But Taranto admits that being environmentally sustainable is an ongoing struggle. “The challenge is that customers want perfect-looking ingredients with no packaging,” he says. “This is, unfortunately, not realistic.” Marshall, the Denver-based marketing professional, tells me that she ultimately abandoned the boxed meal-kit concept entirely because of the sheer amount of waste she was accumulating. “I did not sleep well at night with the amount of garbage that was going out of my door every week when I was using Blue Apron,” she says. “It was the ice packs that really put me over the edge: there are massive amounts of them in the box, because it is delivered during the workday and you might not get to it for 8 to 10 hours, and there are no instructions about how to recycle them.” Customers want perfect-looking ingredients with no packaging. This is, unfortunately, not realistic. She admits that it is hard to make a direct comparison with grocery shopping, which involves waste of other kinds. For instance, grocery stores waste vast quantities of perishable produce because they are unable to precisely predict demand. The USDA estimates that 31% of food in grocery stores goes uneaten every year, resulting in a loss of $161.6 billion; France just made it illegal for supermarkets to throw away edible food in an effort to reduce waste on this epic scale. Meal kits, on the other hand, know exactly how many boxes they need to fill and are able to order precisely the amount of food they need. Taranto says that with predictive analytic technology, his company is able to keep food waste to under 2%. At home, consumers are also not wasting food, since they have exactly what they need for each recipe, down to the number of sprigs of mint or parsley, and each meal is exactly one serving–no more tossing the leftover mystery meat weeks after you initially stash it in Tupperware. And ultimately, as Nina Ichikawa, Berkeley Food Institute’s policy director, points out, this only accounts for a tiny sliver in overall food waste; it doesn’t account for the food wasted by farmers who are unable to predict demand or the food that is damaged as it is transported. “By only participating in a very narrow slice of the food chain, you can perhaps say that you are avoiding waste,” she says. “But by dipping in and out of it based on select consumer demands, that doesn’t reduce overall waste in the system.” Marshall believes that boxed-meal services need to think carefully about how to become more sustainable because earth-conscious millennials are paying close attention to the waste they are generating. She argues there are other possible models these companies could adopt, such as giving consumers a starter kit with the main spices they will use so they don’t need to send little packets every week or picking up the previous week’s box to reuse the containers. “We live in an age where we take our own bags to the grocery store,” she says. “These boxes do not coincide with that mentality at all.” The rippling environmental impact of meal kits is going to take on increasing importance if these services do manage to gain a wider audience.
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Advertisement Despite these challenges, campaigns by well-funded boxed-meal companies to change the way we eat will have ripple effects–and not just on wealthy, urban, childless subscribers. For instance, they might push grocery stores to renew their emphasis on using technology to improve convenience and consumer experience. The Boston Consulting Group predicts that global online grocery shopping is expected to be a $100 billion business by 2018. “That’s not just the Amazons of the world,” Todd of The Food Institute explains. “That’s actual grocery stores building up online ordering and delivery systems.” With the popularity of meal kits, he predicts that grocery stores may start grouping products into meals, so that you can pick up a package of ingredients to make chicken parmesan or whatever you’re in the mood for. This is, in fact, already happening in Sweden, where grocery stores offer meal kits and deliveries designed to compete directly with Middagsfrid. “We’re just at the dawn of this industry,” says Taranto. We live in an age where we take our own bags to the grocery store. These boxes do not coincide with that mentality at all. In another twist of the concept, three graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley’s school of public health are thinking about a way to apply the principles of meal kits to help poor communities. Single working parents, of all people, could benefit from time saved on meal planning and shopping. They’ve launched a low-cost meal-kit service, Cooking Simplified, that requires families to spend only 1% of their week–about an hour and a half–to make three different dishes that are big enough for about half a week’s meals (or, 10 servings), for $32. Each box contains only three recipes that are designed to result in leftovers that can be taken to work the next day. While the startup is still in its infancy, it offers a glimpse into the possibilities of developing less expensive options targeting a wider range of consumers. Todd also suggests that people might stop using the boxed-meal kits once they have developed the skills they need to cook on their own terms. “People who didn’t learn to cook growing up, but have been using these meal kits for several months or years might begin to feel comfortable planning meals or buying ingredients,” Todd says. If companies teach people to cook, they may find themselves losing those very customers. “Going to the grocery might suddenly become more interesting and they might look at the spice aisle in a new light. It might occur to them that it might be better value to buy a jar of bay leaves than to get one a week in their box,” graduating from the boxes to a more traditional, old-fashioned approach to meal planning, grocery shopping, and cooking. After several months of using our meal kit, our interest in it has started to wane. The meals are still tasty, but the novelty is wearing off and we sometimes have cravings for food that aren’t in our box. We occasionally skip weeks and dust off our cookbooks, picking recipes that strike our fancy then navigating our grocery store to hunt for cardamom or dill. I’m beginning to think we might be getting close to cooking like grown-ups, without training wheels. But perhaps I’m being optimistic. The other day I tried to make leek soup, but accidentally used the wrong part of the vegetable, the tough, dark leaves. As my husband bravely tried to swallow the slimy green liquid I produced at the dinner table, I found myself thinking: “This would never have happened with our box kit.” [Paper sculptures: Kyle Bean; Photos: Aaron Tilley; Mushroom and Tomato Photos: Celine Grouard for Fast Company ]Billionaire globalist George Soros (shown) has been dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into manipulating American elections in recent years, leaked documents show. While many critics have focused on his indirect links to a controversial voting-machine company, his electoral scheming goes much deeper, as a review of the documents by PJ Media shows. Rather than tampering with the outcome of particular elections, leaks from Soros' Open Society apparatus show he has far greater ambitions. Basically, he is seeking to “fundamentally transform America,” as Obama put it, by changing and manipulating the American electorate into supporting globalism, statism, collectivism, and his legions of radical politicians and elected officials. Soros, a self-described atheist, has also been exposed seeking to corrupt Christianity with his radical anti-Christian views. But as awareness of the scheming spreads, the Soros brand is becoming increasingly toxic among Americans from all walks of life.
Soros' assault on American elections revealed in leaked foundation documents is broad and multi-faceted. Among other schemes, the protegé of the unfathomably wealthy Rothschild banking dynasty has launched legal assaults on state-level efforts to limit voter fraud and ensure the integrity of elections. Essentially, the ploy appears to be aimed at facilitating mass voter fraud. Soros foundations have also been funding propaganda campaigns, racist ethnocentric “media” outlets, the subversion of journalism, vicious attacks on patriotic organizations, and more. The Soros network has also provided huge infusions of money to fringe and sometimes violent left-wing extremists and race-mongers (including racist groups like La Raza, or The Race) to build up pro-Soros AstroTurf groups. In direct politics, Soros has also been showering money on radical candidates at the local, state, and federal levels who will advance his anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Constitution agenda.
Some of the Soros funding is aimed at what is described in leaked documents as a plot to “build power” for “systemic change.” Indeed, the Soros machine even created the “Democracy and Power Fund” in a bid to dupe various groups of Americans into serving as a collectivist coalition to push Soros' extreme big government agenda. These groups, centered around attributes such as race and income, include “people of color, immigrants, young people, and low income people,” the document shows. Blacks and Latinos are both in Soros' crosshairs. The fund, according to leaked documents, seeks to “inspire” these groups with “multi-issue advocacy” to push Soros' agenda at the federal, state, and local levels. Between 2010 and 2012, Soros dropped $15 million on his “Power Fund.” As the name of the fund suggests, securing power for himself and the establishment at the expense of the Constitution and the American people is exactly what Soros, a convicted felon, has in mind.
To ensure that the propaganda and hate that Soros minions produce receive the requisite media coverage, Soros has also been building up his own personal “media” megaphone. Among other schemes, Soros was exposed funding something called “New America Media,” which pumps out ethnocentric collectivism and race-mongering to thousands of propaganda organs under the guise of “ethnic” media. Also funded by the Soros machine is what documents refer to as a “Media Consortium.” As if the establishment media was not “progressive” enough, Soros documents explain that the funding helps “a network of leading progressive independent journalism organizations focused on making connections, building a media infrastructure, and amplifying the voices of progressive journalists in the United States.” Apparently the Soros-funded “consortium” has “done much to build community and greater strength among progressive media outlets.”
J. Christian Adams, the former Justice Department attorney who left in 2010 after accusing the outfit of racial bias, explained the significance of Soros' media scheming in his in-depth investigation of the leaked Soros documents published by PJ Media. “Mainstream journalists frequently parrot progressive writers when covering voter fraud, thus rendering the Media Consortium Soros dollars well spent,” Adams wrote in an article that was posted on the Drudge Report before going viral. “The leaked documents also reveal deliberate and successful efforts to manipulate media coverage of election issues in mainstream media outlets like the The New York Times.”
When it comes to Soros manipulating press coverage of voter fraud, the process works similar to the Soros machine's Black Lives Matter operation. “The leaked funding documents describe how the propaganda about the'myth of voter fraud' is generated by two Soros-funded organizations, moved to blogger and racially-centric media outlets, and eventually to mainstream media,” Adams explained. Indeed, almost the exact same process is used by Soros to promote hatred of the police and racial agitation, with the ultimate goal of nationalizing law enforcement. As The New American has previously reported, Soros-funded groups protest and riot, Soros-funded academics produce propaganda “studies” to justify the narrative, and then Soros-funded propaganda organs provide media coverage of it all. The Washington Times described the Soros propaganda machine as an “echo chamber.”
The Soros network funds an incredible array of organizations that advance his extremism. Among those that are involved in fundamentally transforming America by manipulating the electoral system, many receive more than half of a million dollars annually. Among them is the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which brings together left-wing extremists, anti-constitutional radicals, overtly racist groups such as “La Raza” (The Race), statist-controlled Big Labor groups, known communist front groups officially condemned by U.S. authorities as “subversive,” and more. This year, the radical alliance even called on a UN-linked international organization founded and largely controlled by communist and socialist regimes to oversee U.S. elections. Other groups on the Soros dole are the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the extremist Center for American Progress, Advancement Project, Center for Community Change, Brennan Center, and more. The supposedly non-partisan League of Women Voters is also deeply involved with the Soros machine.
Soros also partners with various establishment controlled tax-exempt mega-foundations such as Atlantic Philanthropies, Carnegie, Ford, and New World Foundations, among others. It partnered with the globalist Rockefeller Brothers Fund in a scheme to change voter registration policies. Much insight about the Rockefellers' totalitarian agenda was revealed by dynasty boss David Rockefeller, who showered praise on the mass-murdering regime of Chairman Mao for leading what he touted as “one of the most important and successful” social experiments “in history.” Some 60 million to 100 million people were killed as part of the experiment Rockefeller was so pleased with. In his autobiography, Rockefeller also boasted about conspiring with a secret cabal against his country to build a global political system. “Some even believe [the Rockefellers] are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will,” Rockefeller wrote in his book. “If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I’m proud of it.” Soros shares the same agenda.
WikiLeaks has also revealed some interesting facts about Soros' political machinations. Indeed, Soros is mentioned more than 50 times in the Clinton and Democrat e-mails released so far. One e-mail is from Jacqueline Carozza, a Soros employee, to Clinton campaign boss and anti-Catholic bigot John Podesta. “With summer quickly approaching Mr. and Mrs. Soros are starting to plan the 2015 Southampton schedule and would enjoy your company,” she wrote last year to Podesta, who was also invited to an occult “Spirit Cooking” event with satanic overtones. “Please let me know which dates suit you best to come for a visit and hopefully we can coordinate a mutually convenient time for your stay.”
Beyond manipulating Americans into surrendering their heritage and their liberty, leaked documents also show that Soros has also been at the forefront of the establishment's efforts to corrupt Christianity. As The New American reported in August, hacked e-mails from his vast empire of shady tax-exempt |
past hundreds of nodes with full replication and encryption. ScalableBFT also provides a unique security model known as pervasive determinism which provides security not just at the transaction level but at the consensus level as well while encrypting each and every transaction using the Noise Protocol (see below).
Kadena uses deterministic consensus
The consensus mechanism is deterministic if the consensus process is fully specified in the protocol and this process does not employ randomness. As was stated above, Raft, for example, uses randomized timeouts to trigger elections when a leader goes down (since the leader can’t communicate “I’m about to crash”, there’s a timeout that trips to prompt a node to check if the leader is down) but the election isn’t part of consensus at the transaction level, it is instead a means to finding a node to orchestrate consensus.
ScalableBFT is deterministic and hardened such that:
Nodes will commit only when a majority of the cluster agrees with them The evidence of agreement must be fully auditable at any time When lacking evidence of agreement, do nothing.
Kadena is specifically designed for permissioned networks, and as such it assumes that certain attacks (like a DoS) are unlikely and are out of its control. If one were to occur, the system would either lock (all nodes timeout eventually with but an election would never succeed) or sit idle.
Once such an event ends, the nodes will come back into consensus and things will return to normal. However, in a permissioned network, administrators would have full control and kill the connection causing the issue.
Leader Election
Leader election is very similar to Raft in that any node can be elected leader, every node gets one vote per term, and elections are called when the randomized timeout one of the nodes fires (the timer is reset every time a node hears from the leader).
The biggest difference is that in Raft a node that gets enough votes assumes leadership, whereas in ScalableBFT a node that gets a majority of votes distributes those votes to every other node to demonstrate (in a BFT way) that it has been elected the leader by the cluster.
ScalableBFT’s mechanism fixes issues seen in Juno and Tangaroa, like a “runaway candidate” where a non-Byzantine node has timed out due to a network partition but, because its term has been incremented, it can’t come back into consensus and instead continues timeout then increments its term (“Runaway”.)
Raft consensus guarantees a strict ordering and replication of messages; it doesn’t matter what’s in each message and can range from random numbers to ciphertext to plain-text smart contracts. Kadena leverages the log layer as a messaging service when running in an encrypted context; much like Signal can run Noise protocol encryption over SMS. ScalableBFT runs Noise over a blockchain.
ScalableBFT adds consensus robustness, which the layer that deals with interpreting the messages assumes as a guarantee, but also incremental hashes that assure perfect replication of messages. Noise protocol slots between consensus and smart contract execution, encrypting/decrypting messages as needed; because the messages are ciphertext only some of the normal tricks for avoiding a Cartesian blowup of live tests are needed to run per message without leaking information.
Security model/pervasive determinism
Kadena uses the term “pervasive determinism” to describe “the idea of a blockchain that uses PPK-Sig based cryptography for authorship guarantees (like bitcoin) and is composed of a fully deterministic consensus layer in addition to a Turing-incomplete, single-assignment smart contract layer.
The implications of a ‘pervasively deterministic’ blockchain are rather profound, as it allows for a bitcoin-ledger class of auditability to be extended deep into the consensus layer by chaining together multiple layers of cryptographic trust.
Take as an example a transaction that loads a new smart contract module called “loans”. Say “loans” imports another module called “payments” that is already present in the chain. The successful import of “payments” alone implies the following (with each being fully auditable by cryptographic means):
Who signed the transaction that loaded “payments”
What consensus nodes were in the cluster at the time of loading
What consensus nodes agreed that the transaction was valid
What nodes voted for the current leader at the time of loading
Who the leader was
Who the previous leader was
Etc.
A pervasively deterministic system allows new transactions to leverage not only the cryptographic trust that naturally occurs as transactions are chained together in a blockchain, but also the trust of how those transactions entered the ledge in the first place. In so doing, you can create a system more secure than bitcoin because the consensus process becomes as cryptographically trusted, auditable, and entangled as well, with transaction level executions implying that specific consensus level events occurred and with each implication being cryptographically verifiable.
This provides BFT not just for the consensus layer but for the transaction layer (bitcoin already does this) as well. This is different from, say, PBFT which assumes that transactions sent from the client’s server are valid which leaves them with an ability to be compromised. Moreover, non-Raft BFTs generally entrust the client with the ability to depose/ban nodes. Pervasive Determinism takes an alternative viewpoint: trust nothing, audit everything.
Allowing ScalableBFT to incorporate pervasive determinism creates a completely paranoid system that is robust at each and every layer via permanent security (ie: a form of cryptographic security that can be saved to disk). It has bitcoin’s security model for transactions, extends this model to the consensus level, and adds smart contracts without the need for mining or the tradeoffs that most in the industry have become accustomed to. It’s a real blockchain that’s fast and scalable.
I asked Will Martino (co-founder of Kadena) for the specifics of how this worked for each layer:
What is your consensus-level security model?
For replication, Kadena uses an incrementally hashed log of transactions that is identically replicated by each node. These agree on the contents of the log via the distributed signed messages containing the incremental hash of a given log index, which are then collected by other nodes and used to individually reason about when a commit is warranted. No duplicates are allowed in the log and replication messages from the leader containing any duplicates are rejected immediately.
We use blake2 hashes and Term number to define uniqueness, allowing clients of the system to not worry about sending duplicates by accident or about a malicious node/man-in-the-middle (MITM) resubmitting commands. We employ permanent security, a PPK-sig-based approach to authorship verification (or any type of approach that can be saved to disk) that is very similar to how bitcoin verifies transactions but at the consensus level (in addition to the transaction level).
This is opposed to ephemeral security which uses secured channels (TLS) for authorship validation – a vastly inferior approach where the question “who sent the transaction X?” is answered not via PPK cryptography but via a consensus-level query because any individual node is incapable of providing a BFT answer.
What is your transaction-level security model?
The ideas of ephemeral and permanent security span both the consensus and transaction level, as it is consensus that hands the smart contract execution layer individual transactions. At the smart contract/transaction level we also use permanent security as well, supporting row level public key authorization natively in Pact.
This is important because ephemeral implies that an attacker is one server away from impersonating an entity; secured channels work by point to point distribution of new transactions by the client/submitter to the cluster nodes over TLS and consensus secures that a given transaction should be committed and replicated. However, if an attacker hacks the client server holding the other end of the TLS connection, they can transact as if they were the client without the cluster being the wiser.
Permanent security, on the other hand, has many keys for individual roles in a given entity thus requiring an attacker to gain access to the individual keys; further, with permanent security the CEO’s transactions are signed with a different key than the Mail Clerk’s transactions vs ephemeral where the “who is sending this transaction” is determined by a “from: X” field.
If the same TLS connection is used to submit both the CEO’s and the Clerk’s transactions, then the authorship and authorization logic is a “because I said so/trust me” model vs a PPK-sig approach where you verify against the appropriate key before execution. Kadena’s blockchain is designed to trust as little as possible; if we knew of a more paranoid or fine-grained approach than row-level PPK signatures we’d use that instead.
What is your confidential transaction model?
We use Double-Ratchet protocol (what Signal, WhatsApp, etc… use for encrypted communications) embedded into the blockchain (encrypted transaction bodies) for multi-party privacy preserving use cases. We work with the notion of disjoint databases via the ‘pact’ primitive in Pact – they describe a multiphase commit workflow over disjoint databases via encrypted messages.
Smart contracts
Pact is a full smart-contract language, the interpreter of which is built in Haskell. In Kadena, every transaction is a smart contract and the Pact smart contract language is open sourced. Pact is database-focused, transactional, Turing-incomplete, single-assignment (variables cannot be changed in their lifetime), and thus highly amenable to static verification.
Pact is also interpreted – the code you write is what executes on-chain – whereas Solidity is compiled, making it difficult to verify code, and also impossible to rectify security issues in old language versions, once compiled. Pact ships with its own interpreter, but can run in any deterministic-input blockchain, and can support different backends, including commercial RDBMS. In the ScalableBFT blockchain, it runs with a fast SQLite storage layer.
Characteristics of the Kadena Blockchain
The Kadena blockchain contains all these features:
In conclusion, Kadena has developed a fully replicating, scalable and deterministic consensus algorithm for private blockchains with high performance. This blockchain solution can be a giant leap forward for financial services companies looking to employ a real private solution that remains true to many of the key bitcoin blockchain features without mining (proof of work), anonymity and censorship resistance while catering to the key design features that financial services are craving particularly scalability and confidentiality.
This article was previously published on the Sammantics blog and has been reproduced here with permission. Some edits have been made for style and brevity.
Cogs image via ShutterstockA lesbian was brutally murdered in South Africa over the Christmas holidays shortly after graduating high school.
The mutilated body of Motshidisi Pascalina, aged between 18 and 20, was found in an open field near her home in Evaton township, Gauteng province. She was last seen on 16 December.
‘Her body was discovered in a veld two days later. We suspect she was raped. Her body was burnt. Her eyes were taken out and her private parts were mutilated,’ Cedric Davids, a member of the Young Communists’ League working committee in Gauteng, told eNCA news.
‘Most of her body had sustained burn injuries. Her parents identified her by her tattoo on her leg, it was the only thing visible.’
Four men have been reportedly arrested in connection to the murder.
#MotshidisiPascalina trended on Twitter on Tuesday (12 January) as members of the LGBTI community expressed their shock and anger at the murder.
Homophobic murders need to end. Do we not deserve to feel safe & comfortable with our sexuality? #MotshidisiPascalina — Fighter (@Lindo_My_Baby) January 12, 2016
Her crime was not being born a black woman, but daring to love black women – the thing the world knows not how to do #MotshidisiPascalina — mama action (@missmillib) January 12, 2016
#MotshidisiPascalina died at the hands of homophobic and sexist murderers. Say her name. Demand justice. — Sylva (@queenfeminist) January 12, 2016To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their excellent album Pink**, Japanese metal band Boris are reissuing a deluxe edition of the LP. It will come with a bonus album of previously unreleased songs that were recorded at the same time as Pink. Titled Forbidden Songs, the bonus album includes a track called "Are You Ready?" which you can stream below. Also below, find the tracklist.
Boris are also heading out on a North American tour this summer, and will be performing Pink in full during their shows; find a full list of dates below. Earth will support. The reissue will be available on 3xLP box set, 2xCD, and download on July 8 via Sargent House.
Pink (Deluxe Edition)
01 Pink
02 Woman on the Screen
03 Nothing Special
04 Blackout
05 Electric
06 Six, Three Times
07 Afterburner
08 Pseudo Bread (long version)
09 My Machine (long version)
10 Farewell (long version)
11 Just Abandoned Myself
Forbidden Songs
01 Your Name Part 2
02 Heavy Rock Industry
03 Sofun
04 Non/Sha/Lant
05 Room Noise
06 Talisman
07 N.F.Sorrow
08 Are You Ready?
09 Tiptoe
Boris:
07-22 San Diego, CA - The Casbah *
07-23 Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom *
07-25 Dallas, TX - Trees *
07-26 Austin, TX - The Mohawk *
07-28 Ybor City, FL - The Orpheum *
07-29 Orlando, FL - The Social *
07-30 Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade *
07-31 Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel *
08-01 Nashville, TN - Third Man Records *
08-03 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle *
08-04 Washington, DC - 930 Club *
08-05 Brookln, NY - Warsaw *
08-06 Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer *
08-07 New Haven, CT - College Street Music Hall *
08-09 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club *
08-10 Montreal, Quebec - Bar Le Ritz P.D.B.
08-11 Toronto, Ontario - Lee's Palace
08-12 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop *
08-13 Grand Rapids, MI - Pyramid Scheme *
08-14 Chicago, IL - Metro *
08-16 Madison, WI - Majestic Theater *
08-17 Minneapolis, MN - Fineline Music Cafe *
08-18 Lawrence, KS - Granada Theatre *
08-19 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater *
08-20 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge *
08-22 Seattle, WA - Neumo's *
08-23 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom *
08-25 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore *
08-26 Los Angeles, CA - The Regent Theater *
08-27 Las Vegas, NV - Hard Rock Hotel *Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
This Fourth Turning was ignited suddenly in September 2008 as the housing bubble, created by the Federal Reserve and their criminal puppeteer owners on Wall Street, collapsed, revealing the greatest control fraud in world history. A crisis mood was catalyzed as the stock market dropped 50%, unemployment surged to highs not seen since 1981, foreclosures exploded, and captured politicians bailed out the criminal bankers with the tax dollars of the victims.
The mood of the country darkened immediately as average Americans flooded their congressmen’s websites and phone lines with a demand not to bailout the felonious Wall Street banks with $700 billion of TARP. But they ignored their supposed constituents and revealed who they are truly beholden to.
Trust in the political and financial system disintegrated and has further deteriorated as the ruling elite continue to loot and pillage as if the 2008/2009 global financial meltdown never happened. From the perspective of the archaic social order there is no longer a crisis. The recovery narrative, flogged ceaselessly by the crooked establishment and their propaganda fake news corporate media mouthpieces, has convinced millions of willfully ignorant Americans progress is occurring.
Could they be right? Is the Crisis over? Has this Fourth Turning been managed to a successful conclusion by central bankers issuing tens of trillions in debt, politicians spending tens of trillions supplied by taxpayers, bankers rigging financial markets, and consumers leveraging up to maintain their lifestyles? Has the exiting corrupt social order successfully retained their power, control and influence over the masses by manipulating the levers of society and fending off their demise? Have they already won?
This Fourth Turning just passed its ninth anniversary. The Civil War Fourth Turning lasted only five years, but that was because it was accelerated, with an enormous amount of bloodshed crammed into a short time frame. The American Revolution Crisis lasted twenty one years. The Great Depression/World War II Crisis lasted seventeen years. All three prior American Fourth Turnings ended with an all-out decisive war, with clear victors and vanquished.
Based on historical precedent, this Fourth Turning shouldn’t reach its resolution until the mid-2020’s, with a major global conflict on the near term horizon. Those who understand that something wicked this way comes are frustrated by the apparent slowness of the progression. They shouldn’t be too anxious for an acceleration.
Since Strauss & Howe didn’t formulate their generational theory until 1997, this is the first Fourth Turning in which some people understand the dynamics driving the Crisis. Does knowledge about a cycle change the underlying forces propelling history? Has the establishment oligarchy co-opted the crisis mood of the country to avoid its own demise? Or, is this Fourth Turning just proceeding according to the standard morphology along its two decade long test of survival?
I honestly don’t know. This is my first and only Fourth Turning. What I do know is the Crisis began in the time frame predicted by Strauss & Howe. The catalyst was the 2008 financial meltdown created by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, just as they had done in 1929 to catalyze the previous Fourth Turning. Strauss and Howe documented the four stages of a Fourth Turning.
A Crisis era begins with a catalyst – a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood.
– a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood. Once catalyzed, a society achieves a regeneracy – a new counterentropy that reunifies and reenergizes civic life.
– a new counterentropy that reunifies and reenergizes civic life. The regenerated society propels toward a climax – a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and birth of the new.
– a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and birth of the new. The climax culminates in a resolution – a triumphant or tragic conclusion that separates the winners from losers, resolves the big public questions, and establishes the new order.
The 2008 global financial meltdown most certainly produced a sudden shift in mood. Average working class Americans saw their retirement savings obliterated for the second time in the space of eight years. Millions lost their jobs and got thrown out of their homes by the Wall Street bankers who perpetrated the greatest financial fraud in world history. The American citizens, who overwhelmingly disapproved of TARP, were disregarded as captured corrupt congressmen handed $700 billion of taxpayer funds to the Wall Street criminals.
The darker shift in mood produced the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both movements were co-opted by the establishment and effectively extinguished as change agents. Over the next seven years a massive debt produced bubble has been blown in stock, bond and real estate markets to benefit only those in the upper echelon of wealth. Wall Street is winning in a blowout over Main Street.
As 2015 morphed into the historic year of vitriol, hate, fake news, Russians, pussy grabbing, and an all-out establishment effort to discredit and defeat Donald Trump – 2016 saw battle lines drawn and combatants armed. The oligarchs used every propaganda trick in their bag. They used their vast limitless wealth to insure the election of their hand-picked candidate – Hillary Clinton. Black Lives Matter terrorists slaughtered policemen in cold blood. Social justice warriors were triggered on campuses across the land, retreating to safe spaces with crayons and coloring books.
Antifa fascists rioted, beat Trump supporters and attempted to shutdown free speech at every opportunity. Violent clashes, provoked by leftists, roiled the country and hardened the resolve of normal people in flyover America. The fake news corporate media produced fake polls showing an overwhelming victory for Clinton. The ruling elite underestimated the anger among the silent majority. Trump won an unlikely victory.
The basket of deplorables and millions of other disillusioned regular people chose the Grey Champion of this Fourth Turning on November 8, 2016. It was possibly the biggest upset in presidential history. The long awaited regeneracy had arrived. Just as the election of FDR marked the regeneracy of the last Fourth Turning, the election of Donald Trump marks the regeneracy moment of this Crisis.
His election has energized the country in positive and negative ways. He has unified factions for and against his agenda. His election has revealed an ingrained establishment (aka swamp creatures) inhabited by politicians of both parties who are intent on sabotaging his presidency. The first ten months of his presidency has been a tumultuous clash between an entrenched establishment and a tweeting, insulting, volatile, unpredictable, rude outsider real estate mogul from NYC.
The mood of the country has clearly darkened as 2017 has progressed. There is no middle ground or compromise. The tension between the two Americas rises with each mass shooting, Russian collusion revelation, exposure of media bias, proof of Hollywood degradation, judicial overreach, Soros funded staged protests, Donna Brazile tell all book and censorship actions by Twitter, Facebook, and other left wing slanted media outlets.
Only 24% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, and they are right. With a $20 trillion national debt, $200 trillion of unfunded welfare liabilities, pension plans underfunded by hundreds of billions, rampant governmental corruption, blatant Wall Street criminality, undeclared wars being waged across the globe, and a feeble minded corporate propaganda media spewing fake news, the nation has already hit the iceberg and the ship is going down.
The level of divisiveness and anger in this country grows exponentially, with the flames being fanned by the corporate media intent on creating a civil war. Battle lines are being drawn between Republicans and Democrats; the establishment GOP and the Steve Bannon alt-right disciples; far left Sanders Democrats and Clinton partisans; BLM terrorists and police; Soros funded Antifa scum and free speech conservatives; SJW’s and normal people; elites and deplorables; whites and blacks; liberals and conservatives; Wall Street and Main Street; Hollywood deviants and people with morals; Muslims and infidels; those who are awake and those who are ignorant; gun owners and gun confiscators; surveillance state and citizens being surveilled; young and old; haves and have nots; workers and parasites; government union workers and taxpayers; left wing academia and those with common sense; arrogant hubristic oligarchs and humble hard working Americans.
If you can’t comprehend the sense of foreboding engulfing the nation and the globe, you aren’t paying attention. Despite a global recovery narrative and record high stock markets supercharged by irresponsible debasing schemes implemented by captured central bankers, the world is hurtling relentlessly toward conflict, war and bloodshed. Every previous American Fourth Turning saw an upwards ratchet in violence, death and technological killing devices. This Fourth Turning will see a continuation of this trend. Fourth Turning wars are always decisive, with clear winners and losers.
The Revolutionary War erupted two years after the Boston Tea Party catalyst and lasted for eight years. The Civil War swept the country into conflict shortly after Lincoln’s election. The Second World War didn’t encroach on the lives of Americans until 12 years after the 1929 Great Crash. Each Crisis will have its own dynamics, pace, and timing, based upon specific events, leadership decisions, and generational reactions to the incidents and episodes driving the crisis. We are in year nine of this Fourth Turning and a looming bloody conflict is just over the horizon, but the vast majority of the American populace is unprepared and unaware for such a trial by fire.
The 2008 volcanic eruption has continued to flow along the channels of distress impacting nations across the globe. Yeoman efforts by the Deep State to keep the molten flow within controlled channels are failing, with the eruption about to burst free and cause global havoc on a grand scale, as predicted by Strauss & Howe.
“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following: Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction” The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
The American Revolution military conflict was with an external enemy. The Civil War was an internal conflict between Americans. World War II was again an external conflict. Will the coming conflict be domestic, foreign or both? Every Fourth Turning has internal and external struggles and skirmishes. Loyalists battled patriots during the American Revolution. Both sides attempted to seek European support during the Civil War.
A resolute opposition despised FDR and even sought to organize a military coup to seize power of the government. This Fourth Turning is progressing along a dual path of internal and external clashes destined to define the events which will propel the world towards a climax and resolution of this fourth crisis period in U.S. history.
The apparent slowness of this Fourth Turning is not unusual and the rise in the stock market in the midst of the crisis does not alleviate the dire circumstances of the crisis. From its low in 1932 the stock market rose by over 400% by 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, before another 45% plunge. The current Fed financed stock market rally has driven stocks up about 400% from the 2009 lows. Stock markets do not define when a crisis has ended for the majority of Americans because so few people own a significant amount of stock.
The average American suffered economic hardship throughout the 1930s, just as average Americans have continued to suffer economic hardship since 2008. As Americans dealt with privation and poverty in the late 1930s the coming global conflict was brewing. Animosities, prejudices and resentments, exacerbated by economic turmoil, stirred militaristic ambitions of hubristic rulers in Europe and Asia. The parallels with the current international dynamic are eerie. The exact timing of the chaotic dangerous portion of this Fourth Turning is uncertain, but it can’t be escaped.
“Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning the way you might today distance yourself from news, national politics, or even taxes you don’t feel like paying. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted. The Fourth Turning necessitates the death and rebirth of the social order. It is the ultimate rite of passage for an entire people, requiring a luminal state of sheer chaos whose nature and duration no one can predict in advance.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
In Part 2 of this article I will examine the devolving global environment and the implications on markets and the course of this Fourth Turning.When it comes to eco building, there appears to be a lot of enthusiasm for straw bale homes and for cob homes. Let's just note that if you were to pay someone to have a conventional house built for you, it'd be around $100,000. Say you want an eco home built for you, straw bale would be $130,000 and cob would be $200,000. In either case, this is usually nothing more than replacing the exterior walls. Cob could also be used for interior walls, but for the moment, I would just like to examine the simpler case of replacing the exterior walls.
With straw bale, the cost of the materials for the exterior walls is higher than a conventional home. The cost of labor is significantly higher, although some of the work can often be replaced by workshop labor. Unless you live on land that produces straw and you have a baler, you will have to buy straw and have it moved to you. The beauty of straw bale is the insulation. Straw itself is not a particularly good insulator, but a really thick wall of it is. Of course, to stay warm on a really cold day, it helps if you're sealed up inside like being in a ziplock bag.
With cob, you will need a source for clay and good sand. Sometimes you are on land that has clay, so then you just need a few dumptruck loads of sand. And the amount of time to build a cob wall is far greater than conventional. The beauty of cob is that you can shape it to anything! And it is soooooo easy to do. If you can supply lots of time, you can build a fantasticly lovely home from cob.
In the fall of 1970, Mike Oehler (pronounced "Ay-ler") lived in a crappy shack and struggled to stay warm. He decided that the following spring he would build a better place to live. He spent the winter drawing all sorts of designs to calculate heat efficiency. He also wanted to keep his materials costs low. He came up with a design that was unlike anything he had ever seen anywhere else. The result is a home built in 1971 with a total cost of $50.
Later, Mike added on to that house and then wrote a book about it. His choice of title was so bad, that I avoided the book for more than a decade. Even the pictures on the cover bothered me. It was only after seeing so many other authors refer to the book that got me to look at a library copy.
Mike's design eliminates many of the complexities of conventional construction. Further, if you live on wooded land, most of the materials consist of what you cut from your land when doing sustainable forestry thinning. No importing straw bales or dump truck loads of sand. In fact, everything you import could fit into one pickup load: some doors, some glass, some plumbing and electrical stuff - all of which you would bring in for any type of house.
Mike then enhances his original designs to come up with a variety of ways to get sun into his structure from all directions, while keeping the costs low. After teaching dozens of workshops on his techniques, he puts the workshop on video. I have seen these videos. They are excellent.
In a nutshell, Mike's design is a pole structure with a green roof. A green roof is usally more expensive than a conventional roof, but, if you can follow one simple design principle, you can dramatically cut the costs of the whole structure!
The one simple design principle is this:
Every drop of rain has a complete downhill soil path and never encounters a roof edge.
I contact Mike and visit with him a bit. Now, his excellent design is easily confused with.... lessor designs. Designs which he thoroughly bashes in his book, but you will never find out about that if you cannot get past the title of the book (which is what happened to me). During our conversation, he told me that he wishes to now call his structures "Earth Integrated Structures". For the rest of this document, I am going to disrespect his wish and instead refer to these as "Oehler Structures".
Next, I found a copy of John Hait's book "Passive Annual Heat Storage". In that book, John appears to extend Mike's ideas to include a cheap means to eliminate the need to heat. Basically, surround the structure with 20 feet of dry dirt to produce an enormous thermal mass. It's mostly laying down some extra plastic sheeting and insulation during construction.Quote of the Day: “Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying “No” to any authority — literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.” — Ignazio Silone (1900-1978) Source: The God That Failed, 1950
The politicians are trying to tax the Internet again. Let’s stop them.
I just sent the letter below using our “Hands Off the Internet” campaign.
The hardwired message on this campaign reads...
“Please oppose any attempts to undermine Internet freedom.”
To this I added the following personal comments, from which you can copy or borrow...
I request that you create a form letter to respond to letters like mine on the issue described below... I want you to oppose the so-called “Mainstreet Fairness Act.” It’s only a proposal right now. Yet I will be angry if I see you become a sponsor of this bad bill. Please create a form letter letting your constituents know where you stand. If your letter is vague and wishy-washy, that won’t satisfy me. I want you to be clear. This bill would help to impose state sales taxes on Internet purchases. State’s already get enough taxes, thank you very much. The problem isn’t the lack of taxes, but NO PRUDENCE when it comes to spending money. Limit the money states receive. State politicians will learn prudence. We also need... * Tax competition between states, not tax collusion
* A free Internet to drive economic recovery — it ISN’T broken, so we don’t need you to fix it Instead of advancing this bill, please take steps to balance the federal budget. That’s where your focus should be. I hope to receive a response informing me that you will not endorse this terribly, counterproductive legislation. Either way, please be specific and be clear.
END LETTER
NOTE: The Mainstreet Fairness Act does not seem to have a bill number yet. We’re hitting this one early. If you want to learn more about this bill the Competitive Enterprise Institute has written two informative articles about it:
* State Cartel Looking to Hike Internet Taxes
* An Alternative to California Proposal to Tax E-Commerce
You can send your letter to Congress using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.
And we encourage you to follow us on Twitter and retweet this Dispatch: http://twitter.com/DDCDispatch
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
commentsIt's a tough job working for Newegg, the universally recognized leader in PCs, technology and celebrity gossip. So when we Neweggers aren’t peeling graphics cards for industry-leading ASMR unboxing vids, we're coming up with award-winning egg puns and thinking about the challenges that face our fellow man. Like how laptops only have one screen.
Earlier this year, Razer took the first bold steps into the post single-screen laptop era with the introduction of the triple display Project Valerie laptop at CES 2017, and the world stood up and applauded.
That said, we can't stop thinking...is three really enough?
Enter Project MEgga, the single greatest invention since TiVo.
How'd we do it?
First, we looked at where we could put more screens.
Second, we put them there.
Third, we put on our drinking hats and added three more screens under the six original screens.
And then we gave it a bold poultry based brand to match its magnificence: MEgga, aka M#gg@, #TheWorldsFirstNineScreenLaptop.
The world's first 9-screen laptop is here.
The revolution is complete.
…and someone stole it.
But we’ll make more. Pre-order yours now.
Project MEgga: World's first 9 Screen Laptop World's second laptop with three screens
And three more screens
And then three more screens below those other screens
That's nine screens
Which is six more than Razer
And eight more than your dumpster peasant laptop
But not 10 screens. That's too many
INCLUDES: Intel i9-8900x 400 core CPU
128GB RGB RAM
NVIDIA GTX 1280 Ti Ancestor Edition
Cherry MX power supply
Loudspeakers with tiny confetti cannons
GSync caps lock AND num lock
Dual fuel auxilary power supply
IUV-RGB (Infrared, UV spectrum & RGB) lighting
was: $29,999.00
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Save: $1.00
(0.00003%)
Free Shipping PRE-ORDERIn early trading Monday, the Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, rose 0.8 percent, while the FTSE 100 index in London rose 0.6 percent. The euro rose to $1.3747 from $1.3673 late Friday in New York.
Bond prices reacted positively as well. The Irish 10-year yield fell 18 basis points, but — at 7. 73 percent — still carried a hefty premium to the comparable German bond, the European benchmark, which ticked up 2 basis points to 2.72 percent.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” Henk Potts, a fund manager at Barclays Stockbrokers in London, said of the Ireland rescue, “but we need to see more detail,” particularly on how much money is actually on the table and how it will be distributed. Those details will be worked out over the coming days.
“E.U. officials may have won the battle,” Mr. Potts said, “but the war is still to be fought.”
The Irish finance minister, Brian Lenihan, said Monday that the rescue package could quickly put the nation back on course to borrow money in international bond markets.
“The view in the discussions to date has been that the provision of this large facility may enable Ireland to return to the bond markets very quickly,” Mr. Lenihan told the Irish national broadcaster RTE on Monday.
The loans to Ireland were necessary in large part because of the faltering state of the nation’s banking system, underscoring the extent to |
mother’s boyfriend locked him in a shed and pummeled him. News of his brutal beating filled television screens and newspaper pages. Doctors weren’t sure he’d make it. But he’d fought his way back and state caseworkers went to the Grants and told them Strider and his younger brother, Gallagher, were theirs if they wanted them.
The Grants had burdens already. Lanette Grant was 51 and depended on Oxycodone for a herniated neck disc, Lyrica for fibromyalgia, and Prozac for most everything else. At 63, Larry Grant had diabetes, short-term memory problems, and frequently drove off, returning hours later, still listless, without giving a hint of where he’d been. Recently, they’d lost a job delivering auto parts to stores across Maine.
But family was family, Lanette said.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Strider, 5, hugged his grandmother, Lanette Grant, outside of the camper they were living in. He held on to her tight. Strider worried constantly about losing things — especially his grandparents. He called Lanette “mama” and Larry “papa” and demoted his biological mother to “bad mommy” and his father to “Michael.”
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Strider’s biological father, Michael, visited the campground where the family was living, and he worked to fix the training wheels on Strider’s bike. Michael was sweet but troubled and easily led astray. As a young boy doctors had diagnosed him with an alphabet soup of maladies, and he’d spent time in a mental health facility. Lanette blamed the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of her first husband.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Larry Grant roughhoused with Strider beside the campfire. With Strider he was playfully gruff. Larry had diabetes and short-term memory problems. He frequently drove off, returning hours later, without giving any hint of where he’d been.
Strider was thin and fragile when he arrived at their home. In the windows, he saw specters. “Ghost dogs,” he called them. “The owl is coming to get me,” he whispered at night. In preschool, his fears took new form. He worried constantly about losing things — toys, friends, and especially his grandparents. He tried to pull them closer. He called Lanette “Mama” and Larry “Papa” and demoted his biological mother to “Bad Mommy” and his father to “Michael.”
He showered Lanette with praise. He aped Larry. But he and his brother taxed what energy his grandparents had left. “Medicine!” Lanette called when the boys were getting out of hand. Even anti-hyperactivity meds didn’t slow them enough for the Grants.
At night, when Strider was in bed, he could hear them complaining of unpaid bills and the unfairness of it all.
Now, there was this — this parking lot and a vast, swallowing sea of uncertainty.
Rain had begun. The white pines fringing the parking lot were caves of drenched green. The whine of trucks from Route 26 penetrated the camper as Lanette wound the gear of a cigarette maker. Pipe tobacco shot through the Top-o-Matic’s chute. Her mouth drew into a shadowed fold as she took a drag.
“We didn’t ask for this. We just didn’t,” Lanette said, her gaze falling on Strider and his brother.
Strider’s face flattened in panic. Caseworkers had explained it would be like this with him. He’d lost so much, any whiff of rejection set off bells of alarm. His traumas were as much a part of him as the trees he climbed or the magic brooms he fashioned from sticks. Researchers now understood that trauma could alter the chemistry of developing brains and disrupt the systems that help a person handle stress, propelling a perpetual state of high alert. The consequences could be lifelong. As an adult, he’d be more likely to suffer anxiety and depression and heart disease and stroke. His ability to hold a job, manage money, and make good decisions could be compromised. And there was evidence, controversial but mounting, that he could pass on these traits to his children.
The one thing known to reverse the cascading effects of trauma on young brains was the constancy, security, and persistence of love.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Strider struggled as he carried gallons of water filled from a spigot to the camper. Lanette would heat the water on a small stove to do the dishes and bathe the boys with a washcloth. The family bounced around from campground to campground, after being evicted last summer for falling behind on their rent.
Strider needed Larry and Lanette. He loved them desperately, and now he studied his grandmother, searching for some assurance that everything would be all right — even as everything was falling apart. In the months to come, they would hit bottom, and still Strider would try to get what he needed and they would give him what they could. Failure, they well knew, could be catastrophic.
Yet Larry and Lanette had their own emotional wounds that looped with the burdens of poverty and forced them into corners — like the one Lanette was in now as she retrained her sight on her phone, checking for a message that might not come.
It’s not known what Justin Roy used to punch a hole in Strider’s stomach in December 2011. Was it a boot? A fist? What’s known is Strider was eating dinner. He was fussy. He was at that age. Roy, his mother’s boyfriend, was tired of having Strider and his brother underfoot in his mobile home near the Maine border in Albany, N.H. He’d texted Strider’s mother a week earlier and told her she should have drowned them at birth.
On this night, he yanked Strider outside and shoved him into a dog cage. Then he dragged him behind the mobile home to a shed with cheap, rough siding and a grinding wheel.
Hours passed and temperatures plummeted to the single digits in the shadow of Mt. Chocorua. Strider’s mother went out to the shed during the night. Roy had hung T-shirts over the windows. He held the door shut and would not let her in. Shortly before dawn, Roy stormed into the house carrying Strider. He was still raging by morning. He swore at 11-month-old Gallagher. He flung Strider to the floor.
Strider’s mother told Roy she was leaving and packed the boys into her van. Then she drove to get gas and wish a friend happy birthday. She drove to her mother’s house. There, she wondered why Strider’s eyes were rolling back in his head. Around 7:30 a.m., she plunked Strider in a waiting room chair at the local hospital and walked to the registration desk.
A nurse walking by noticed Strider. He was writhing.
Doctors ordered him flown to Maine Medical Center in Portland where he underwent three surgeries in four days to repair his torn intestine and other damage that doctors later would testify they typically saw in high speed, head-on car crashes.
Family photo In December 2011, Strider was locked in a shed by his mother’s boyfriend and beaten. Doctors weren’t sure he’d survive. Admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Maine Medical Center in Portland, he fought his way back. Lanette took the photo on the left while visiting her grandson in the ICU. The photo on the right shows Strider after he was released.
Family photo Strider underwent three surgeries in four days to repair his torn intestine and other damage that doctors later would testify they typically saw in high speed car crashes. A family photo shows the feeding tube that Strider returned home to Larry and Lanette with.
Family photo A family photo shows Strider being cared for at home after returning from the hospital with a feeding tube in March 2012.
Strider lay for 23 days in a hospital bed webbed in tubing and bandages and monitors. Police arrested Roy. They questioned Strider’s mother. Each pointed a finger of blame at the other. On Jan. 11, 2012, doctors released Strider from the hospital and, with his stomach fitted with a feeding tube, he arrived at the Grants’ home, aching from losses he couldn’t yet comprehend.
The Grants hailed from Aroostook County, Maine’s sparsely settled outpost of potato fields and logging forests bordering Canada. Larry’s father was military, and his family hopped bases every few years. As a kid, he vowed he’d have a horse ranch someday. Horses meant you stayed put. Lanette pined for stability of another sort. At 15, she’d gone to her mother and told her that a relative had molested her. Her mother abruptly ended the conversation, as Lanette recalls it. Lanette pleaded for her mother to listen, to believe her, to do something. In a way, Lanette hadn’t stopped pleading. She called her mother every day.
Lanette met Larry at a VFW dance in Presque Isle in 1991. They were both divorced with kids. He liked her shape and called her Pockets. His hair hung long and shaggy. She pulled hers into a tight bun each morning, as if the winding might bring order to her world. His humor ran to the dry side of parched. She talked and talked to whoever might listen. Together, they divided the world into people who were with them and the ones who were against them. Those people could go pound sand, Lanette liked to say.
In search of work, they moved some 300 miles south to Oxford, with its fry joints and convenience stores sprawled along Route 26, a town waiting for the dividends of the new casino. They bought an Imperial mobile home, parked it on two rented acres down from the speedway, and filled the yard with mowers, washing machines, and random metal frames that could be sold for smelting. Lanette did a few years as a nursing assistant, then as a convenience store manager. But she had pain from the herniated disc in her neck. “Work wasn’t in the cards,” she said. Larry’s long-distance trucking job ended when he collided with another tractor-trailer in 2007 and emerged from the hospital with a dented forehead and a notice of termination.
They were patching together an existence off Craigslist, a roulette of piecemeal jobs, when Michael, Lanette’s son, brought a new girlfriend around. They had met online. Larry and Lanette worried. She struck them as harsh and Michael was sweet and troubled and easily led astray. He’d spent time in a mental health facility as a child and now, at 25, he struggled to hold a job and had a daughter by another woman
The next thing they knew, they had a grandson, Strider Wolf — Strider for the character in Lord of the Rings and Wolf for the howling image on the shirt Michael was wearing the day his son was born. Gallagher came along two years later. Then things went south. Michael and the boys’ mother split. She left with the boys, and Michael came home to live with the Grants.
In December 2011, Michael got the call that Strider was in the hospital. He nodded, then crumpled to the floor and rocked his body in a fetal ball.
The state initially explored the possibility of putting the boys in the care of Michael and their mother, despite their shortcomings. Caseworkers drew up plans and bullet-pointed lists of activities meant to teach them the obligations and responsibility of parenting.
But hopes quickly dissolved. Strider’s mother was distracted to the point of indifference during arranged meetings with the boys. There was no “mutual affection,” a supervisor concluded in notes submitted to a judge. The visits were halted. A short time later, Michael fled the Grants’ mobile home, checked into a mental health facility, and then moved to a town over an hour away, where he stayed put.
The boys were castaways, stranded for good with the Grants. “People say we r angels but boy if this is what it is like being an angel I’m all set let someone else be!” Lanette vented on Facebook. Gallagher struggled to talk. He pushed up Lanette’s shirt and pressed against her bare skin like a newborn. He was so distracted and prone to accidents that a therapist recommended he wear a backpack stuffed with small weights to ground him. Had he been dropped on his head as an infant? Doctors suspected a calamity of some sort.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Gallagher cooled off with a drink while Larry and Lanette packed for hours by the light of their car headlights following eviction. The landlord had cut the power and put locks on the electrical boxes in an attempt to force them off the property.
And Strider. He was always asking, asking — pressing the Grants for more and more. He had a facial expression when he did, lifting the left side of his mouth into a smile and cocking his head, as if the head-tilt might roll things his way. His therapist was encouraged. Asking for what he wanted was a sign that in his young mind the world had not forsaken him.
There was resilience in this boy. He marched off to kindergarten with a dimple in his stomach where his feeding tube had been. Testing showed he had a nimble mind. He made a best friend. He came home talking about rockets and anteaters and prisms. He roamed the woods, finding sticks that could be a sword or a steed and castinghimself a Christopher Robin of western Maine.
He was stronger and faster and nimbler in the woods, the boy beneath the mountain of hurt. He tried to be that boy all the time, nodding agreeably and listening closely to his grandparents so that he might slot more seamlessly into their lives.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Michael carried his son, Gallagher, Strider’s younger brother, on his shoulder. Michael lived over an hour away from the boys and visited sporadically. When he did visit he tried to make up for lost time, often with boisterous play.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Strider pulled his pajamas over his head as he changed in Lanette and Larry’s bedroom inside the cramped camper. Recently evicted from their home, the family of four was squeezed into the 24-foot camper.
But the hurt rose up unbidden. A hole opened and memories swallowed him. For weeks at a stretch, Strider would be moody and keep to himself. And then, equally without warning, he would share his pain, often with his therapist. Playing with blocks or drawing pictures on the floor in her office, he would express confusion and fright and a sense of perilous solitude.
“[Bad Mommy] swooped me outside the house with a broom and said ‘go live somewhere else,’ ” he told the therapist during a session last December. “I traveled so far.”
Unburdened, he returned for a time to happier ways. His therapist warned Larry and Lanette that memories would seize him again. When they did, she said, he would need them most.
In April, days after loading up the camper and parking it at Walmart, Lanette got the call from Strider’s school. Strider was anxious. His breath had sped into a hot helpless rhythm and he was confused about which school bus to ride.
Was he supposed to take the usual one home or was there another one that went to Walmart?
When their time was up at Walmart, the Grants moved to the Tractor Supply Co. parking lot, and then a few days later, they motored five miles down Route 26, past the speedway and Maine-ly Action Sports, and set up camp off a rutted road in the trees. A scenic lake ran along the length of one side of the campground. Their site was on the other side, in black fly breeding grounds.
The flies swarmed in clouds of threatened attack one afternoon as Strider dropped his backpack by the door of the camper. He told no one about the note buried at the bottom. Then he wandered into the woods until Lanette called “Supper!”
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff On a warm summer evening Strider sat beside a campfire with a stick as night began to fall.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Gallagher sat in the center of a circle his brother, Strider, had etched around him in the dirt.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Strider held out a small lantern as he played in the woods outside of the camper. In spite of everything, he was imaginative and playful, running through the woods and climbing trees most evenings until his grandmother called him in for dinner.
Lanette ladled Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes onto plates and stared at the piles. She wasn’t hungry. She’d drunk Pepsi all afternoon as she called everyone she could think of in state government. The woman at the governor’s office said there was no error. Their food stamps had been cut by a hundred dollars because living in a campground meant they no longer had a house payment. Lanette argued back. The woman said it was no use. And on the conversation went.
Larry had equally little success finding a place where they could haul the mobile home. He’d e-mailed a guy from Craigslist willing to sell a piece of land for $10,000 in a lease-to-own deal. But when they talked by telephone, the guy explained the land had no water or septic, and they would need to haul water from the fire station and toss their waste in the woods, like he and his family did.
Strider was forking a potato when Lanette held up the note from his teacher.
“Why, Strider?” Lanette demanded.
The teacher sent a note home every day. It listed his daily activities with a slot next to each. The slots had smiley faces except for one. Next to lunch, she had drawn a face with a slash-mouth. Off to the side she’d written: Hit another boy in the face and called him a whine-bucket.
Strider fixed his mouth, as if that might beat back tears.
The scene had unspooled so fast. A boy sitting next to him held a lunchbox in front of his face. The boy called it a shield. Strider thought he was trying to block his view of his best friend. Strider told him to put the lunchbox down, and when the boy didn’t, he’d let his fist fly. The boy cried, and Strider reached for a word he knew from home.
Kindergarten friendships were fleeting. Someone was your best friend one minute and someone else’s the next. It was the way kids figured out friendship, Lanette had explained to him. But in that moment at lunch, all Strider needed was to hang on to his friend. And now, with his grandparents staring at him in disappointment, the only thing he could think of to say was, “Sorry.”
Larry and Lanette had heard sorry from what felt like every corner of the earth.
“Sorry don’t mean nothing to you,” Larry grumbled.
Strider folded into himself like he wanted to disappear.
His brother started crying. “Gallagher’s going to bed,” Lanette announced. She lifted the wailing boy off the bench and carried him inside the camper. The coffee maker began to gurgle. The boys stripped off clothes. Lanette dipped a rag in the Mr. Coffee pot of warmed water and sponge-bathed the boys’ backs as they angled past each other in the hallway, bumping up against baskets of dirty clothes and the vacuum cleaner and the rolling bin of paper plates and everything that didn’t fit in the crush of half-shelves.
Gallagher soon was asleep under an M & M blanket. Strider’s eyes widened with the coming dark that he still feared, and he scanned the floor for his flashlight. “Oh, all right,” Lanette said, okaying the flashlight as Strider crawled into his bunk above Gallagher’s.
The screen door clapped shut. The calls of peepers filled the night, and then his grandparents’ voices swirled above them. A text had come into Lanette’s phone. It was from their neighbor, Neal. “You f—ing people. Every day,” Lanette read aloud. Neal had had enough. When they’d gotten booted off the land, he’d agreed to watch the weathered bunch of horses they had collected over the years. Neal asked only that they supply hay. Larry hadn’t delivered any in days.
“There ain’t no hay to be found,” Larry said.
“Whatever,” Lanette said.
There wasn’t more to say and so they were still. The only movement came from the silver light peering out from the small window next to Strider’s bunk. The light darted between the trees, as if seeking a path.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff The night the Grants were evicted, Michael’s fiancee, Ashly (left) stood in the doorway with Lanette as they took a break from packing up the family’s belongings. After two years of not paying the rent, the Grants’ landlord had given them 30 days to pack and leave. But as the night went on it became clear that they were not going to be able to take all of their possessions with them.
A letter from the landlord’s lawyer arrived at the post office where their mail was being held. The Grants had 30 days to get their mobile home off the rented property. If they didn’t, everything would be the landlord’s.
They had nowhere to move the mobile home, but maybe they could save their things. Each morning they made plans to make the 10-minute drive to the mobile home and pack. But one thing or another came up, and they wouldn’t make it over there until late afternoon, when it was easier just not to think about the problem.
“I so want to be back here,” Lanette said, leaning against the mobile home’s kitchen counter one afternoon. The cabinets overflowed with Tupperware and bowls and plates. Crayon drawings hung alongside calendars and taped notes of inspiration. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior,” one declared.
They’d left in such a hurry that they’d forgotten Gallagher’s milk in the refrigerator. The sour smell permeated everything.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff As Lanette and Larry worked to pack up the family’s possessions, Strider and Gallagher were left in the back of the car. Tired and acting out, Gallagher bit Strider, who recoiled, pressing himself against the car window.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Stressed out and exhausted, Lanette stared out of the camper’s doorway as Gallagher rested beside her.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff When the Grants returned to their trailer to pack, Strider wandered into his bedroom and looked around. Many of his belongings would be left behind, including his bicycle.
The power was still off, and Larry had hocked the generator for a loan. Now a pawnbroker charged them $62 a month to hold the generator as collateral. It was like that with their money. The $1,827 they took in each month, from Larry’s disability, welfare, and child support from Michael, somehow drained from their Norway Savings Bank account before bills could be paid.
Strider was in his room. It was as it had been. The bookshelf hung crookedly. The Ninja Turtle kite sagged from a few points of attachment to the ceiling. The firefighter boots. The sign on the door that read Captain Strider. He played Legos, clicking pieces together, building an orderly world.
It was getting on toward 6.
“Stri!” Lanette called.
He stood and looked at the Legos. He cocked his head. He’d loved Legos since he was a toddler. But he knew better than to ask if he could bring them to the camper. It was crowded enough.
They piled into their yellow car and angled out of the dirt driveway.
Packing would wait for another day.
He shouldn’t have left the sticks by the camper door. He’d gathered them in the woods and imagined they were clues to a mystery and he was a detective with all the answers. He ought to have left them behind. But he’d wanted to show them to his grandparents, and in the morning his grandfather had tripped on them and swore. Larry was still cranky as he drove him to school. Strider chattered from the backseat — about football, picnics, his upcoming three-day weekend for Memorial Day. “Your vacation, my torture,” Larry muttered.
Strider tilted his head in confusion, then straightened and tried again.
“I’m going to get all smiley faces today,” he said.
“No you can’t,” Larry said.
Strider insisted.
“I’ll get you an ice cream cone if you get ’em all,” Larry countered. The bet was on, and Strider bobbed into Oxford Elementary School.
Larry gripped the wheel tightly and steered toward the next reckoning.
State officials were headed to Neal’s to look at the horses. Someone had reported them to animal welfare. By the time Larry arrived with Lanette, officials were staring in fixed dismay at the sway-backed elderly horse with mottled fur, the distended stomachs and flat eyes of the others.
“This is not our fault,” Lanette told one state officer.
“Then whose is it?” the officer asked.
Lanette cried messily as she signed paperwork surrendering the horses. Next to her signature, she wrote, “We love our horses.”
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Lanette looked away after being told she had to turn over her horses to an animal control officer and a veterinarian. Due the family’s financial strains they couldn’t feed the horses and had to surrender them due to malnourishment. Next to her signature, she wrote, “We love our horses.”
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Animal control officers inspect the Grants’ horses, malnourished due to the family’s financial strains.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Lanette leaned in as she explained to Strider that the horses were gone and that they would never see them again. Strider was silent.
They hadn’t been charged with animal cruelty. But there was guilt and shame, and as the afternoon went on, the feelings turned to anger and blame flew. There was the turncoat neighbor. The state officials. And all the people who knew nothing of saving two boys and being punished for it.
“Everything was perfect until we took them boys in,” Lanette said into the quiet.
And then the boys were home from school and Lanette bent down and leveled her face with theirs.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
Strider stared with big eyes that tried to read his grandmother as she explained that the horses were gone. Strider said nothing and she said they would never see them again. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
He paused. She wanted him to say something about the horses. Something to blunt her hurt. He offered what he had. “I got all smileys.”
Larry said, “It hasn’t sunk in.”
Lanette nodded, and when he sensed that he could, Strider escaped into the woods, under boughs of white pines, his slender legs stalking the needle-feathered ground. He quickly conjured a game, imagining himself a hunter of ancient waterways, taking himself away from the day’s turmoil.
Later, when he asked Larry when they could get the ice cream cone, Larry shook his head. The yellow car had begun leaking gas. There was no way to get to One Cow Ice Cream.
A nightmare woke Strider with a shudder. Lanette recalled going to him, but he couldn’t stop crying. Gallagher woke and started crying too, and then morning came and they stepped outside into the muck.
They were at a new campsite. The one they’d been at was booked for the rest of the season, and so they’d had to scramble for this new one in Poland, a town over from Oxford. This campground owner had put them in a muddy site, across from a high, dry, and empty one, charged them $210 a week and texted them: “I don’t want to regret helping you out.”
The 30 days that the landlord had given them to move their stuff were nearly up. Lanette’s hope was on a guy named Rick. He’d called about a Craigslist posting they’d put up offering the mobile home for sale. Rick said he’d pay $6,000. He was going to come by to have a look.
“You’re dreaming up the wrong tree,” Larry told her.
A few days later, the day before the deadline, Larry and Lanette were at the mobile home at 10 a.m. They recalled waiting and waiting and waiting. An hour passed and then another, and finally Lanette had to agree with Larry. Rick wasn’t coming.
They were out of options.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff On the night of the eviction the boys climbed into a rusted Ford sunk behind the horse pasture. Strider held a broken automotive hoses to his eyes like a pair of binoculars. He tipped his head upward. “What’s on the moon?” Strider asked.
The weather was clear the next night — a minor blessing in the mess.
Pale moonlight ringed Strider and his brother as they ran in frenzied freedom behind the mobile home, darting between barrels and chain link fencing and a jumble of plywood. Larry and Lanette were scrambling to pack stuff and get it to storage by midnight.
A train whistle blew. The boys sped toward the sound. They climbed into a rusted chassis sunk in the crusted old horse field. Strider held broken automotive hoses to his eyes like a pair of binoculars. He tipped his head upward. “What’s on the moon?” Strider asked.
They stood silhouetted against the pressing darkness, straining to see the universe from the ruined Ford, until a car barreled onto the grass shortly after 9 p.m.
“Our father is here,” Strider said, running toward the car.
Michael had been promising to come and help them move since they got their eviction notice. He wasn’t good about keeping promises to visit. When he did show, he compensated spastically for lost time. One weekend Michael crushed his finger wielding a wood maul. Another time he tried to get a game of football going with Strider, but he threw the ball so hard, it bloodied Strider’s cheek.
Now Strider stood with his hands clasped, then backed away as Michael rushed past him. “My gorilla!” Lanette said. Michael fell into her arms. They hugged until he extracted himself and stalked into the mobile home and flung himself at furniture. He pinched his finger trying to move Lanette’s vanity toward the door and yelped, then was back in motion.
Strider wandered to a wicker daybed by the side of the road. The Grants had marked it free to any takers. His eyes pinned in bleary resignation as he watched the dismantling of his home.
He was asleep when a pickup truck parked down the street. Lanette saw a man sitting in the cab.
Moonlight faded. The mobile home hulked like a gray clown car producing an unending stream of stuff. At midnight, Lanette saw the waiting truck’s headlights snap on. The truck crawled forward and halted in front of the daybed. The landlord stepped out.
“Time’s up!” he yelled, as recalled by the Grants and the landlord. “Get off my property!”
Michael lunged at the daybed.
“It’s my baby!” Michael cried.
He scooped Strider off the daybed and carried him away, like a firefighter emerging from a burning house. The landlord stood in the street watching in bewildered silence. But Michael wasn’t done. He yelled at the landlord, until the landlord said enough, and called the cops. Strider woke only enough to pull his legs to his chest, stretch his T-shirt over them, and mumble, “I’m so cold. I’ve been so cold.”
In the days to come, they counted their losses. Cutting boards and tops to pots had been left behind in the mobile home. Boxes of photographs and furniture. Strider’s bike was gone, along with Lanette’s late brother’s autopsy report.
Larry was defeated by the losses. Lanette had plans. She would take the landlord to court. But first they had to set up at a new campground. They’d been asked to leave the campground in Poland after neighbors complained about their dogs. They’d wangled a new campsite, this one on a side road winding behind the casino on Route 26 in Oxford, where the guard watched them warily. Lanette warned Strider to stay out of view and Strider wandered to the campsite’s perimeter, where, if he looked up, he could see snug stick-built houses on the ledge above.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff After surrendering their belongings following their eviction, the Grants appeared before a judge at Maine District Court in a last ditch effort to try and gain reentry to the property.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Without a lawyer, the Grants were left without much hope of winning against their former landlord. At the judge’s urging they went into the hallway and tried to come to an agreement.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Lanette and Larry stood outside of District Court after waging an unsuccessful attempt to regain entry to the trailer. The new owner eventually agreed to box up the family photos left behind and leave them at the police station for the Grants to retrieve.
On a Sunday morning, Lanette hung balloons under a tarp that stretched from the camper to staked poles. The balloons were stamped “I love you,” leftovers from her wedding to Larry. Strider was turning 6. His birthday party was set to start at 1.
“Let’s see what you have,” Larry told Strider as he and Gallagher zoomed around, high on anticipation and sugar of frozen blueberry waffles. Gallagher thrust his fist into his grandfather’s shoulder. Larry caught it and released it. Gallagher tumbled to the ground, taking Strider with him.
“Don’t be a whine-bucket,” Lanette reprimanded as Gallagher cried.
Strider scrambled to his feet. He looked to Lanette for reprieve, but her head was turned. She smiled broadly at a car pulling up to the camper. “Great-grammie’s here!” she called.
Lanette’s mother had short hair and a bulldog gaze. “Time’s ticking,” she said as she jangled her car keys. She’d offered to take Lanette to Walmart and pay for Strider’s birthday cupcakes. It was a 15-minute drive. “We’ll be back!” Lanette called from her mother’s car as it winked out of sight.
A half hour passed, then an hour.
At 2:30, Strider balled his fist and thrust it like a microphone in front of Larry: What was the color of the sky last night? How does an airplane keep birds off its back? Whose birthday is today? “I’m not here,” Larry said. Strider slumped onto the camper’s stoop. “The news is all over,” he said. He rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his chin in his hands. Rain began to fall. The temperature dipped to 50 degrees. Strider shivered.
“I’m going to scream,” Strider said to silence.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff On the day of Strider’s sixth birthday, Lanette and her mother went to Walmart to pick up his birthday cake. They were gone for more than two hours. Back at the campsite a disappointed Strider sat beside Larry and waited for them to return.
Shortly before 3 p.m., Lanette’s mother’s car nosed in.
Lanette looked happier than she had in months. Her mother had taken her to get her medicines. She might as well have taken her to the moon. “My mama,” Lanette called her mother. Her sister didn’t talk to their mother, as far as Lanette knew. Lanette took another view. You only get one mother. She set the cupcakes on the misted plastic tablecloth and sang “Happy Birthday” louder than anyone.
“Pop it!” his great grandmother said to Strider, handing him an oversized balloon.
The balloon was full and bouncy and airborne. “I don’t feel like it,” Strider whispered back.
“Come on Strider, pop it,” Lanette said. Larry took the balloon from Strider. He held it over his head and poked it with a knife. POP! Six rolled-up dollar bills showered Strider’s head, then fell to the ground and scattered. “Find ’em,” his great-grandmother called. Lanette echoed her. Strider scavenged in the mud under the table, and when he’d found them, he looked up from his crouch and asked, “Can we have cake now?”
Lanette gave him a chocolate cupcake and kissed him. Then she talked with her mother while Strider bent his head and ate. He asked for another and another, as though the whole bunch might be snatched away and lost.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Strider’s great-grandmother gave him a balloon and told him to pop it. “I don’t feel like it.” Strider whispered. “Come on Strider, pop it.” Lanette said. Larry took the balloon from Strider, held it over his head and poked it with a knife. Six rolled up dollar bills and confetti scattered to the ground. “Find ’em,” his great-grandmother called.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff “Can we have cake now?” Strider asked. Lanette gave him a chocolate cupcake and kissed him. Strider bent his head and ate. Then he asked for another, as though the whole bunch might be snatched away and lost.
A few weeks later, shortly before the end of school, Strider sat alone, under a DARE sign, curled into a wall alcove. The lunch ladies in blue smocks had piled his tray with potatoes and carrots and chocolate milk, but he picked only at a package of Pillsbury mini-bagels. It was grab bag day. A dollar bought a brown paper bag of goodies, like pencils and erasers. Two mothers from the PTO were stuffing bags at the table over from him. Lanette had told him that morning she didn’t have a dollar.
Strider’s schoolwork was improving, and his teachers were pleased. But what did that matter now? His best friend sat a few seats away surrounded by other boys. They were giggling and having fun. Strider wasn’t up for battling for a place next to him. Trays clattered and voices twittered, the noise rising to the rafters, while Strider tucked his legs up against his chest, deeper into the alcove.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff During recess at his elementary school, Strider sat at the base of a tree as other children played nearby.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Strider made his way through the hallway of his elementary school as he and his classmates returned from recess.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff At lunch Strider tucked himself into a cubby as he nibbled on a snack, leaving the rest of the food the school |
the importance of math and science education by helping launch the "Math Moves U Hippest Homework Happening" program, which gave students the opportunity to do math homework online with celebrities and athletes.[85]
He has also volunteered with Special Olympics and taken part in Unified Sports, which brings together athletes with intellectual disabilities and without on the same team. Ohno served as a Special Olympics Global Ambassador ahead of the 2015 World Summer Games in Los Angeles, California.[86]
Using his recognition and fame from his sport, he has accumulated a list of sponsors that include McDonald's, Subway,[87] General Electric, The Century Council, Vicks, and Coca-Cola.[88][89][90] Ohno's father, Yuki, said about sponsorships: "He's not like a professional athlete who has a multi-million-dollar contract with a team... He has to have sponsorships to pay the bills".[91] Capitalizing on Ohno's fame, Alaska Airlines were his primary sponsor for the 2010 Winter Games and designed a Boeing 737–800 jet with his image on the side.[91][92]
He was critical of the leaders of the U.S. Speedskating Organization when a donation of $250,000 was raised by viewers of the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report for the organization after their largest commercial sponsor, the Dutch DSB Bank, declared bankruptcy and was unable to donate its $300,000 in November 2009.[92][93] In an email to Time, he wrote it was "a bit embarrassing that our leadership couldn't secure other sponsors three months before the Olympic Games" but credited the show's host Stephen Colbert for "his willingness to help out our nation's greatest athletes".[94] In return for The Colbert Report donation, long track and short track skaters had the "Colbert Nation" logo on their uniforms for World Cup events leading up to the 2010 Winter Games.[94] Ohno did not wear the logo because Alaska Airlines was his primary sponsor for the 2010 Games.[92] He was also part of Oreo's Team DSRL sketch in 2011.
Dancing with the Stars [ edit ]
Season 4 – with Julianne Hough [ edit ]
Ohno participated on the fourth season of the reality show, Dancing with the Stars.[95] He was paired with dancing partner Julianne Hough, and both appeared on the show for the first time on March 19, 2007.[96] Together, they received the competition's first perfect score of 30 for their samba routine on April 16, 2007.[97] The dancing duo became finalists in the competition, and went on to become the champions in May 2007.[98]
Season 15 – with Karina Smirnoff [ edit ]
In July 2012, it was announced Ohno would return for the all-star fifteenth season for a second chance to win the mirrorball trophy; this time he was paired with Season 13 champion professional Karina Smirnoff.[99] They were voted off during the ninth week of the competition.
*Note: Paula Abdul was guest-judge during Week 4, Opponents' Choice Week.
During the Swing Marathon, the judges eliminated each pair until only one pair remained, earning 10 points. Apolo was the third eliminated and earned 6 points from the judges.
Other appearances [ edit ]
In 2012, Ohno appeared as a guest star in the 17th episode of the 2nd season of Hawaii Five-0,[100] as a suspect. He also had a guest appearance on The Biggest Loser in Season 12, Episode 9[101] and Season 15, Episode 12.[102]
In 2013, Ohno appeared as the character "Stone" in the Syfy Original Movie Tasmanian Devils,[103] as well as the host of GSN's Minute to Win It.[104]
In 2015, Ohno appeared as a live guest during the season finale of NBC's live variety show Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris.[105]
In 2016, Ohno appeared as a guest star on Hollywood Game Night hosted by Jane Lynch on NBC.[106]
In 2017, Ohno appeared as a host in the second season of the reality-competition series Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge the second season premiered on June 12, 2017. In the same year, Ohno appeared on an episode of The $100,000 Pyramid this episode aired on July 9, 2017.
Apolo Ohno Invitational [ edit ]
In November 2014 Ohno sponsored a speedskating race in Salt Lake City, UT that featured the four top men and women skaters from the US, China, Canada and the Netherlands. It aired on NBCSN on November 21, 2014 at 10:00 pm EST.
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Ohno, Apolo Anton; Richardson, Nancy Ann. A Journey: the autobiography of Apolo Anton Ohno, New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2002. ISBN 0-689-85608-3.
, New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2002. ISBN 0-689-85608-3. Gordon, Harry. The time of our lives: Inside the Sydney Olympics: Australia and the Olympic Games 1994–2002, Queensland, Australia: University of Queensland, 2003. ISBN 0-7022-3412-5.
, Queensland, Australia: University of Queensland, 2003. ISBN 0-7022-3412-5. Epstein, Adam. Sports Law (The West Legal Studies Series): Volume 2002, Clifton Park, NY : Thomson/Delmar Learning, 2003. ISBN 978-0-7668-2324-2.
Further reading [ edit ]Senior bureaucrat Bal Kishan Bansal, who was arrested under corruption charges, committed suicide in his Madhu Vihar residence in New Delhi, news agency ANI reported. Bansal reportedly killed himself along with his son. According to police, the incident came to light on Tuesday morning when the domestic help discovered the dead bodies and then made a call to the Police Control Room.
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“We have recovered their dead bodies and called the district forensic crime team to examine the spot,” a police officer added.
In July, Bansal was arrested by the CBI on charges of corruption. Hours after he was produced in court, his wife Satyabala (58) and daughter Neha (28) were found hanging in two separate rooms at their residence in Neelkanth Apartments on July 22 after CBI’s second raid at their residence.
WATCH VIDEO: Senior Bureaucrat BK Bansal Commits Suicide Along With His Son In Delhi
News agency PTI had reported that in their suicide notes, the women had said that the CBI raid had caused “great humiliation” and they did not want to live after that. They also mentioned that they didnt hold anybody responsible for their death.
Bansal had been the Director General of Corporate Affairs before being arrested on alleged charges of bribery. According to the charges, he was attempting to scuttle a probe against a Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company. The CBI had also allegedly caught him accepting a bribe of Rs 9 lakh.
Also Read | BK Bansal’s wife, daughter had committed suicide in July
A special court had later granted him bail in August. Special CBI judge Gurdeep Singh had observed, “Keeping in view the factum of unfortunate happening in his family, where his wife and daughter committed suicide when he was in police custody; he himself is suffering from a medical condition; his only son is in depression and the fact that Anjun Saxena is yet to be arrested… and particularly the peculiar circumstances of the case, I am of the opinion that the accused is entitled to bail.”
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Speaking on his son’s depression, Bansal had told the judge, “My son is sitting like a statue. I fear he too will do what his mother and sister did.”For a non-technical introduction to the topic, see Introduction to genetics
Genetic disorder A boy with Down syndrome, one of the most common genetic disorders Specialty Medical genetics
A genetic disorder is a genetic problem caused by one or more abnormalities formed in the genome. Most genetic disorders are quite rare and affect one person in every several thousands or millions.[citation needed]
Genetic disorders may be hereditary, meaning that they are passed down from the parents' genes. In other genetic disorders, defects may be caused by new mutations or changes to the DNA. In such cases, the defect will only be passed down if it occurs in the germline.
Some types of recessive gene disorders confer an advantage in certain environments when only one copy of the gene is present.[1]
A single-gene (or monogenic) disorder is the result of a single mutated gene. Over 6000 human diseases are caused by single-gene defects.[4] Single-gene disorders can be passed on to subsequent generations in several ways. Genomic imprinting and uniparental disomy, however, may affect inheritance patterns. The divisions between recessive and dominant types are not "hard and fast", although the divisions between autosomal and X-linked types are (since the latter types are distinguished purely based on the chromosomal location of the gene). For example, achondroplasia is typically considered a dominant disorder, but children with two genes for achondroplasia have a severe skeletal disorder of which achondroplasics could be viewed as carriers. Sickle-cell anemia is also considered a recessive condition, but heterozygous carriers have increased resistance to malaria in early childhood, which could be described as a related dominant condition.[5] When a couple where one partner or both are sufferers or carriers of a single-gene disorder wish to have a child, they can do so through in vitro fertilization, which enables preimplantation genetic diagnosis to occur to check whether the embryo has the genetic disorder.[6]
Most congenital metabolic disorders known as inborn errors of metabolism result from single-gene defects.
Autosomal dominant [ edit ]
Only one mutated copy of the gene will be necessary for a person to be affected by an autosomal dominant disorder. Each affected person usually has one affected parent.[7] The chance a child will inherit the mutated gene is 50%. Autosomal dominant conditions sometimes have reduced penetrance, which means although only one mutated copy is needed, not all individuals who inherit that mutation go on to develop the disease. Examples of this type of disorder are Huntington's disease,[8] neurofibromatosis type 1, neurofibromatosis type 2, Marfan syndrome, hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, hereditary multiple exostoses (a highly penetrant autosomal dominant disorder), Tuberous sclerosis, Von Willebrand disease, and acute intermittent porphyria. Birth defects are also called congenital anomalies.
Autosomal recessive [ edit ]
Two copies of the gene must be mutated for a person to be affected by an autosomal recessive disorder. An affected person usually has unaffected parents who each carry a single copy of the mutated gene (and are referred to as carriers). Two unaffected people who each carry one copy of the mutated gene have a 25% risk with each pregnancy of having a child affected by the disorder. Examples of this type of disorder are Albinism, Medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency, cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell disease, Tay–Sachs disease, Niemann-Pick disease, spinal muscular atrophy, and Roberts syndrome. Certain other phenotypes, such as wet versus dry earwax, are also determined in an autosomal recessive fashion.[9][10]
X-linked dominant [ edit ]
X-linked dominant disorders are caused by mutations in genes on the X chromosome. Only a few disorders have this inheritance pattern, with a prime example being X-linked hypophosphatemic rickets. Males and females are both affected in these disorders, with males typically being more severely affected than females. Some X-linked dominant conditions, such as Rett syndrome, incontinentia pigmenti type 2, and Aicardi syndrome, are usually fatal in males either in utero or shortly after birth, and are therefore predominantly seen in females. Exceptions to this finding are extremely rare cases in which boys with Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY) also inherit an X-linked dominant condition and exhibit symptoms more similar to those of a female in terms of disease severity. The chance of passing on an X-linked dominant disorder differs between men and women. The sons of a man with an X-linked dominant disorder will all be unaffected (since they receive their father's Y chromosome), and his daughters will all inherit the condition. A woman with an X-linked dominant disorder has a 50% chance of having an affected fetus with each pregnancy, although in cases such as incontinentia pigmenti, only female offspring are generally viable. In addition, although these conditions do not alter fertility per se, individuals with Rett syndrome or Aicardi syndrome rarely reproduce.[citation needed]
X-linked recessive [ edit ]
X-linked recessive conditions are also caused by mutations in genes on the X chromosome. Males are more frequently affected than females, and the chance of passing on the disorder differs between men and women. The sons of a man with an X-linked recessive disorder will not be affected, and his daughters will carry one copy of the mutated gene. A woman who is a carrier of an X-linked recessive disorder (XRXr) has a 50% chance of having sons who are affected and a 50% chance of having daughters who carry one copy of the mutated gene and are therefore carriers. X-linked recessive conditions include the serious diseases hemophilia A, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, as well as common and less serious conditions such as male pattern baldness and red-green color blindness. X-linked recessive conditions can sometimes manifest in females due to skewed X-inactivation or monosomy X (Turner syndrome).
Y-linked disorders are caused by mutations on the Y chromosome. These conditions may only be transmitted from the heterogametic sex (e.g. male humans) to offspring of the same sex. More simply, this means that Y-linked disorders in humans can only be passed from men to their sons; females can never be affected because they do not possess Y-allosomes.
Y-linked disorders are exceedingly rare but the most well-known examples typically cause infertility. Reproduction in such conditions is only possible through the circumvention of infertility by medical intervention.
Mitochondrial [ edit ]
This type of inheritance, also known as maternal inheritance, applies to genes encoded by mitochondrial DNA. Because only egg cells contribute mitochondria to the developing embryo, only mothers can pass on mitochondrial DNA conditions to their children. An example of this type of disorder is Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy. It is important to stress that the vast majority of mitochondrial disease (particularly when symptoms develop in early life) is actually caused by an underlying nuclear gene defect, and most often follows autosomal recessive inheritance.[11]
Multiple genes [ edit ]
Genetic disorders may also be complex, multifactorial, or polygenic, meaning they are likely associated with the effects of multiple genes in combination with lifestyles and environmental factors. Multifactorial disorders include heart disease and diabetes. Although complex disorders often cluster in families, they do not have a clear-cut pattern of inheritance. This makes it difficult to determine a person’s risk of inheriting or passing on these disorders. Complex disorders are also difficult to study and treat, because the specific factors that cause most of these disorders have not yet been identified. Studies which aim to identify the cause of complex disorders can use several methodological approaches to determine genotype-phenotype associations. One method, the genotype-first approach, starts by identifying genetic variants within patients and then determining the associated clinical manifestations. This is opposed to the more traditional phenotype-first approach, and may identify causal factors that have previously been obscured by clinical heterogeneity, penetrance, and expressivity.
On a pedigree, polygenic diseases do tend to "run in families", but the inheritance does not fit simple patterns as with Mendelian diseases. But this does not mean that the genes cannot eventually be located and studied. There is also a strong environmental component to many of them (e.g., blood pressure).
Diagnosis [ edit ]
Due to the wide range of genetic disorders that are known, diagnosis is widely varied and dependent of the disorder. Most genetic disorders are diagnosed at birth or during early childhood however some, such as Huntington's disease, can escape detection until the patient is well into adulthood.
The basic aspects of a genetic disorder rests on the inheritance of genetic material. With an in depth family history, it is possible to anticipate possible disorders in children which direct medical professionals to specific tests depending on the disorder and allow parents the chance to prepare for potential lifestyle changes, anticipate the possibility of stillbirth, or contemplate termination.[12] Prenatal diagnosis can detect the presence of characteristic abnormalities in fetal development through ultrasound, or detect the presence of characteristic substances via invasive procedures which involve inserting probes or needles into the uterus such as in amniocentesis.[13]
Prognosis [ edit ]
Not all genetic disorders directly result in death; however, there are no known cures for genetic disorders. Many genetic disorders affect stages of development, such as Down syndrome, while others result in purely physical symptoms such as muscular dystrophy. Other disorders, such as Huntington's disease, show no signs until adulthood. During the active time of a genetic disorder, patients mostly rely on maintaining or slowing the degradation of quality of life and maintain patient autonomy. This includes physical therapy, pain management, and may include a selection of alternative medicine programs.
Treatment [ edit ]
The treatment of genetic disorders is an ongoing battle with over 1800 gene therapy clinical trials having been completed, are ongoing, or have been approved worldwide.[14] Despite this, most treatment options revolve around treating the symptoms of the disorders in an attempt to improve patient quality of life.
Gene therapy refers to a form of treatment where a healthy gene is introduced to a patient. This should alleviate the defect caused by a faulty gene or slow the progression of disease. A major obstacle has been the delivery of genes to the appropriate cell, tissue, and organ affected by the disorder. How does one introduce a gene into the potentially trillions of cells which carry the defective copy? This question has been the roadblock between understanding the genetic disorder and correcting the genetic disorder.[15]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]When we heard that our friend Jason from Swift Industries was planning a little weekend bike touring / fly fishing extravaganza for the 4th of July AND that we would be riding a portion of the Iron Horse Trail, we couldn’t say no. We have been eyeing the Iron Horse Trail for quite some time because it looked like an intriguing gravel ride and because it seemed to have good bike tourism bones. Surprisingly, for a trail of its length, proximity to Seattle and general potential for awesomeness, there is very little information about it. There are some odd trip reports here and there, but nothing with photos that really give you a flavor of the trail.
We boarded the BOLT bus in Portland. For those that don’t know, the Bolt is a generally less sketchy Greyhound (though it operates The Hound umbrella). The coaches are newer, have WiFi and MOST importantly aren’t jerks about taking bikes. Interestingly, the buses don’t have racks but instead allow you to place them in the luggage area UNBOXED. For us, this illustrates that accommodating bikes is more about attitude/policy than hardware. We’ve taken the Bolt bus where they have accommodated upto 6 bikes sans bike rack. Also interesting to note was that the bus was full of Gen X/Y riders. Our generation may not be into owning cars, but it doesn’t mean we don’t like to travel. It just means we will travel to places that are easy to get around without driving.
After taking the bus to Seattle, we all gathered the next morning and got a lift from Steve, who actually wrote his graduate thesis on the Iron Horse Trail and is active in mapping and advocating for the trail. It was great to hear his insight about the potential and challenges of the trail.
We started riding at the trailhead at Rattlesnake Lake (about 43 miles from Seattle). The trail is unpaved gravel which is very rideable but is more enjoyable with some fat rubber. I was riding my new Surly Ogre with 2.3 inch tires and Laura was riding her monstercrossed Vaya with 45mm Vee Rubber tires. There was no tire skinnier than 35mm on the ride.
From Rattlesnake Lake we rode East on the trail, which is generally trending uphill. It climbs at a railroad grade, so it was pretty mellow, even with a load. There were short stretches of loose gravel and some pot holes to negotiate, but for the most part the riding was easy and freed us up to talk with each other and enjoy the scenery.
One remarkable thing about the Iron Horse is that it has some beautiful “backcountry” campsites just off the trail, with pit toilets. They were tastefully done and placed in some nice locations (the complete opposite of many hiker/biker sites around the country). One particularly striking site was perched next to a small waterfall and creek, tucked beneath some lush trees. We decided to take a break there for brunch. As luck would have it, another cyclist was also stopped, with a BOB trailer. He was actually providing support for a group of riders and wanted to ditch some of his load, so he gave us a sixer of Pabst, some V8 and muffins : )
As you ride you’ll be flanked by salmonberry bushes, which we of course took a few minutes to sample. You’ll also ride over trestles and pass some cliff faces that are popular with climbers.
The other big highlight is the Snoqualamie Pass Tunnel, a 2.5-mile tunnel that bores right through the mountain. It is the longest tunnel open to non-motorized travel in the US. The sensation of traveling through a tunnel that long was a little unnerving but fun at the same time. The other end appears as a tiny pinprick of light in the distance that seems to grow larger at a glacial pace. Be sure to bring good lights and a windbreaker. On our return trip, the temperature outside the tunnel was a pleasant 75 degrees and inside was a breezy 45.
Just after the tunnel is the Hyak stop, which has a small building with restroom facilities with flush toilets, sinks and running water. There were also showers there, though they seem to have been shut off. At Hyak we had a break for lunch.
Soon after the trail crossed the Yakima river, we left the Iron Horse and headed for Lake Easton to find a convenience store to load up on more snacks. After the minimart, we made our way to our final destination, Lake Kachess. Through some navigational errors, we found ourselves on a pretty rough forest service road. Gone was the relatively relaxed Iron Horse Trail, replaced with fist-sized rocks and ponds that crossed the entire “road.” The going was slow but the climbing and obstacles made for a more exciting ride and was a good test of both my new Ogre and the Vee Rubber tires Laura was using on her Vaya. Both performed admirably.
After an hour or two on the forest service road, we strangely emerged into a housing development, which was rather disconcerting after feeling like we were in the middle of nowhere a few minutes before. From that point, we were back on pavement and made our way to the official campground on Lake Kachess. Although it was mid-week, it was also the 4th of July so the campground was a little fuller than it would have been otherwise but it still wasn’t too bad. We found a rather large site and pitched our tents and made dinner at the day use area by the waterfront.
The next morning, we left base camp, carrying snacks and fishing gear. The plan was to pedal a few miles up a gravel road and fish Box Canyon Creek. We passed some promising spots early on, but they were already filled with cars and other campers. We pushed on and finally found one wilderness campsite by the river that provided both shade and beautiful scenery for the non-fishers and some promising little runs for the fishermen.
I eyed a promising little run and strung up my Tenkara rod and got into the water. Instead of waders, I use neoprene booties and my Keen sandals. They give me just enough insulation to stand in the cold water. After about 10 minutes I hooked up with a fish in some really skinny improbable looking water. It was a beautiful fat 8 inch trout that got off before I could handle it. It was an auspicious start, but the rest of the day was a little slow fishing-wise. I caught two other small ones, but that was it for the rest of the day.
The next morning we got up early and took a more civilized paved path back to the Iron Horse Trail and essentially rode the route in reverse back to Rattlesnake Lake. From there, we parted ways with a few riders. The remaining group rode to Issaquah where we thought we could take our bikes back on the SoundTransit bus back to Seattle (cutting out 18 miles of urban riding), but we were turned away.
The driver pointed to my front rack and said “No bikes with baskets are allowed.” Admittedly, my 29er was having a tough time fitting on the front rack. I completely deflated the tire to try to get the hook to slide over more securely but had no luck. All the while, the driver was no help whatsoever. I asked if we could take the bikes on board since the bus was pretty empty, but he said no.
With that, we were left with no other option but to ride back, rounding off the day at just under 80 miles from Lake Kachess to Seattle. Fortunately we were all feeling pretty good and had it in our legs to do the mileage. But it seemed like such a disappointment that what could have been a convenient multi-modal connection was a non-option due to inadequate front racks and a none-too-helpful bus driver. Oh well.
We rode only a portion of the Iron Horse Trail and really enjoyed it and look forward to exploring it more in the future. The section we rode was pretty tame riding (perfect for families or a S24O) but we hear it gets rougher the further east you go (downed bridges, crossing a military base, signing waivers to ride through tunnels, etc.,). But we’ll save that part for a future adventure.
One thought that really stood out in our mind is how great a resource is the Iron Horse Trail. Our return trip was on a Saturday and we saw lots of day riders and climbers using the trail. Despite that, we felt that it could be even MORE popular. Being just a visitor and not privy to the politics of the trail, I was surprised at the lack of marketing behind the Iron Horse. It really could be an awesome bike destination, if only people knew about it and if the local communities seemed more connected to it. In the end, the riding was great, the fishing could have been better, but it was still a fine way to celebrate the 4th of July.
(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our new Brompton Touring Book, or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing, or buying your gear through our Amazon store.)Advertisement After threats made, school forced to forfeit football game Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Friday night's football game between East High and Ames High has been cancelled.Video videoAfter threats were made on Thursday, officials increased safety precautions Friday at East High. School officials said there were a half dozen police officers patrolling the school campus on Friday as a precaution. No incidents were reported."The reaction had to be pretty quick. We need to err on the side of caution because obviously you don't want the alternative to ignore the situation, to have it turn into something that serious," said Des Moines Public Schools spokesman Phil Roeder.In addition to the added security, the football game with Ames scheduled on Friday night has been canceled. East had to forfeit the game.School district officials said the Iowa High School Athletic Association forced the team to forfeit.Superintendent Thomas Ahart went to East High to personally tell the football team the news."The IHSAA and Ames have reacted together to unsubstantiated internet rumors about safety at East High School. The IHSAA directed DMPS officials to either reschedule the game for tonight in Ames, tomorrow at East (in daylight only) or forfeit," said a statement from the district."IHSAA's stance is disappointing and sets an insupportable precedent," said Ahart. "The reasons Ames and the IHSAA are basing their decision on are baseless. This is an insult to our students, our school and the entire Des Moines community.""We have complete confidence that there are no more and no less safety concerns for tonight's game than there would be for any other football game anywhere else in Iowa," said interim Chief Schools Officer Matt Smith. "Based on our close work with the Des Moines Police Department in response to these rumors, the reasons cited by Ames and agreed to by IHSAA have no merit."“Forcing East to play a game on the road with a few hours notice or on a Saturday with less than a day’s notice lacks all respect for our students,” said Tim Schott, executive director of secondary schools at DMPS. “Many of our students work on the weekends, in jobs that they need to help support their families, and Ames and the IHSAA are jeopardizing the well-being of those students by making such a rash and groundless decision.”DMPS said it plans to appeal the decision, if allowed by the IHSAA.Look for more on this story coming up on KCCI-TV, KCCI.com, our Facebook page, mobile website m.kcci.com and apps.FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas - A man was shot Friday in an apparent road incident in Fort Bend County, sheriffs said.
The incident started just before 1 a.m. on Bellaire Boulevard, deputies said.
The victim tried to get away and the driver in the other car chased him to Chickery Woods, investigators said.
The victim and the other driver got into an argument before the driver pulled out a gun and shot the man multiple times in the leg and groin area, deputies said.
The shooter drove away.
The victim drove to his parents house for help, investigators said.
He was taken to a hospital and into surgery.
He is expected to survive.
Investigators said they do not have a good description of the shooter's vehicle.
Anyone with information about the shooting or the shooter is asked to call Fort Bend County sheriff's deputies.
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Jeb Bush declared martial law in Florida four days before the 9/11 attacks.
Our take...
Think about this for a moment and it doesn't sound very likely. Wouldn't someone in Florida have noticed this, asked why? Still, here's the Rense explanation: Just some quick facts (no rumors what-so-ever) concerning the Bush family brothers, Governor "Jeb" of Florida and President "G.W." of Washington City, with regards to the events of 9-11:
On Friday, September 7, "Jeb" signed Florida Executive Order No. 01-261 which states, in part:
"I hereby delegate to The Adjutant General of the State of Florida all necessary authority, within approved budgetary appropriations or grants, to order members of the Florida National Guard into active service, as defined by Section 250.27, Florida Statutes, for the purpose of training to support law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters and to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations. This Executive Order shall remain in full force and effect until the earlier of its revocation or June 30, 2003."
This Fla. EO places the Florida National Guard (which is not a lawful militia), a unit of the Federal U.S. Army, in control of all Florida law enforcement (State FDLE, County Sheriffs, and local PD's) and the Florida Emergency Management department (Florida's FEMA under federal FEMA control). Remember, this was 4 days before the WTC disaster.
http://www.rense.com/general14/jebdeclared.htm This is yet another one of those cases where a big conclusion (the National Guard were placed in charge of all law enforcement) is based on absolutely nothing at all. Read the quote yourself: where does it say the National Guard "control" anything? It doesn't, because they don't. It's about "training to support law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel", working with the police, not taking charge of them. And it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with martial law.
Need confirmation? Okay, read the whole thing. EXECUTIVE ORDER NUMBER
01-261
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard has the statutory responsibility to provide support to law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters; and
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard has the responsibility to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations; and
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard must train to meet such responsibilities; and
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard is funded for any such training by budgetary appropriation or grants before any such training; and
WHEREAS, the Florida National Guard must conduct such training in active service of the state, as defined by Section 250.27, Florida Statutes (also known as active military service and state active duty) for members of the Florida National Guard to be covered by Section 250.34, Florida Statutes; and
WHEREAS, as Governor, I may delegate the authority contained in Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, to order training to help respond to civil disturbances, natural disasters, and counter drug operations to The Adjutant General of the State of Florida; and
WHEREAS, it is in the best interest of the State of Florida that I delegate such authority, so that the Florida National Guard is adequately trained to meet its obligation to help respond to civil disturbances, natural disasters, and counter drug operations and so that members of the Florida National Guard performing such training are covered by Section 250.34, Florida Statutes; and
WHEREAS, the Governor may order the Florida National Guard to provide extraordinary support to law enforcement upon request and such a request has been received from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to assist FDLE in performing port security training and inspections.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JEB BUSH, as Governor of Florida, by virtue of the authority vested in me by Article IV, Section 1(a) of the Florida Constitution, and by Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, and all other applicable laws, do hereby promulgate the following Executive Order, to take immediate effect:
Section 1.
Based upon the foregoing, I hereby find that the public welfare requires that the Florida National Guard train to support law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters and to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations.
Section 2.
I hereby delegate to The Adjutant General of the State of Florida all necessary authority, within approved budgetary appropriations or grants, to order members of the Florida National Guard into active service, as defined by Section 250.27, Florida Statutes, for the purpose of training to support law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters and to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations.
Section 3.
The Florida National Guard may order selected members on to state active duty for service to the State of Florida pursuant to Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, to assist FDLE in performing port security training and inspections. Based on the potential massive damage to life and property that may result from an act of terrorism at a Florida port, the necessity to protect life and property from such acts of terrorism, and inhibiting the smuggling of illegal drugs into the State of Florida, the use of the Florida National Guard to support FDLE in accomplishing port security training and inspections is "extraordinary support to law enforcement" as used in Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes.
Section 4.
The Adjutant General shall not place members of the Florida National Guard into active service for longer than necessary to accomplish the purposes declared herein.
Section 5.
This Executive Order supersedes Executive Order Number 01-17. Executive Order Number 01-17 is hereby revoked.
Section 6.
This Executive Order shall remain in full force and effect until the earlier of its revocation or June 30, 2003.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and have caused the Great Seal of the State of Florida to be affixed at Tallahassee, the Capitol, this 7th day of September 2001.
http://sun6.dms.state.fl.us/eog_new/eog/orders/2001/september/eo2001-261-09-07-01.html This is not martial law.
Rense and others move on to another Executive Order signed by Bush on 9/11, though, and suggest maybe THAT imposed martial law. (Which suggests they weren't too convinced about the previous order, perhaps, but we'll let that pass.): Governor "Jeb" then signed Florida Executive Order No. 01-262 immediately after the second WTC tower fell. Florida was the first STATE to declare a "State of Emergency" and did so before New York State or the Federal Washington City leaders did, yet there were no "terroristic" incidents that had taken place. Florida EO 01-262 states, in part:
"I hereby declare that a state of emergency exists in the State of Florida... The authority to suspend the effect of any statute or rule governing the conduct of state business, and the further authority to suspend the effect of any order or rule of any governmental entity... The authority to seize and utilize any and all real or personal property as needed to meet this emergency... The authority to order the evacuation of any or all persons from any location in the State of Florida, and the authority to regulate the movement of any or all persons to or from any location in the State; The authority to regulate the return of the evacuees to their home communities... I hereby order the Adjutant General to activate the |
, would drive the media bonkers if uttered by Sarah Palin instead of a liberal like Schumer.
Near the end of the interview, this is how Schumer reiterated his devotion to the cause of Israel:
We do think that the media, or the blogosphere at least (the most important part of the media, obviously), would probably flip out if Palin said God had a special plan for her in government. We already saw it with George W. Bush. Remember how he allegedly told Palestinian leaders that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq? How he reportedly told a Texas evangelist that God wanted him to run for president? Or how he was also reported to have told an Amish group, “I trust God speaks through me.” Yeah, liberals/secularists/sane people didn’t really appreciate that. Is Schumer saying something similar here that God has given him a mission to protect Israel? Honestly, we can’t really tell what “Hashem actually gave me that name” is supposed to mean. We thought it was his name because it was his parents’ name. We’ve reached out to Schumer’s office for clarification.Product Description
The Eyes of Alice Cooper is the 23rd album by Alice Cooper, that was released in 2003.. With this album, Cooper returned to his earlier hard rock sound, in the vein of The Last Temptation, and left the heavy industrial metal sound found in his last two studio albums. Of note is the album cover, which was released in four different versions, featuring alternate colours in Cooper's eyes and the crescent around the 'A' in the title. It was available in blue, green, purple and red...Tracklisting: 01. What Do You Want From Me? 02. Between High School & Old School 03. Man Of The Year 04. Novocaine 05. Bye Bye Baby 06. Be With You Awhile 07. Detroit City 08. Spirits Rebellious 09. This House Is Haunted 10. Love Should Never Feel Like This 11. The Song That Didn't Rhyme 12. I'm So Angry 13. Backyard BrawlHere’s the exclusive reveal and up close look at the planned WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2012 DVD cover artwork, featuring John Cena, AJ Lee, and Dolph Ziggler.
The TLC 2012 DVD hits stores across the United States on January 15th, 2013. You can get your Amazon pre-orders in now over at this link.
No. 1 Contenders’ Tag Team Tables Match
Team Rhodes Scholars vs. Rey Mysterio & Sin Cara United States Championship Match
Antonio Cesaro vs. R-Truth Miz TV Intercontinental Championship Match
Kofi Kingston vs. Wade Barrett Six-Man Tables, Ladders & Chairs Match
The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins & Roman Reigns) vs. Ryback & Team Hell No Divas Championship Match
Eve vs. Naomi World Heavyweight Championship Chairs Match
Big Show vs. Sheamus Alberto Del Rio, The Miz & Brooklyn Brawler vs. 3MB (Heath Slater, Jinder Mahal & Drew McIntyre Ladder Match for the Money in the Bank contract
Dolph Ziggler vs. John Cena
Available January at Amazon.com; following February to Australia at WWEDVD.com.au.There’s a new gym coming to town, but it has all the markings of a brand that’s very familiar for Londoners.
GoodLife is launching a new affordable line of fitness centres. Strip away the bells and whistles of their typical gym — no group exercise classes, child care or massages — and at the same time, slash the price.
That’s the idea behind Fit4Less.
The fitness industry is just one more casualty of an economic downturn and families’ tight chequebooks.
“It’s the same as any other industry,” said Don Morrow, a professor of health sciences at Western University.
“I also suspect it might be an initiative to create a new market niche.”
GoodLife hopes the new venture will target a new audience, people who might be nervous working out alongside seasoned gym-goers.
“The number 1 reason people don’t exercise is intimidation,” said GoodLife Fitness chief executive David Patchell-Evans.
Fit4Less is a low-risk way to get your fitness on.
A mere $10 per month gives you access to the equipment, while $20 per month nets extra privileges such as guest passes, half-price drinks and sun tanning.
“Most people go for the $10. They just want a place to work out,” Patchell-Evans said.
The core of the Fit4Less venture is identical to the GoodLife mission, he said.
“What’s common between both clubs is the whole idea that everyone’s welcome, there’s no judgments, and people feel comfortable.”
Fit4Less will hope to bank on the popularity of the GoodLife empire that Patchell-Evans began in London in 1979.
At a time when economic conditions aren’t leaving much room in the budget for the gym membership, a trend toward budget gyms provides options for Canadians with different income brackets and work schedules.
“It’s an admirable vision for Canadian society,” Morrow said of the effort to bring exercise to all Canadians, regardless of income.
Patchell-Evans said it’s a starting point for cash-strapped or tentative exercisers. They can always “upgrade” to GoodLife later on. It’s like choosing wine, he said.
“The first glass of wine you had probably didn’t cost very much. But as your tastes mature, you kind of say, ‘It’s worth it to pay a little more for the glass of wine.’”
megan.stacey@sunmedia.ca
twitter.com/MeganatLFPress?
BY THE NUMBERS
5-6: Fit4Less gyms to open in London in the next 18 months
50: Fit4Less gyms to open by 2015
500: Fit4Less gyms to open across Canada
13: GoodLife Fitness clubs in London and area
42,000+: GoodLife members in London and area
1 million+: GoodLife members across CanadaReawakening Smell: how a perfumery course changed my ideas about smell training
In the summer of 2014 I found myself on a Monday morning, seated in a classroom at Kingston University, starting a course called Design with Scents. The course, now entering its fourth year, is designed to provide budding perfumers and people with an interest in scent and marketing with a good start down whatever path they wish to follow. My fellow classmates came from all over the world. They were interesting, varied in both age and background. Everyone had an interest in fragrance. Everyone, that is, but me.
I had lost my sense of smell. It seems an odd combination for an anosmic (as we are called by the doctors) to want to attend a perfumer’s course. It had been recommended to me by Duncan Boak, founder of Fifth Sense, and he had attended the previous year. I was sceptical. But I was also becoming more and more disconnected from so many of the pleasures of life through this loss, which happened as the result of a virus. I was ready to try anything: it is better to be a student of your affliction than a sufferer.
Our week was a strange, wonderful and heady experience for me. At the time I attended, I was what is termed a “functional anosmic”. I could smell something, but not very much. Most smells seemed to me like white noise, or perhaps even grey and brown noise. I could detect the presence of smells, but beyond that I felt at a loss to interpret the olfactory messages. The difficulty that confronts anosmics – as well as all people interested in smell and fragrance I learned – is that the experience of smelling and not smelling is near impossible to put into words. The first awakening of that week was to be introduced to this problem -- formally -- and go through some exercises that employed all the senses in an effort to bring us towards the kind of vocabulary that might help us in understanding and describing what we smell.
The second awakening that week was the exciting feeling of seeing all those little bottles and knowing there is something wonderful hiding inside, even if I knew I couldn't really experience it fully. The tactile experience of this, doing smell, rather than smelling smell: the mouillettes, the ritual of holding, smelling, concentrating, thinking about smell. All these things may on the surface seem like just “smelling” but in fact the experience is multisensory. And although I was only catching a distorted glimpse of each accord, perfume or ingredient, it was as though I was allowed to look into a hundred unlocked safe deposit boxes by the light of a single candle.
I am a devourer of trivia, and have a scientific background, so the anecdotes about putrescine and cadaverine stick out prominently in my memory of that week, as does the headspace method of smell extraction. That week another surprise came to me: the smell of an ingredient in one fragrance, geosmin, made such an impression on my nose that I was able to “find” it the following day in another. I was actually able to learn, remember and isolate a new smell. Another unexpected awakening.
The crowning achievement for me at the Design with Scents course was the final day at the wine tasting. We were doing a compare-and-contrast exercise, and that was the first time I realised that something of the week of smelling was rubbing off onto the realm of flavour. What we perceive as flavour is actually a combination of “true taste”, or that which is experienced on the tongue (salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami) plus the smell of the food or drink we are taking. We use the word “taste” all the time without thinking that the full impact of any food or drink comes not from the tongue but a combination of tongue and nose. The next time you eat something delicious and hear yourself say “mm! mm!” with enthusiasm, think that tongue gesture you use to do this is pumping the air inside the oral cavity up to the olfactory epithelium for a hit of delicious sensation. The heightened awareness brought about by smelling, comparing, describing and thinking about smells that week seemed to make my experience of the wine that afternoon a new one. Now there was complexity. Awakening #4 was to discover separate strands of flavour in each mouthful.
What I found in the weeks after my course in Kingston was that food, also, was taking on a new definition. I describe my experience like this: If food for functional anosmics is like putting your dinner into a food processor and turning it into a brown mush, my week of intensive smell training allowed me to run that food processor backwards enough that I could experience individual flavour notes. I can’t say whether my ability to identify individual odour objects is better, but I had developed a new kind of awareness that let me drill down into which olfactory messages were making it to my brain.
But the benefit of this week of joys and marvels had one last gift for me, delivered recently. Because my sense of smell remains distorted (I have parosmia, which means all smells are different now than they used to be for me) I had given up hoping that one day I might smell one of those wonderful smells that bring you straight back to a happy moment in your past. Like the inside of the first car you owned, or your grandmother’s kitchen at Christmas. When I took out the olfactorium that was given to the participants at the close of the Design with Scents course, opened the bottles and smelled the accords we had used to blend our own fragrance, it happened. I was right back in Kingston during the hottest week on record. I probably won’t get any of the old ones back, but this memory shines bright in my new smellscape.By on
The Yeon Lotus Flower Charcoal Transform Cleanser
Before my trip to Seoul, where I spent what felt like half my monthly income on various skincare products, I’d never heard of The Yeon. I hadn’t seen them in any online shops, or any of the stores down south in Busan. Founded in 2012 in Seoul, the company uses natural ingredients, and in their own words:
We have discovered that the sustainability of all products is in nature itself, not derived from artificial factors.
So yes, they use natural ingredients, but none more so than the lotus. They use lotus in many forms in a significant amount of their products: lotus flower, lotus root, lotus leaf, and lotus seed. Aside from being a beautiful plant, the lotus provides antioxidant protection, cleanses, and purifies the skin.
They’re a young company, but have established themselves in the US already and have opened two stores in New York. On top of this, the brand boasts locations in the Philippines, Japan, China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Thailand. I stumbled across their store in Myeongdong (beauty shopping district), and of course, they beckoned me in with a few free samples.
As I entered the shop, I wasn’t entirely sure about the products. A lot of things were discounted, and sometimes this can put up little red flags (Why are they selling all this stuff so cheaply? What are they trying to get rid of?). I needn’t have worried, as they were just having one of their beauty sales, which many shops seem to do on a monthly basis. I’d spent my day fruitlessly looking for an oil cleanser, and told the lovely assistant so. She informed me of the two-in-one oil to foam cleanser, which sounded promising, because who doesn’t enjoy saving time and money by getting two products in one?
Directing me to a large bowl of water, she proceeded to smear lipstick and eyeliner all over my hand in order to demonstrate how the product worked. I tested quite a few products in the shop that day (including their Jeju Hallabong range, which smells amazingly citrusy and tangy), but this was the one product that stood out to me. After using it for a while now, I’m ready to review it, and show you how a two-in-one cleanser works.
The Yeon Lotus Flower Charcoal Oil to Foam Cleanser
Oil to foam cleansers are becoming increasingly more popular, an alternative for those who want to combine the two-step process of oil cleansing followed by foam cleansing. It’s very simple to use – all you need to do is dispense the gel, and rub it into your face. This part is the oil cleanse. Why is this important? It draws out oil-based make up and dirt, such as the make-up you use, sun cream, and sebum (oil your body secretes from glands). This cannot be done simply by using a water-based/foam cleanser – as you know, oil and water don’t mix (see, science is really useful and now my face is glad I paid a bit of attention in school).
Rub the oil into your face, making small circular movements. Then, when you’ve rubbed it in some, add some warm water into the mix, and you’ll start to see it foaming up. The Yeon sold a cleansing brush tool to me along with their cleanser (it came together, at 19,000W, or $16/15 euros), and to use this, simply apply the product, and do the same as described above, but with the brush! I like using this as it seems to remove make-up more quickly and gets deeper into the skin/pores, removing more gunk. The foam part of the cleanse removes things like dirt and sweat, so keep rubbing that foam into your face, and then wash off with warm water to complete this step.
I really like the texture of this product. It feels nice on my skin and I look forward to cleansing – it does feel slightly warming on my skin, possibly because of its oil base (this is the part where you can tell me I obviously wasn’t too sharp at the whole science thing).
The ingredients are as follows:
Water, Sodium Cocoyl Apple Amino Acids, Glycerin, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Acrylates Copolymer, Lauric Acid, Potassium Hydroxide, Fragrance, Dipropylene Glycol, Nelumbo Nucifera Flower Extract(3.75mg), Nelumbo Nucifera Leaf Extract(3.75mg), Nelumbo Nucifera Root Extract(3.75mg), Nelumbo Nucifera Seed Extract(3.75mg), Myristic Acid, Hydrolyzed Corn Starch, Butylene Glycol, Sucrose, 1,2-Hexanediol, Bertholletia Excelsa Seed Oil, Argania Spinosa Kernel Oil, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil, Orbignya Oleifera Seed Oil, Laurus Nobilis Leaf Extract, Punica Granatum Fruit Extract, Ficus Carica (Fig) Fruit Extract, Morus Alba Fruit Extract, Ginkgo Biloba Nut Extract, Charcoal Powder(180mg), Caprylyl glycol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Tropolone, Disodium EDTA
A quick check on CosDNA shows a red flag for one ingredient in particular: Cocamidopropyl Betaine. It shows up as follows:
Why? Well, cocamidopropyl betaine is something called a synthetic surfactant, which means it could cause skin irritation, especially for those with sensitive skin or allergies. It has, however, been deemed safe for use in small amounts and is a cleansing agent. It is likely present in the product because of its cleansing and foam-boosting properties. So far, I haven’t experienced any problems with the product, and my skin is on the sensitive side.
There are some nice things in there too, such as many of the leaf extracts – laurus nobilis leaf extract is a tonic which refreshes your skin, and nelumbo nucifera leaf extract conditions the skin. Charcoal is proven to be effective in cleansing, as it sticks to the dirt and oil in your pores, pulling it out and therefore washing it away as you rinse.
Below you can see the cleanse test I carried out, using foundation, lipstick, and waterproof eyeliner.
The lipstick is also a lip tint, so I left it on there for a while, as that stuff can be horrible to get off after a night on the tiles! I let it sink into my skin.
This is what the product looks like at first – a gel-type substance. One or two pumps is usually enough for my face.
Rubbing the product in. As you can see, it’s effective against the lipstick and foundation, but that eyeliner is stubborn as all hell and isn’t going anywhere. This is where the cleansing brush comes in. Some days I use a charcoal jelly puff too, which is equally effective.
After just one rub, you can see the eyeliner is coming off. So all it needs is a little friction, and it glides off easily – it’s not realistic to think that eyeliner will be removed simply by rubbing at it! I was impressed by how quickly it did come off, as I’ve had other cleansers which didn’t remove eyeliner at all. Once you add water, the foaming comes into effect.
My nice clean hand, and nice clean brush. I was worried eyeliner would get stuck to it, but it comes out after a rinse.
I like this product and it lives up to its claims. I probably wouldn’t have bought it at full price without the brush, but I’d be tempted to now I know how well it works.
Price: 4/5 ($23.99RRP for a cleanser alone is a little steep in my opinion).
Ingredients: 4/5. This would have been a perfect score, but I know that certain ingredients could be a hazard for some, which brings it down a little. It wasn’t a problem for me, though.
Effectiveness of product: 5/5. I love how easily my make-up comes off, and the two-in-one method is genius. It’s so great to use and I like that I don’t have to use two products in my routine. This is quick, simple, and it really works in removing all the gunk from my face.
Overall, at an average of 4.33/5, I highly recommend this product. I’m also interested in seeing what else The Yeon has to offer after this!
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Categories: Cleansing, The YeonSearch Gallery The FatKid Project FatKid has a posse - STICKER MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid in Watercolors MonkeyMan504 4 Advertisement Advertisement FatKid has a posse - 3D a MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid has a posse - 420 MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid has a posse - 3D b MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid has a posse - Solid MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid has a posse - Ouch MonkeyMan504 1 FatKid - Right Shoulder MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid - Tezuka's Favorite Son MonkeyMan504 1 FatKid - Na'vi MonkeyMan504 2 FatKid - Anonymous MonkeyMan504 1 FatKid - Twinkle Toes MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid - That Voodoo That... MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid - Eat My Shorts MonkeyMan504 2 FatKid - I am the night. MonkeyMan504 3 FatKid - SNIKT MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid - Ororo Munroe MonkeyMan504 2 FatKid - Piotr Rasputin MonkeyMan504 2 FatKid - Venom MonkeyMan504 1 FatKid - I don't drink wine MonkeyMan504 1 FatKid - Feel the POWER MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid - Thundercats, hooooooo MonkeyMan504 2 FatKid - The Flash MonkeyMan504 0 FatKid - Its-a me, Mario MonkeyMan504 2Bob Burden is best known for Flaming Carrot, Gumby and The Mystery Men, the latter inspiring the movie starring Ben Stiller and William H. Macy.
But now he’s going back to the very beginning.
Thrilling Visions 2 Sketchbook shows the Flaming Carrot’s early years in sketch form as well as early art and experimental drawings. I really love Bob’s work and some of this is some of his best. Seriously, look at the image above from the seventies, aren’t you already playing the scene out in your head?
If you meet Bob Burden he seems quite normal. After you’ve read his books, you’re under a totally different impression. He could be a founding member of the Illuminati, alive today through transfusions of vampire blood. He could be the party animal, that, after eight Bloody Marys, reaches up into the midnight sky and grabs the moon down. He could be “the man who proved the earth was flat”.
Like fellow surrealist Federico Fellini, Burden started out his career as a cartoonist. Burden produced both single panel caption cartoons and continuity strips. Much of his really interesting, early stuff was odd and quirky single panel cartoons with strange, striking captions, or cover mock-ups. And this will all be showcased in his new Art-Book, THRILLING VISIONS, Vol. 2 – PANDEMONIUM BOULEVARD!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFW39oawrSc[/youtube]
In general, these early cartoons were very similar to – or in the same vein as – Kliban’s work (NEVER EAT ANYTHING BIGGER THAN YOUR HEAD, etc.) or that of Gary Larson (FAR SIDE), only rendered in a more realistic, quirky and often disturbing style.
Lucky for us, Bob Burden went on to do his iconic and seminal Indy comic series FLAMING CARROT (instead of going the Gary Larson route, and making millions of dollars as a syndicated cartoonist).
Now he is sharing it all. THRILLING VISIONS Vol. 2 – PANDEMONIUM BLVD. is a treasure trove of surreal cartoons, early concept sketches, recollections on a life as a surrealist, and even the origins of the Flaming Carrot. And all the other bizarre, deranged and utterly wonderful no-Carrots things he was working on at the same time.
So this series, this new book, 250 pages – what’s in it? Bob told us:
This will have early stuff, and drawings all the way up to this decade. The first volume was a start and this will round it out. There’ll be never before new characters and comic ideas, a lot of surreal drawings, some hot chicks – I love drawing the female form – and a lot of wild stuff…
The cover is by Dave Stevens… and you. How did that happen?
The details are in the book but Dave grabbed a drawing I had been working on – we were sitting in the hotel bar after the convention closed – and he finished it. Ten minutes of my work and about a minute and a half by him. That’s how good he was. He liked the shape of the girl, the posture, and didn’t want me to mess it up. You really know how limited you are and what real talent is when you see someone like Dave in action.
Well, you’re not so bad.
I’d say I’m as fun artist, not a great artist or even a good artist. There are so many good artists out there. I can practice all I want and I’ll never be as good as Dave or someone like Jamie Hernandez or Bernie Kriegstien or Mike Mignola or Kubert, Ditko, Kirby… and I saw that, that day when Dave worked his magic on that drawing in a couple of minutes. Breathtaking. Sometimes I could just sit and watch Dave or Jamie draw, at a show, or I visited Dave now and then and it was like I was watching an opera, seeing a real artist draw. So I guess I had to make up for it with the writing! With the ideas. I was an idea guy. And that’s what this book is about. It’s about CREATIVITY. Surrealism. It’s about having fun. There’s memoirs. Anecdotes. Tutorials. Reflections. Epiphanies. All one or two pages, here and there. Just like in the first book.
Comics in the 80s. You were there. During a revolution, really. An explosion of talent.
Those were great times. The Indy days. Comics were not just about the latest hot cover artist, or some endless soap-opera-continuity of mainstream titles. Not just about vampires and zombies. It was also about fine art, new frontiers, freedom of expression, creativity, a certain sense of wonder.
Why Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is a real good system for me. Well, I can reach readers directly. They get the books directly from me and I think they like that. It’s efficiency of scale rather than economy of scale. By getting the money up front, I can put out a better product at a better price. It makes the whole different ball game. And later I can sell it at shows and through Diamond. But without Kickstarter, there’d be nothing at shows.
Your first two Kickstarters have been printing work that is already done. What’s next?
I was told that people would be more likely to donate to a project that is already done. Already in the can. I guess they worry about someone taking all the money in and then not doing the project. Makes sense. I’m planning my next project to be HIT MAN FOR THE DEAD. We may Kickstart that too. I already have an artist working on it.
Who?
It’s secret.
Bob, I’ve already been to the site.
Oh yeah, its live. Hitman for the dead dot com. Oops. Well I’m working with Andrew Robinson on it. We have a little video done up on the site there I think.
It would be a good kickstarter.
But I want to have an issue in the can first. That’s what Andrew’s working on. I’m financing it myself. Though we have other sources sniffing around.
Not Dark Horse?
Haven’t heard a peep from them.
So where did all this come from? What is the origin of Bob Burden?
I’ve always loved comics. Storytelling. It’s the hottest medium. It’s the most immediate medium. You can get an idea, and, boom – as a cartoonist, it’s down on a napkin ten seconds later. Whereas, a movie might take a year, or a book six months to get across.
And the cartoons that affected you? Influenced you?
I was a comic book fanatic as a kid, but also cartoons fascinated me. Yes. But don’t get me wrong: I loved comics too. They were my first love. I still have runs of PLASTIC MAN, POPEYE, CAPTAIN MARVEL from the 40’s and 50s. Kirby FIGHTING AMERICAN. I still have the first Amazing Fantasy 15 I bought off the stands as a kid. But the gag writers I liked were Gahan Wilson, Charles Adams, George Price and a guy named T. S. Sullivant. When I was really young I went on a Dennis The Menace kick and had about ten paperback collections of his cartoons.”
Where did you go to art school?
Nowhere. I was always drawing. As far back as I can remember I was scribbling and carving and messing things up. Drawing just came naturally to me.
You were an early tagger.
I guess so. You just want to say “hey, here I am!” or “I was here!” When I was like five, I wrote my name on my parent’s bedroom furniture. And Zorro too. I caught hell for that.
So you’re going to have some early primitive stuff.
I’m still primitive. Just look at the stuff.
An American primitive.
But some things work better drawn crudely. Some movies might be a lot better at a low budget.
While Burden’s offbeat view of the world around him evolved into full length comic book stories with his FLAMING CARROT series and the four delightful, all-ages GUMBY comic books, his odd, single panel non-sequitors certainly lived on, sporadically and faithfully, on the covers of his comics, and among the hundreds of sketches and faux covers Burden did over the years for sales at conventions.
While his comic stories take a minute to sit down and read, Always a small press, not ready for (or too good for?) prime time, exquisitely preposterous kind of guy, these two volumes have enough buckshot and salt to go viral in the modern, short-attention-span, internet world…
Sean Fernald writes;
A true pioneer of the Indy, New-Wave comics explosion of the 80’s, Bob Burden’s blue collar, second string, totally wacked-out characters and whimsical, offbeat stories always grabbed me. His Flaming Carrot Comics, Mysterymen, and award wining Gumby stories entertained, inspired, and deranged a whole generation of both readers and creators. When I asked him once, how he became an artist, he told a story of how, as a young boy, he picked up a baby bird that had fallen from its nest and onto a driveway. As he held the bird between his hands, he breathed on it gently. Moments later, the bird came around – woke up – and flew off. Bob told me, that he knew then, that he would be an artist, and a good one. What that all had to do with being an artist, I am still unclear, but like his drawings, it made some kind of sense, some kind of weird, oblique sense, particularly with both of us well into an open bar at some con party. Some years later, at a similar party, I asked him about the bird again. I wanted him to tell the story again for a friend. Bob shook his head and said with all seriousness: “Dam thing keeled over at a black-jack table in Reno last year. Heart attack. Split his aces three times, and still got wiped out.”
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundTo many in the media, ripping President Donald Trump and trying to shame his friends is par for the course. By taking his family to the White House to visit the President, pro-golfer John Daly just opened the door for more hacks at the President the left-stream media love to hate. Trump haters fired chip shots at Daly after he tweeted about the fun he had at the White House:
Rick Reilly, 11-time national sports-writer of the year and member of the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame, belittled himself by childishly criticizing Daly in a tweet of his own:
The feud between these two goes back a few years when Reilly caddied for Daly and then used Daly quotes that were supposed to be "off-the-record" in a book. But now that Daly has been outed as a friend of Trump's, he is fair game.
David Hookstead, of The Smoke Room blog, teed off on Trump this way:
Daly paying Trump a little visit is exactly what his administration needs at the moment. His son is being accused of colluding with Russians after a meeting with a Russian lawyer, but President Trump knows how to control the narrative. Who wants to talk about Russia or politics when one of the most entertaining athletes in America is at the White House? Genius move from Trump. Also, Daly has to be the most entertaining athlete to ever step foot in the White House, right? The man is a walking and talking stereotype of an American man who loves tobacco, alcohol, women and gambling.
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Golf.com hit this approach shot at the President's friend:
Daly, who refers to Trump as a "great friend," has been a vocal supporter of the president from Day 1, and most recently on Twitter, when he appeared to turn down an invitation from Brittany Lincicome to attend her upcoming charity event because of comments Lincicome made ahead of the U.S. Women's Open, which is being played at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. "Hopefully, maybe he doesn't show up and it won't be a big debacle and it will be about us and not him," she said a week ago.
A writer for Barstoolsports who goes by "Trent" fired wildly into the rough with this errant stroke:
So I honestly think there isn’t a single thing Donald Trump wouldn’t do for John Daly. Not one thing. Daly could ask Trump to blow up the moon and it would just happen. No questions asked. We’d instantly toss an atomic bomb at the moon. Daly could ask to be his Vice President and Trump would figure out a way to kick Mike Pence to the curb. There have been fewer bromances in history stronger than the one between Donald Trump and John Daly. Just guys being dudes loving each other.
If these writers were intelligent, they'd all call "mulligan" on these cheap, errant shots.Magenta Baribeau has always known one thing: she’s never had the desire to have children. When the Montreal-based filmmaker turned 30, she was suddenly inundated by the concerns of nosy friends and family, concerned at her lack of maternal interest. This inspired her to create a documentary film featuring dozens of women who have chosen to stay childfree, titled Manan? Non Merci. She’s also hosting a Child-Free Day in Montreal next weekend. She spoke to the National Post’s Jen Gerson.
* * *
Q.How did you decide to not have kids? What was that process like for you?
A. I only realized that I didn’t want to have children because people kept asking me whether I wanted them. I never thought about it before because I never wanted any. I keep on making the comparison to climbing Mount Everest. You don’t realize that you don’t want to climb Mount Everest. It’s always been with you; you never have that desire.
Q.Was there ever a part of you that had to struggle with the idea that you didn’t want to have children? Was that a part you that had to come to terms with the fact that your lack of desire was at odds with what was expected of you?
A. Personally, no. It was always part of my personality. I always had other interests before children so I wasn’t giving up on anything. I know some people who are not going to have children for environmental or political reasons, but that wasn’t the case for me.
Q.When you try to explain that to people, what’s the reaction?
A. Most people simply don’t believe me. They don’t think it’s possible for a woman to not want children. Most of the time people look at me and say ‘Oh, you’re going to change your mind.’ Which I find very condescending. I’ve lived with myself for 37 years and they have known me for 22 seconds and they think they know me better than I do. I find that quite disrespectful.
Sometimes they will ask me why I don’t want to have children — but only for them to deconstruct my reasons. They try to make me feel like I’m going to be missing out on the best thing in life, that this is the best life you can have for myself. But the best life I can have for myself will be different than the best life you can have for you. There’s also this feeling of belonging. There is such a thing as a maternity club. People want you to be part of it. I stand outside that club, and it makes people feel uncomfortable.
Q.How do your parents react? Are they upset about not having grandchildren?
A. I’ve been really fortunate. I grew up with a model that it was possible for women to not have children. My mother had two sisters who did not have children. Now they’re in their ’60s and I could see them their whole life being happy and fruitful in other ways.
When I told my mother, she wasn’t surprised. She said ‘you’ve never talked about children. She was supportive. I’m really fortunate. I’ve interviewed 50 different people and that’s not the case for most people. A lot of women told me they had a lot of direct pressure from their own mothers who said: ‘I really want this for me. You should do this for me.’ And feeling that they were disappointing their own family, and that must be really hard to bear.
Q.How do you deal with charges of selfishness?
A. Desire is a self-centred thing. Any kind of desire is selfish, whether you desire children, or not to have children. Everyone on this planet is selfish. Another thing |
As unrest continues, we examine what is driving the protests in Kiev and if outside influences are at play.
As unrest continues in Kiev, a meeting between the Ukrainian opposition and President Viktor Yanukovych failed to produce any agreement to end the political crisis, and the protesters returned to the streets.
Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko has called negotiations with the government a waste of time saying the authorities are ignoring the opposition's demands.
The tussle has far-reaching consequences for the European continent and its relations with the East because the conflict has largely been painted in terms of an East versus West debate.
Right now we have 100 people missing and we have terror on the streets of Kiev, so we can longer call this country a democracy and we can no longer rely upon democratic institutes working in Ukraine. Lesya Orobets, MP for the Fatherland opposition party
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians first took to the streets of Kiev after Yanukovych backed away from signing a free-trade deal with the European Union - which many people saw as the key to a European future - in favour of financial aid from Ukraine's old Soviet master Russia.
The movement has since widened into broader protests against perceived misrule and corruption in the Yanukovych leadership.
While the EU and its Western allies have struggled to stand by their ideological allies in the country, Russia has stood firmly by President Yanukovych. And it has cemented this partnership with hard cash.
Russia has offered Ukraine $20bn in cheaper gas and other benefits, while the Europeans have been trying to sell the idea of Ukrainian membership of the EU as being of long-term benefit to the country.
And if the EU cannot bring Kiev into its club, that raises questions about the bloc's potential - something that is quite likely being watched closely in Turkey, which has European ambitions of its own.
One aspect of the continuing protest in Ukraine is the emergence of a new batch of leaders opposed to Yanukovych.
The most visible of these are: Vitali Klitschko, the 42-year-old world boxing champion who spent years in Germany and holds a doctorate in sports science; Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the nationalist Svoboda or Freedom party who represents dissent in the west of the country; and Arseniy Yatsenyuk who, at 39-years-old, is the youngest of the three but has the most experience, having served as foreign and finance minister and speaker of Ukraine's parliament.
So, what is driving the unrest and protests in Ukraine? And are outside influences at play?
To discuss this, Inside Story presenter David Foster is joined by guests: Valentin Yakushik, a professor at Kiev Mohyla Academy; Lilit Gevorgyan, an analyst at IHS Global Insight; and Alexander Korman, from the Ukrainian ministry of foreign relations. We also speak to Lesya Orobets, a Ukrainian politician and MP for the Fatherland opposition party.
"If they [the opposition] cannot come up with a single candidate, and it appears they haven't been able to do it so far, I don't think they really stand a strong chance to challenge the current president who has actually the entire administration and the administrative resources behind him - despite is falling popularity - and that is the biggest weakness of the opposition." Lilit Gevorgyan, an analyst at IHS Global Insight
Source: Al JazeeraGoing to the chapel and we’re… going to put it on Instagram.
In the age of #CustomNuptialHashtags, weddings are a bigger business than ever. As grooms and brides publish their weddings online, vendors are put on display—and into competition. The Most Liked Wedding contest is unofficially running 24/7 for all soon-to-be-married 20-somethings on social media. It’s a huge opportunity and challenge for brands in the wedding industry.
Could your organic naked sponge cake, artistically draped with sage brush, get #CraigAndStephanie4Ever more comments than their BFFs #SmithlyWeds2016? Will your bespoke hand-painted barn wood sign edge #ChrisandChrissie ahead on Facebook for the most liked album in their friend group? The answer might decide whether or not you get hired.
Welcome to the wedding thunderdome, where every like, favourite, and retweet counts.
Getting it right on social media is the key to a steady stream of clients for wedding vendors. There are more than 1,224 wedding photographers, 250 wedding makeup artists, and 400 planners in Ontario alone. How can vendors compete, when social media is awash with picture-perfect weddings?
Define Your Brand
Launching a social media campaign as a wedding vendor can be an intimidating process. How can you compete?
The hashtag #barnwedding returns more than 100,000 posts on Instagram. Mason jar centrepieces? There are millions of Pinterest pins. Perfect blushing bride makeup? Thousands of Facebook posts. How can you stand out?
Developing a successful wedding vendor business means constructing an original brand and voice that echoes in all the work you share on social. Staying generic (#barnwedding! #sunflare!) might work in the short term by appealing to everyone. But it also means that your posts will get lost online in the deluge of wedding content.
Fab Fete Event Planning, a Toronto company dedicated to “all things pretty”, uses a very specific type of pretty to define its brand on Instagram. Almost every photo shared has a dose of pink or gold, but most aren’t Pinterest-perfect staged pictures. The Crowdbabble table below shows her top posts for July, peak wedding season.
Fab Fete’s focus on bringing pretty glamour into the real world has helped the company succeed on Instagram, with a high engagement rate.
As shown in the Crowdbabble graph below, Fab Fete’s Instagram uploads usually attract more than 100 likes.
Fab Fete’s high engagement is the engine for the account’s follower growth (Fab’s current following is 8,845), which extends the reach of its content and helps it find new customers. By tracking engagement rate and other metrics, vendors can find out what content is working and what isn’t — which can help you narrow down your style and audience to define your unique voice. Successful brand development requires social media analytics.
Making your content more specific will narrow your audience… right down to potential leads. Your social media audience might be smaller, but engagement—and conversions—will be much higher.
Be a Person
Weddings are about the love between two people (and how it can be photographed for Instagram).
Wedding content performs best when it’s posted in the voice of a real person. Vendors, after all, are real people who will be involved in an important day.
Integrating yourself into your social media posts is part of creating a memorable and approachable brand that appeals to people getting married. It’s easy to hate high-maintenance brides, but your social media presence has to communicate that you’re easy to work with.
Two of the most engaging posts for Fab Fete include its owner: they showcase that she cares about family and is passionate about her business (in the car = busy and hardworking, in a magazine spread = trustworthy and sought-after). By integrating herself into her online content, she expresses values that will help potential customers connect with her.
Love by Lynzie is another Toronto wedding vendor who is also killing it on Instagram. All posts are in first person, by Lynzie Kent, the event planner and owner. Like Fab Fete, Love by Lynzie stands out with a striking visual style. Stepping away from the traditional wedding pink and gold, Lynzie goes for a kaleidoscope of colours: every Instagram upload is a rainbow. Her brand of wedding is well defined: bohemian, but polished.
Lynzie’s personality shines through in her visual style and captions on Instagram. By marketing herself as upbeat and carefree, she can sell couples on bringing her into their special day. Like Fab Fete, posts with her children shows customers making their own families that she shares their values.
Incorporating herself into her brand has kept engagement for @lovebylynzie high, with an average of 111 comments and likes each day.
Customers always factor in the person, not just the product, when choosing a wedding vendor. By tracking your social media performance with Crowdbabble, you can find out how much your audience responds to posts that feature you more heavily.
On social media, vendors have the opportunity to showcase their work and how awesome they are to work with. Doing both will turn social media leads into sales.
Use Your Competitors
Partnering with vendors in adjacent wedding categories can help you build your business. They might be competing for the same audience, but they can’t steal your business if they provide different services.
Communities on social media are built, like scaffolding, over top of one another. You can use another vendor’s audience on Instagram to build your own, and vice versa.
For example, a wedding photographer swapping shoutouts with a cake vendor — one who matches their audience, brand, and voice — can be mutually beneficial.
For Love by Lynzie, likes and comments are the easiest to attract when she engages with other vendors. One of Love by Lynzie’s most engaging Instagrams over the past month, the rainbow piñata pictured above, captured a collaboration with four other brands. In the caption, Lynzie wrote: “On set today with @belairdirect @bemakeful [email protected] teaching you how to make simple, summer fun projects for your next cottage party. I am in love with this rainbow piñata we made!” By tagging collaborators in the description, Lynzie capitalized on their audiences — garnering more likes and comments.
What to do with direct competitors? After you’ve developed your brand, learning more about their strategies with social media analytics can help you get ahead.
First, you need to identify your direct competitors: these are vendors who are going after the same demographic of engaged lovebirds as you are and offering the same services.
Next, create a competitive report.
With Crowdbabble’s competitor reports, you can track vendors going after the same audience.
Competitor reports also show the impact of potential collaborations: they compile engagements and followers, giving you an idea of what your total audience might be with cross-promotion.
By adding their accounts to your analytics dashboard, you can learn from their successes and mistakes. With Crowdbabble, you can discover what your competitor’s most engaging posts, hashtags, and filters are. This insider info will bolster your own social strategy with the knowledge of what their (soon to be your) audience loves.
May the Odds Be In Your Favour
With social media, wedding vendors — from florists to rented tuba players — are put on display in realtime as guests share images and videos. Weeks after the cake cutting has been Instagrammed, the vendor details are showcased online again as the photographer uploads an album to their website and professional pictures are re-shared.
The constant social sharing cycle for weddings is a huge opportunity for vendors, even though keeping up can be a challenge.
Leverage social media to find new customers by defining your brand, selling yourself, and tracking your competitors. With the plan outlined above, you can use this hyper-competitive arena to your advantage.There is no better place to generate staggeringly high bills than at a hospital. For entirely rational reasons, healthcare providers invested vast sums of money on IT systems optimized to maximize billing opportunities. Unfortunately for hospital-based health systems, this is the polar opposite of what will drive success in the future. From a revenue-generating perspective, ordering as many procedures and interventions as possible created success in the old reimbursement model that is currently in its death throes.
Even for people with chronic conditions that consume 80% of healthcare resources, hospitalizations should account for less than 1% of their life. Yet, the vast majority of health IT budgets have been centered on large hospital-based health systems. In the rapidly growing population health-based ecosystem of the future, it’s well recognized that a hospitalization represents an abject failure in the vast majority of incidences -- something that should have been caught earlier or prevented entirely that results in a high-cost, high-risk hospitalization.
I was reminded of this as I was writing up my big takeaways from the recent Exponential Medicine conference put on by Singularity University. Later this week, I will publish the seven bunker busters to the status quo healthcare fortress that I took away from the Exponential Medicine event (update: See 7 Healthcare Bunker Busters From Exponential Medicine 2015). One of the striking things from discussions on AI, robotics, synthetic biology, big data, blockchain, virtual reality and more was that the primary focus is meeting individuals (a.k.a. patients) where they are in their life/community versus inside an institution. In other words, paying attention to the other 99% of the individual’s life that the traditional system largely ignores. Since it was a meaty topic and takeaway #1, it made sense to create a separate article for it. Stay tuned for the other six bunker busters.
The most powerful exponential technologies are human centered
In the past, healthcare has been organized around providers and medical technologies, which led to a highly siloed and uncoordinated system creating waste and even medical harm. There is strong desire to avoid repeating mistakes of the past and simply have new exponential technologies perpetuate the siloization of healthcare. During her always compelling "Unmentionables" session at Exponential Medicine, Alexandra (Alex) Drane (Co-Founder, Chief Visionary Office & Chair of the Board of Eliza Corporation) shared vivid details of how a healthcare system that doesn't take into account the realities of people's lives will be destined to under-perform. Alex described a shift in perspective that I view as significant as Copernicus' conclusion that the earth (provider) isn't the center of the universe. Rather, being patient-centered shouldn’t be simply a catchy marketing trope. A truly human-centered view causes a health organization to completely change their perspective.
In fact, the biggest edge that I see the next-generation healthcare delivery organizations (e.g., CareMore, ChenMed, Iora Health, Qliance, South-central Foundation, Vera Whole Health, ZOOM+ and others) have over traditional healthcare delivery organizations is a visceral understanding of this radically different, post-Copernican view. It’s what allows them to greatly out-perform on the Quadruple Aim objectives. They recognize that health outcomes are primarily determined by the 99+% of an individual’s life when they are away from the clinic.
It struck me that legacy health IT infrastructure reflected the old world and a new framework is needed. Consequently, I’ve been working with Cascadia Capital’s healthcare practice on a new industry taxonomy that reflects a modern population health view of the industry. [Disclosure: I’m a non-staff Senior Advisor to Cascadia Capital. Previously, Cascadia advised my company, Avado, when it was acquired by WebMD in 2013.] As you can see in the schematic below, the framework necessarily depicts the individual at the center of the healthcare “universe." As one of the most active investment banks in the digital health and healthcare services sectors, Cascadia has seen the acquirers of Cascadia’s M&A clients struggling to make the shift from looking at the world through a provider-centric lens. The flawed reimbursement system implicitly reinforced this pre-Copernican view in legacy EMR systems.
The framework below helps incumbent organizations hoping to stay relevant in the next generation of healthcare understand where they have gaps. This will allow them to win in the population health era of healthcare. The schematic below is a mashup of the following items:
RWJF commissioned the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute to do a study of studies to assign percentages to the various factors driving health outcomes. Each of the four main categories outlines the sub-elements and a percentage. For example, the conclusion of the study was that one could assign 20% of outcomes to the quality of and access to clinical care.
Each of the four main categories is then mapped to the elements of the Health Rosetta (represented as a vector in the schematic) that reflect what drives the best outcomes as measured by the Quadruple Aim.
Within each vector, there are a variety of health technology and service categories that serve the various elements of the Health Rosetta.
[Disclosure: I have been the catalyst to the open source, non-commercial Health Rosetta project.]
It has been estimated that 88% of health dollars go to Clinical Care despite the fact that it only impacts 20% of health outcomes. While the majority of health systems are tax-exempt and their mission statements outline that they strive to be stewards of their community’s health, the evidence is clear most are falling far short. Next generation health leaders recognize that items that fall far outside of traditional healthIT are imperative.
Unfortunately for incumbent hc orgs, most are at risk of repeating history & making newspaper industry mistakes Unfortunately for incumbent healthcare organizations, most are at risk of repeating history, of falling into the same trap that newspapers fell into. That Zero Sum Game thinking led to catastrophic damage to those organizations. The smartest healthcare organizations have overcome the understandable, albeit misguided, belief that if they spent a gazillion dollars on a large EMR system it will position them for the future. Instead, they recognize they must not only adopt new capabilities focused on clinical care but also invest in the other three big buckets of health outcome drivers.
The schematic below outlines some of the areas that must be addressed. This is a small preview of a longer presentation entitled The Future Health Ecosystem Today that will be released in early 2016 by Cascadia Capital. In that presentation, we will drill down on the myriad new categories of digital health and health services required in the population health era. In the meantime, I encourage you to read the draft of the 95 Theses for a New Health Ecosystem that lays out a set of guiding principles for success in the next generation of healthcare.
The following link goes to an expanded view of the population health industry taxonomy (example of one area pictured below): Healthcare Industry Taxonomy for the Population Health Era from dchaseThankyou for your interest in my new DLC! Compatible with v1.32!
This DLC is fully compatible with every mod as no vanilla files are affected! This mod also contains no script editing!
(modsezonburz is simply there for the mod to function, feel free to merge with whatever).
Install:
Please Endorse if you like the mod!
Update 1.1.0
- Changed Quality to Witcher's Gear
- Made the Shoulders Shorter
- Added New Saddle
- Added Alternate Gloves
- Minor Bugfixes
+New Sezon Burz Fingerless Gloves
+New Sezon Burz Armored Saddle
Some gorgeous 4k screenshots from 1.0.0 provided by Cheszlaw ('right click - open image in new tab' for full size image):
Download the Main File of this mod in the FILES section.Extract the file wherever you want.Put sezonburz in the DLC folder.Put modsezonburz in the Mods folder.This DLC adds a brand new, lore-friendly set of gear based on the novel Sezon Burz by Andrzej Sapkowski.The armor/swords are GrandMaster level and use the vanilla Feline set bonus and item stats.The horse gear has a marginal increase on B&W stats.It is fully compatible with NG+ and any overhaul mod such as GhostMode/W3EE will take priority over my mod.All items are available for purchase from the Gryphon Merchant (Bram - White Orchard).He will sell the NG+ Versions when you reach lvl 50.+New Sezon Burz Leather Jacket+New Sezon Burz Leather Trousers+New Sezon Burz Leather Gloves+New Sezon Burz Leather Boots+New Sezon Burz Silver Sword+New Sezon Burz Steel Sword+New Sezon Burz Crossbow (lvl 1 Crossbow)+New Howling Vengeance (lvl 1 Crossbow)+New Howling Vengeance (lvl 30 Crossbow)+New Witcher's Saddle+New Witcher's Saddlebags+New Witcher's Expedition Bags+New Witcher's Hidden Blinders+New Witcher's Armored BlindersI appreciate any and all comments or feedback regarding this mod.If you have an idea for a new set of armor you would love to see in the game, let me know, I might just make it.ANN ARBOR -- Brady Hoke spent 2 minutes providing an opening statement to the media after Michigan's streak-breaking win Saturday against in-state rival Michigan State. And at no point did he mention Michigan State. That about sums up the state of affairs at Michigan, where the goal remains Big Ten title or bust. That trek continues Saturday against Nebraska (5-2, 2-1), which trails the 20th-ranked Wolverines (5-2, 3-0) by one game in the Legends Division. "When you think that way, you're thinking honestly," Hoke said Monday. "Great rivalry, all that kind of stuff, is important. Winning that game is important, multiple reasons why. "But it's 'Who's next?' mentality. Who do you play next? Because as you know, November and October is when you win championships." Michigan achieved great heights last year, when it won 11 games and the second BCS bowl in program history. It knocked off rivals Notre Dame and Ohio State. But losses to Iowa and Michigan State occluded the Wolverines from playing for a Big Ten title. So Hoke has adopted a new mantra, which he has hammered to his team and the media in recent weeks. Every week is a championship week. Every week is a championship week. Every week is a championship week. So it comes as little surprise that, presented with the opportunity to put two games between itself and Nebraska -- after already doing the same to MSU -- Michigan is treating this game just like any other. "There's no denying it's a big game for us, but the way Coach Hoke has had our mind set, and I'm sure you guys have heard it more than you'd like to, it's a championship game for us," center Elliott Mealer said. "Last week was a championship game, and the week before was. "We try to have the mind-set of every time we play against a Big Ten opponent is just like we're playing in Indianapolis and we're playing for the trophy. And we control our destiny." How much does Hoke mention "It's a championship week" to his team? "Probably just as much as you guys are thinking in your heads," Mealer said. "As much as you guys have been hearing it, we hear it even more. And for you guys, it's probably overbearing and redundant and things like that -- I'm sure, because I can see all the smiles when I brought it up -- but for us, that's why you come to Michigan. "For us players, it's not redundant, it's not, 'OK we get it.' It's, 'Remember last year? We lost a game here, we lost a game there, and we kept ourselves out of that game.' So we accept the constant reminder of it." Mealer said there's a picture of the Big Ten championship trophy in the team's Schembechler Hall meeting room. There are roses painted on the walls, a not-so-subtle reminder of the bowl that awaits the league's champion. A bowl that Michigan hasn't been to since the 2006 season. A bowl Michigan's seniors saw personally in the offseason during a leadership trip to Southern California. "For the guys who were here last year, we understand a game here or there could have made last year a lot different for us," Mealer said. "(The championship week mantra) might be redundant for you and outsiders to hear it, but for us as players, we accept it. "We want to hear about the Big Ten trophy and Indianapolis and all those things because we know that last year, we didn't get that accomplished and you need a reminder -- you need a reminder every week -- of what you're playing for."
Kyle Meinke covers Michigan football for MLive.com. He can be reached by email at kmeinke@mlive.com and followed on Twitter @kmeinke.
-- Download the "Michigan Wolverines on MLive app" for your iPhone and Android to keep up with news on the Wolverines.Posted on by ChildHealthSafety
[ED: Readers should note that a paper presented at a scientific conference is a citable reference for publication purposes. That applies to Dr Lucija Tomljenovic’s paper discussed in this article.]
An extraordinary new paper published by a courageous doctor and investigative medical researcher has dug the dirt on 30 years of secret official transcripts of meetings of UK government vaccine committees and the supposedly independent medical “experts” sitting on them with their drug industry connections.
If you want to get an idea of who is responsible for your child’s condition resulting from a vaccine adverse reaction then this is the paper to read. What you have to ask yourself is if the people on these committees are honest and honourable and acting in the best interests of British children, how is it this has been going on for at least 30 years?
This is what everyone has always known but could never prove before now. Pass this information on to others so they can see what goes on in Government health committees behind locked doors.
We quote here from the author’s summary and the paper:
Deliberately concealing information from parents for the sole purpose of getting them to comply with an “official” vaccination schedule could be considered as a form of ethical violation or misconduct. Official documents obtained from the UK Department of Health (DH) and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) reveal that the British health authorities have been engaging in such practice for the last 30 years, apparently for the sole purpose of protecting the national vaccination program.
The 45 page paper with detailed evidence can be downloaded here: The vaccination policy and the Code of Practice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI): are they at odds? Lucija Tomljenovic, Neural Dynamics Research Group, Dept. of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. It was presented at and forms part of the proceedings of The 2011 BSEM Scientific Conference now published online here: The Health Hazards of Disease Prevention BSEM Scientific Conference, March 2011. [ED: BSEM HAVE REORGANISED THEIR WEBSITE AND THIS PAGE NO LONGER EXISTS THERE – Note Added 8 May 2014]
There are other papers also found at that link which you will find an excellent read.
The author, Dr Lucija Tomljenovic writes:
Here I present the documentation which appears to show that the JCVI made continuous efforts to withhold critical data on severe adverse reactions and contraindications to vaccinations to both parents and health practitioners in order to reach overall vaccination rates which they deemed were necessary for “herd immunity”, a concept which with regards to vaccination, and contrary to prevalent beliefs, does not rest on solid scientific evidence as will be explained. As a result of such vaccination policy promoted by the JCVI and the DH, many children have been vaccinated without their parents being disclosed the critical information about demonstrated risks of serious adverse reactions, one that the JCVI appeared to have been fully aware of. It would also appear that, by withholding this information, the JCVI/DH neglected the right of individuals to make an informed consent concerning vaccination. By doing so, the JCVI/DH may have violated not only International Guidelines for Medical Ethics (i.e., Helsinki Declaration and the International Code of Medical Ethics) [2] but also, their own Code of Practice. [ED: THE UK DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH APPEARS TO HAVE CHANGED ALL THE LINKS TO THEIR DOCUMENTS BY ARCHIVING THEM WITH THE UK NATIONAL ARCHIVE – IF READERS WOULD LIKE TO ATTEMPT TO FIND THE CORRECT LINKS ON THE UK NATIONAL ARCHIVE AND POST THEM IN A COMMENT HERE THAT WOULD BE WELCOME – Note Added 9 May 2014]
Dr Lucija Tomljenovic continues:
The transcripts of the JCVI meetings also show that some of the Committee members had extensive ties to pharmaceutical companies and that the JCVI frequently co-operated with vaccine manufacturers on strategies aimed at boosting vaccine uptake. Some of the meetings at which such controversial items were discussed were not intended to be publicly available, as the transcripts were only released later, through the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). These particular meetings are denoted in the transcripts as “commercial in confidence”, and reveal a clear and disturbing lack of transparency, as some of the information was removed from the text (i.e., the names of the participants) prior to transcript release under the FOI section at the JCVI website (for example, JCVI CSM/DH (Committee on the Safety of Medicines/Department of Health) Joint Committee on Adverse Reactions Minutes 1986-1992). In summary, the transcripts of the JCVI/DH meetings from the period from 1983 to 2010 appear to show that: 1) Instead of reacting appropriately by re-examining existing vaccination policies when safety concerns over specific vaccines were identified by their own investigations, the JCVI either a) took no action, b) skewed or selectively removed unfavourable safety data from public reports and c) made intensive efforts to reassure both the public and the authorities in the safety of respective vaccines; 2) Significantly restricted contraindication to vaccination criteria in order to increase vaccination rates despite outstanding and unresolved safety issues;
3) On multiple occasions requested from vaccine manufacturers to make specific amendments to their data sheets, when these were in conflict with JCVI’s official advices on immunisations;
4) Persistently relied on methodologically dubious studies, while dismissing independent research, to promote vaccine policies;
5) Persistently and categorically downplayed safety concerns while over-inflating vaccine benefits;
6) Promoted and elaborated a plan for introducing new vaccines of questionable efficacy and safety into the routine paediatric schedule, on the assumption that the licenses would eventually be granted;
7) Actively discouraged research on vaccine safety issues;
8) Deliberately took advantage of parents’ trust and lack of relevant knowledge on vaccinations in order to promote a scientifically unsupported immunisation program which could put certain children at risk of severe long-term neurological damage;
Notably, all of these actions appear to violate the JCVI’s own Code of Practice.
Read the paper here for the full evidence to back up these conclusions in its 45 pages. An excellent piece of investigative research:
The vaccination policy and the Code of Practice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI): are they at odds?
And don’t forget to read more from the proceedings of The 2011 BSEM Scientific Conference now published online here:
The Health Hazards of Disease Prevention – BSEM Scientific Conference, March 2011.
BSEM Scientific Conference, March 2011. [ED: BSEM HAVE REORGANISED THEIR WEBSITE AND THIS PAGE NO LONGER EXISTS THERE – Note Added 8 May 2014]
Filed under: ADHD, Aspergers, autism, Child Health Safety, Disease Statistics, Hannah Poling, MMR, vaccination, vaccine, vaccine court, Vaccine Damage, Vaccines | Tagged: ADHD, Anti-vaccine Safety, Aspergers, autism, Cervarix, Corruption, fraud, Gardasil, GlaxoSmithKline, HPV vaccine, John Poling, mercury, MMR, swine flu, thimerosal, thiomersal, vaccination, vaccine, vaccine court, Vaccine Damage, Vaccines |Developer Storymind Entertainment have released the first gameplay trailer for My Eyes On You, and it looks like we’re in for something completely truly unique, in terms of both visuals and narrative.
My Eyes On You takes place in a near future version of Chicago, with FBI agent Jordan Adalien hunting an elusive serial killer known only as the Man in the Red Mask. The decisions you make will also dictate whether the game’s plot stays closer to reality or heads in a supernatural direction, so you’d better be careful what you wish for. Whilst searching for clues will be one of your main areas of focus, combat will also play an important role, too.
The trailer for My Eyes On You certainly gives off a strong Blade Runner 2049 vibe, so if that’s your thing, you’re probably in for a great time. It will be available on PC and consoles, although a release date has not yet been confirmed.
Storymind Entertainment social media links:
Twitter – https://twitter.com/StorymindEnt
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storymindent
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StorymindEntTerrorists killed at least 153 people and wounded scores of other innocents in coordinated shooting and suicide-bomb attacks in Paris late Friday that included a mass execution at a rock concert, authorities said.
The carnage began at about 10 p.m. Paris time, with one group of jihadis targeting venues packed with people in a night-life district and another attacking near a soccer stadium where President Francois Hollande was watching a match with Germany, French police said.
The well-planned strikes played out in multiple locations:
– At the Bataclan theater, four gunmen wearing suicide vests — screaming, “This is for Syria!” and “Allahu akbar!” — opened fire on the packed house that had gathered to see the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal.
The black-clad killers then picked off wounded victims one at a time, as witnesses described the horror on social media.
The gunmen detonated suicide vests when police stormed the theater, and killed at least 118 concertgoers.
Witnesses said they heard several rounds of gunfire and explosions at the theater, including during the final siege.
– The same attackers had first sprayed several nearby cafes with automatic weapons fire, killing several diners and wounding many others at Le Petit Cambodge Cambodian restaurant in the 10th arrondissement.
Dozens of shots were fired, said witnesses, who described the scene as a “nightmare,” with bodies in the street and police and ambulances rushing to their aid, the Liberation newspaper reported.
- They also strafed Le Carillon bar near the concert.
“We were listening to music when we thought we heard shots. A few seconds later, we were in a scene out of a war,” one of a dozen doctors from the Saint-Louis Hospital told Le Monde.
“There was blood everywhere. We tried to go as quickly as possible. The wounded were evacuated. I did not see the assailants. A friend said he saw a man with a war armament,” he said.
– At least four bodies were seen splayed on a street and covered in blankets outside La Petit Baiona bistro in the 11th arrondissement.
– Simultaneously, a second team of consisting of a suicide bomber and gunmen targeted the area outside Stade de France, where 80,000 fans watched the home team defeat the Germans in a “friendly” match.
Hollande was hustled away by his security detail, but the game was allowed to finish before fans gathered on the field.
– A shooting was also reported at Les Halles shopping center.
Paris police prefect Michel Cadot said all the attackers were believed dead, although authorities were hunting for any possible accomplices.
In an address broadcast around the world, Hollande said of the massacre: “It’s a horror.”
“Two decisions will be taken: A state of emergency will be decreed, which means certain places will be closed, traffic may be banned and searches may also take place throughout the Paris region,” he said.
A citywide curfew was put into effect in Paris for the first time since 1944.
“The second decision I have taken is to close the borders. We must guarantee that no one can come in to commit any act. And at the same time, those who may have committed crimes can be arrested if they try to leave the country,” he said.
The shattered nation’s leader vowed to defeat the terrorists.
“Who are these criminals? Who are these terrorist who are attacking us? My heart goes out to the victims and their families. We will come together. France is strong,” Hollande said.
“What the terrorists want is for us to be scared. But in the face of terror, we have to be united and will vanquished these terrorists.
“Long live the republic, and long live France.”
At the White House, President Obama said, “This is not just an attack on Paris or the people of France, it was an attack on humanity.”
He said the US would provide any assistance France needs, calling the country “our oldest ally.”
“This is a heartbreaking situation. Obviously, those of us in the United States know what it’s like. We’ve gone through these kinds of episodes ourselves. Whenever these kinds of attacks happened, we’ve always been able to count on the French people to stand with us.
“We intend to be there with them in that same fashion.”
Le Carillon and the Bataclan are among the best-known venues in eastern Paris — and are in the same general neighborhood where the Charlie Hebdo offices were when they were attacked by jihadis last January.
France has been on edge since deadly attacks by Islamic extremists on the satirical newspaper and on a kosher grocery that left 20 dead.Share
Almost every smartphone maker has tried wireless charging at some point, but it never works as well as we want it to. Your phone has to have a special cradle, or you have to place your watch in a special bowl – just right. It’s wireless, but it’s a hassle. SunPartner Technologies and 3M have a solution for this. Last week, the two companies showed me a new technology that could help our battery-drain problems, and introduce a whole new way to transfer data.
Solar charging your devices
It’s called “Wysips” and it’s a thin layer of crystal glass that can be embedded into small screens like watches, phones, or tablets and turn the screen into a solar panel of sorts. You can’t see it from the outside of the phone (it’s just about completely clear) and it starts charging the battery anytime artificial or natural light shines on the phone’s screen.
This could completely charge a Kindle or small watch, doing away with the need for wired charging.
With smartphone battery power stretched as thin as it is, another 15 percent (and more if you leave your phone in a bright area) could really help. A tech like this could theoretically save someone in a power bind with no charger. As the miniature solar cells improve, the amount of power generated could rise significantly, we were told.
This could completely charge an E-Ink device, like a Kindle, Nook, or small watch – entirely doing away with the need for physical charging. Old, weak flip phone models could also possibly do away with charging already if they incorporated this model.
What it looks like
SunPartner makes the screen layer and 3M creates the adhesive needed to put it in screens, and helping it reach manufacturers and get some press from publications like DT.
We got a chance to examine the solar-charging Wysips screen layer, which is mostly clear, but shimmers if you look at it from different angles. If you look close enough, you can see the solar crystal pattern, much like you can see |
50 new staffers to fill the roles and will begin training them throughout the remainder of the 2016 season. Sensors will also be installed to both the front and back of each vehicle that will alert the driver when a person or object is in close proximity, according to the release.
“Boston is our home; we recognize what a privilege it is to serve residents and visitors and it has always been our commitment to do so utilizing best-in-class safety practices,” Brown said. “This can only complement BDT’s current strong safety practices.”One of my first posts was devoted to a heightmap generation and now it’s time to talk about heightmap rendering. Most map generators consider heightmap as a technical thing only, but I believe it’s beautiful as is and with some improvements could be used as one of the main map layers.
As of now I’ve added 5 different heightmap styles, 2 optional features and some usable color schemes. The problem is that I need to select only one as I tend to keep things simple. I’m still at the crossroad not knowing which of the styles is the best and I hope this post and your comments will help me decide.
Polygonal
The first style I want to talk about and the most obvious one is polygonal style. If heightmap is based on Voronoi polygons, the simplest way to render it is to draw the polygons by filling each polygon with the color depending on its height.
Heights we have are in a range 0-1, while 0.2-1 range is for land and 0-0.19 is for water. We have two options here: draw all the cells (polygons) or draw the land ones only. In my reality the alternative is contrived. I want map to be scalable and hence render it in svg. Meanwhile I need map to be fast on scaling and dragging and I cannot push so many elements as I want. Why not? SVG is a great format, but it becomes externally laggy with a lot of elements added. As of now my maps contain about 9k polygons, so it’s a not a variant to draw them all. Frankly speaking, even 1.5k land polygons is too much and it is not clever to draw them as a separate elements.
One more issue is colors. It promised a lot of a work, but thankfully D3 has some built-in color schemes. I cannot say I’m fully happy with any of them, but Spectral and RdYlGn look quite suitable for a heightmap. Both schemes go from red to yellow and green, while we have a greater height value for mountains and don’t want them to be green. So to use the scheme we need to return its order subtracting height value form 1, i.e. color(1 – height).
There is a problem with elements rendering to svg. In case of drawing without or with thin strokes svg will leave odd spaces between elements. It could be resolved by setting stroke-width to 0.7, but this breaks the beauty of polygons shapes due to strokes overlapping. Another variant it to change the default svg shape-rendering to optimizeSpeed (i.e. turn off the anti-aliasing). This is much faster than default and render the elements without extra-spaces, but resulting shapes are not precise. The third variant it to draw polygons filled with optimizeSpeed and then draw the strokes only with default geometricPrecision option. It looks great, but means doubling of rendered elements.
I prefer the variant with overlapping strokes as of now, but will think on using optimizeSpeed option for a big maps as this variant is fastest.
Triangled
The main problem with polygonal style is that polygons are too big and color difference between neighboring cells is too significant. It looks not bad, but a bit weird on a big scale. To avoid this we could either use more polygons on map generation or divide the existing polygons into smaller shapes. The easiest way is to split the polygons into triangles.
D3-Voronoi provides not only Voronoi polygons, but also a built-in Delaunay triangulation. Delaunay triangles have almost the same size as polygons, so instead or Delaunay I use triangles based on polygons edges and sites.
For each edge D3 already provides references for both left and right related cells and we don’t need any calculations to render two triangles for every edge. Triangle color depends on both color of its own polygon and the opposite one. Knowing height values for both polygons we can calculate the triangle color as an 2 values interpolation with a 0.33 rate. It means each triangle has a color representing related polygon, but with a significant influence of the opposite cell.
The resulted map is very smooth, maybe even more than I want. It looks polished and flat. We can add some discrepancy and slight 3D shading effect. Right-side triangles should be darker if they are lower than left-side ones. The color difference should be more obvious when heights are great, i.e. in the mountains, while plains should look more flat. I’m not sure this naive approach is the best variant, but it works better than other ones I’ve tried.
Should be also noted that triangled style rendering is significantly slower than polygonal as it requires much more elements to draw. The advantage is a good looking on both large and small scales.
Contours
In cartography one of the most used approach to show the terrain elevation is a contour map. Contour line joins the points with equal height above a given level, producing a visual representation of the relief.
Polygonal base of our map is not suitable for a contouring as it contains not enough elements. To implement the contouring we need to turn polygonal graph into a regular structure. To keep it simple I use 1:1 xy coordinate grid, i.e. 640×360 grid for a test version. For each grid point I assign height value based on the height of the polygon current point is in. The easiest way is do this is to loop thought array, calculate xy coordinates from point’s position in array and then use D3 find method to locate the closest polygon and take its height. But this approach is extremely ineffective. Find method is not fast and using it 230k times is a waste of time.
To make the time loss adequate I have to implement some wiles. First, we know coordinates and heights of polygons sites, so there is no need to find them. Second, we use Poisson-disc sampling and know a minimum distance between sites, which is about 4 points. We can assign the same height not only to the points in Voronoi sites, but also to their neighbors in the grid.
We use regular grid now, so detecting neighbors is trivial. Each not bordering point has 8 direct neighbors and 18 non-direct ones. Using this approach we can define 27 point for each polygon, or less if we are worrying about approximation quality. Having about 9k sites we can pre-define almost all 230k points and use find for remaining ones only. The result is not ideal, but close to it and much faster than you could get with find. I have prepared fiddle for the method demonstration.
Having an array of heights we can easily apply noise pattern to it. Not sure I really need it, but it adds some diversity into a terrain build on just a dozen of blobs. I’m not going to describe how to get the noise as I’m still not completely satisfied with the result and cannot describe it better than Amit whatever. Generally speaking I use SimplexNoise library by Jonas Wagner. If you are interested, I have also created three fiddles for a noise testing: singleoctaved curtains, multioctaved pattern and the same with biomes rendering.
Now it’s time to draw the contours. D3 has it’s own contouring, which is based on marching squares. The only thing we need is to provide a rectangular array of values. Hopefully, we already did it. The layers count depends on the thresholds values. Our land elevation ranges from 0.2 to 1, so I decided to create a contour level for each 0.04 elevation points. This is about 20 layers at all, not too much and hence fast on rendering. Each contour has its own color depending on threshold point height. I use the same color schemes as were used for a polygonal style.
Implementation is pretty straightforward. The only unobvious moment is a contours shade, needed for a 3D effect. We have to apply contours in a distinct order, so the highest layers should be on the top of the lower ones. The shade element should be added right before its parent layer, in this case it will not overlap highest layers. The shade color is derived from the layer color with a significant lightness reduction. To get a 3D effect shade layers should be drawn with a small offset. Here is the D3 code:
// define the data var data = d3.contours().size([width, height]).thresholds(d3.range(0.2, 1, 0.04)) (heightsArray); // apply separate group for each contour var contours = map.selectAll("p").data(data).enter().append("g"); // render contours shade contours.data(data).append("path").attr("d", d3.geoPath()).attr("class", "shade") // calculate shade color turning it to HSL and reducing lightness.attr("fill", function(d) {return d3.hsl(color(1 - d.value)).darker(2)}); // offset the shade.attr("transform", "translate(0.5 0.6)"); // render colored contours contours.data(data).append("path").attr("d", d3.geoPath()).attr("fill", function(d) {return color(1 - d.value);})
The result looks quite interesting. I would prefer more relaxed lines, but this is the only smooth function available by default and I don’t want to rewrite the basics as of now. We can render the map with any count of contours. Even rendering with step 0.01 requires 160 elements only and works fast. The same for shade, we can change shade offset, color or opacity and gain very different result.
The only demur is that shaded map looks not so great on a large scales. To resolve it I have changed the zoom function. Besides changing the viewpoint now it shrinks the offset and increase opacity of the shade elements on zooming. Not a big deal, but now the map is almost flat on a big scale and got 3D looking on zooming out.
Noisy
This style is also based on contouring method, but designed especially for a big scale. The idea is to take height array and make it a bit more noisy. The implemented noise function is just a simple multiplier by a random value in a 0.95-1.05 range. This randomization is too noisy to be used with shades, but has natural look in case on flat rendering.
Pixel
The idea is to draw heightmap in a nostalgic pixel style. As I mentioned above it’s not a good idea to render a lot of elements into svg, so I’m not going to draw all the 230k points. It could be acceptable in the case of considering a bigger square, let’s say with a side of 4 points, as one pixel. Works pretty well, but I don’t like the result (even with added shades) and don’t see a possibility to make it look good.
Features
Two optional features I mentioned before are slope hatching and blur effect. The first is my try to implement the slope shading method described by Martin O’Leary. The reality showed me that my maps with all these big polygons and almost the same slopeness along the map are not eligible for this kind of shading. We can do this on a regular grid instead of polygons, but in this case we also need to randomize the coordinates to get rid of grid regularity. The main problem with slope hatching is that it’s incompatible with scaling. On a big scales we expect the shading to be more detailed, while I’m not sure how it could be easily done.
Blur effect is self-describable. The idea is to use feGaussianBlur svg filter to smooth the map. Initially it was implemented for a polygonal style and worked well, even I don’t really like its fuzziness and it’s a bit slow. But I’ve already got a good smoothness with other heightmap styles, so I’m not sure I will use the blur for a base styling. At the same time it’s very useful for a relief shading or separate elements blurring, e.g. to blur coastlines and river shades.
That’s all for today. Map examples for all of the described styles are in the slideshow below. I would much appreciate if you take a look and suggest the best variants for both small and large scales. For this reason all the styles are shown on the same map.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
AdvertisementsNothing means more to Jackie Fortin than the wellbeing of her 17-year-old daughter Cassandra who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma but, according to her mother, Cassandra doesn’t want treatment.
“She has always—even years ago—said that if she was diagnosed with cancer, she would not put poison into her body,” Fortin explained.
She adds that doctors at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center pushed Cassandra to undergo chemotherapy against her will. Cassandra pushed back by running away from home, which ultimately led to DCF taking custody. She was then returned to CCMC to start chemo.
“CCMC reported to DCF that I was not giving medical attention to my daughter,” said Fortin.
Right now, the battle is making its way through the court system.
NBC Connecticut reached out to CCMC and Corporate Communications Director Bob Fraleigh released the following statement:
"Connecticut Children’s is working closely with the Department of Children and Families. We are grateful that the Supreme Court has agreed to take on this very important case and we look forward to their guidance. Due to HIPAA regulations, we cannot provide any additional information at this time."
Cassandra will turn 18 in September, when she’s free to make the decision on her own.
According to Fortin’s lawyer, Michael Taylor, that detail is too important to miss.
“When you think about what freedom means,” said Taylor, “a big part of it means being able to say to the government, ‘You can’t tell me what to do with my own body.’”
He says her right to bodily integrity shouldn’t be any different here than if she were getting an abortion or her driver’s license.
“There are a lot of ways the state recognizes that people who are under 18 can be mature enough to make very important decisions,” said Taylor.
And that’s exactly what Fortin wants the courts to hear. She knows she faces a tough decision, one she feels a parent should never have to make.
“I tell her a mother should never have to bury a child. You should bury me," Fortin said. "But my daughter and I have a close connection, and I have always said—since she was a baby—no matter what you do in life, I will be here for you and I will be by your side.”
The State Supreme Court will hear both sides of the argument on Thursday, Jan. 8.
NBC Connecticut also reached out to DCF, but officials said out of respect for those involved, they do not have a comment at the time.Consider the following program:
#include <windows.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> int array[10000]; int countthem(int boundary) { int count = 0; for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) { if (array[i] < boundary) count++; } return count; } int __cdecl wmain(int, wchar_t **) { for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) array[i] = rand() % 10; for (int boundary = 0; boundary <= 10; boundary++) { LARGE_INTEGER liStart, liEnd; QueryPerformanceCounter(&liStart); int count = 0; for (int iterations = 0; iterations < 100; iterations++) { count += countthem(boundary); } QueryPerformanceCounter(&liEnd); printf("count=%7d, time = %I64d
", count, liEnd.QuadPart - liStart.QuadPart); } return 0; }
The program generates a lot of random integers in the range 0..9 and then counts how many are less than 0, less than 1, less than 2, and so on. It also prints how long the operation took in QPC units. We don't really care how big a QPC unit is; we're just interested in the relative values. (We print the number of items found merely to verify that the result is close to the expected value of boundary * 100000.)
Here are the results:
boundary count time 0 0 1869 1 100000 5482 2 200800 8152 3 300200 10180 4 403100 11982 5 497400 12092 6 602900 11029 7 700700 9235 8 797500 7051 9 902500 4537 10 1000000 1864
To the untrained eye, this chart is strange. Here's the naïve analysis:
When the boundary is zero, there is no incrementing at all, so the entire running time is just loop overhead. You can think of this as our control group. We can subtract 1869 from the running time of every column to remove the loop overhead costs. What remains is the cost of running count increment instructions.
The cost of a single increment operation is highly variable. At low boundary values, it is around 0.03 time units per increment. But at high boundary values, the cost drops to one tenth that.
What's even weirder is that once the count crosses 600,000, each addition of another 100,000 increment operations makes the code run faster, with the extreme case when the boundary value reaches 10, where we run faster than if we hadn't done any incrementing at all!
How can the running time of an increment instruction be negative?
The explanation for all this is that CPUs are more complicated than the naïve analysis realizes. We saw earlier that modern CPUs contain all sorts of hidden variables. Today's hidden variable is the branch predictor.
Executing a single CPU instruction takes multiple steps, and modern CPUs kick off multiple instructions in parallel, with each instruction at a different stage of execution, a technique known as pipelining.
Conditional branch instructions are bad for pipelining. Think about it: When a conditional branch instruction enters the pipeline, the CPU doesn't know whether the condition will be true when the instruction reaches the end of the pipeline. Therefore, it doesn't know what instruction to feed into the pipeline next.
Now, it could just sit there and let the pipeline sit idle until the branch/no-branch decision is made, at which point it now knows which instruction to feed into the pipeline next. But that wastes a lot of pipeline capacity, because it will take time for those new instructions to make it all the way through the pipeline and start doing productive work.
To avoid wasting time, the processor has an internal branch predictor which remembers the recent history of which conditional branches were taken and which were not taken. The fanciness of the branch predictor varies. Some processors merely assume that a branch will go the same way that it did the last time it was countered. Others keep complicated branch history and try to infer patterns (such as "the branch is taken every other time").
When a conditional branch is encountered, the branch predictor tells the processor which instructions to feed into the pipeline. If the branch prediction turns out to be correct, then we win! Execution continues without a pipeline stall.
But if the branch prediction turns out to be incorrect, then we lose! All of the instructions that were fed into the pipeline need to be recalled and their effects undone, and the processor has to go find the correct instructions and start feeding them into the pipeline.
Let's look at our little program again. When the boundary is 0, the result of the comparison is always false. Similarly, when the boundary is 10, the result is always true. In those cases, the branch predictor can reach 100% accuracy.
The worst case is when the boundary is 5. In that case, half of the time the comparison is true and half of the time the comparison is false. And since we have random data, fancy historical analysis doesn't help any. The predictor is going to be wrong half the time.
Here's a tweak to the program: Change the line
if (array[i] < boundary) count++;
to
count += (array[i] < boundary)? 1 : 0;
This time, the results look like this:
boundary count time 0 0 2932 1 100000 2931 2 200800 2941 3 300200 2931 4 403100 2932 5 497400 2932 6 602900 2932 7 700700 2999 8 797500 2931 9 902500 2932 10 1000000 2931
The execution time is now independent of the boundary value. That's because the optimizer was able to remove the branch from the ternary expression:
; on entry to the loop, ebx = boundary mov edx, offset array ; start at the beginning of the array $LL3: xor ecx, ecx ; start with zero cmp [edx], ebx ; compare array[i] with boundary setl cl ; if less than boundary, then set al = 1 add eax, ecx ; accumulate result in eax add edx, 4 ; loop until end of array cmp edx, offset array + 40000 jl $LL3
Since there are no branching decisions in the inner loop aside from the loop counter, there is no need for a branch predictor to decide which way the comparison goes. The same code executes either way.
Exercise: Why are the counts exactly the same for both runs, even though the dataset is random?Helmet camera footage shows a joint U.S.-Kurdish raid that freed about 70 hostages from an Islamic State prison in northern Iraq early Thursday, Oct. 22. (Kurdistan Region Security Council)
“We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq.” – President Obama, June 13, 2014
“As I have said before, these American forces [in Iraq] will not have a combat mission.” – President Obama, Sept. 10, 2014
About 3,300 U.S. troops are now stationed in Iraq, where they are helping local forces battle the extremist group. Over both Iraq and Syria, U.S. planes have been flying bombing and surveillance missions for over a year.
In keeping with Obama’s promises to keep U.S. troops out of another prolonged ground war in the Middle East, the Pentagon has given American troops a limited mission in Iraq, consisting primarily of advising local forces and rebuilding the country’s hollowed-out army. While U.S. forces are not confined to bases, officials say, their mission is very different from that of the 2003-11 war, when U.S. troops fought — often house by house — to end a powerful insurgency.
[Plans by U.S. to capture Islamic State’s capital already go awry]
But depicting the U.S. mission in Iraq became an even more delicate activity last week after a joint raid in the Iraqi city of Hawijah, which freed about 70 Islamic State hostages and left a U.S. Delta Force soldier dead. The death of Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler was the first time a U.S. servicemember had been killed in a firefight there since U.S. troops returned to Iraq last year.
Briefing reporters hours after the raid took place, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said that “U.S. forces are not in a combat role in Iraq.” He said a team of elite U.S. soldiers had provided transport and support for the Iraqi Kurdish commandos. But the Americans were not intending to take part in the raid itself, he said. That changed when a firefight erupted and Wheeler jumped in to help. Later that day, Cook said that Wheeler’s death was the first combat casualty there since 2011.
On Monday, asked about operations in Iraq, White House press secretary Josh Earnest declined to characterize the operations there as combat. He said the “train, advise and assist” mission differed from “the long-term, sustained ground combat operations” that took place after the 2003 invasion. Over 160,000 U.S. troops were stationed in Iraq at the peak of that war.
American officials appear more ready to acknowledge that the flights over Iraq and Syria are combat operations. Not so when it comes to ground operations, perhaps in keeping with Obama’s own statements.
[Life in the Islamic State]
But on Wednesday, Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, described the mission in blunt terms. “We’re in combat,” he said, speaking via video feed to reporters at the Pentagon. “That’s why we all carry guns. That’s why we all get combat patches when we leave here. That’s why we all receive imminent danger pay. So, of course it’s combat.”
Officials say the ground mission is primarily an advisory, not combat, one, but say American personnel are bound to encounter combat or kinetic situations from time to time, as they did in Hawijah. How often that occurs may depend on whether Obama approves proposed steps that would expand U.S. operations in Iraq and Syria, including embedding American troops with Iraqi units closer to the front lines.
No matter what they’re called, U.S. operations in Iraq are unlikely to resemble the scale and scope of the last Iraq war anytime soon. “There’s been an awful lot of energy around making rhetorical hay out of a few of these words,” Warren said.
It’s hard to sum up the situation on the ground in Iraq in a way that would fit on a “reasonably sized bumper sticker,” Earnest told reporters. “But I do think it is important for people to understand precisely exactly what our men and women are doing inside of Iraq,” he said.
Officials have not provided a detailed account of what all American forces, especially Special Operations forces, are doing in Iraq.
Read more:
Iraq forces say key oil refinery is back in their hands
Did U.S. weapons supplied to Syrian rebels draw Russia into the conflict?
Petraeus: The Islamic State isn’t our biggest problem in IraqTosin Abasi is on tour with the heavy metal band he plays in, Born of Osiris. On stage he wears all-black, but when he’s not working, he likes classic men’s formalwear. The day our Video Look Book cameras caught him he wore a fitted vest from a thrift store and carried a camel leather bag he bought for half-price at Marshall’s. He also wore women’s shorts from Banana Republic and a vintage Schiaparelli hat his girlfriend gave him. “Actually I had dreadlocks and I cut them and I was like, ‘What the fuck do I do with my hair now?’ And she was like, ‘You should have this hat.’ So I’ve been wearing it every day.” Watch the Video Look Book to find out where he got his pink paisley scarf.The haul was described by police as one of the largest found in the emirate.
DUBAI // Police have intercepted a shipment of over half a ton of ivory.
Found at Dubai International Airport, the haul was described by police as being one of the largest found in the emirate.
The announcement was made via Dubai Police's official Twitter account on Wednesday, although no details on how the shipment was detected were provided.
Dubai is seen as a transit point for the trade in endangered animals and their body parts, and ivory is among the most-seized items by customs officers at Dubai International Airport.
The illegal trade in ivory results in the deaths of thousands of elephants every year.
Up to 50,000 elephants are slaughtered each year by poachers to meet the soaring demand for ivory, according to estimations from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw).
One kilogram of ivory can be sold for around US$1,000 (Dh3672) on the black market.
Last November, Dubai Customs seized a haul worth Dh15 million.
Coming into the UAE via Jebel Ali Port, the shipment of 215 tusks came from 108 African elephants and was hidden in 40 boxes containing beans.
In May this year a campaign to battle the illegal trade of ivory was launched at Dubai International Airport by Dubai Police. Advertisements warning passengers that ivory smuggling leads to prosecution were shown on video screens.
wissa@thenational.aeWASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 17: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) talks to reporters following the Senate Democratic policy luncheon at the U.S. Captiol March 17, 2015 in Washington, DC. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he will not move on to a vote to confirm Loretta Lynch, the nominee to replace Attorney General Eric H. Holder, until the Senate votes on the sex trafficking bill. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that if Republicans don't schedule a confirmation vote soon for U.S. attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch, he'll do it himself.
"I know parliamentary procedure around here and we’re going to put up with this for a little while longer, but not much," Reid said in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. "Absolutely we can force votes. If we don’t get something done soon, I will force a vote."
Lynch has been waiting for more than five months for a vote -- far longer than any of her recent predecessors. Most recently, GOP leaders have tied her confirmation vote to the passage of an unrelated sex trafficking bill that's hit a snag. That bill isn't moving, so neither is Lynch.
Democrats appear to be reaching their breaking point. Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Josh Earnest lashed out at Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for suggesting it was Democrats' fault that Lynch hasn't moved. And Reid said that he's warned his GOP colleagues that things are about to get messy if they don't act on Lynch.
"I had a conversation today with a number of Republicans and told them really to get her done, or I will make sure they will have an opportunity to vote against her," he told Maddow.
Reid's office explained how, exactly, he could force a vote on Lynch.
Any senator can call up a nominee that's been set on the executive calendar. Reid plans to make a motion to move the Senate onto the executive calendar and take up Lynch's nomination, if McConnell doesn't schedule a vote on Lynch "very, very soon," said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Reid.
It only takes a simple majority to clear those votes. So Democrats could conceivably cobble together a handful of Lynch's GOP supporters to vote with them to move the Senate into executive session, at which point Reid could set up a procedural vote that lines up a confirmation vote on Lynch the following day.
Lynch appears to have the votes to be confirmed, whenever she does get a vote. She would be the first African-American woman to become U.S. attorney general.
Before the Senate adjourned Thursday, Reid said there's been "significant progress" in finding a way forward on the trafficking bill, but that negotiators aren't there yet.
"I'm going to serve notice right now that Ms. Lynch's nomination will not remain in purgatory forever," he said on the Senate floor.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said the trafficking bill will be back up early next week. And then, if all goes well, Lynch is up.
"It's my hope that we'll be able to go through an orderly amendment process and pass a trafficking bill early next week," he said. "The Senate would then consider the Lynch nomination."Everyone knows Vienna is beautiful. But we want to take you to the dark side, and explore some very ugly mistakes, on a walking journey.
We want locals to explore their own city from an innovative perspective. A tour of beautiful palaces would not interest many of them, but this will. There is a fascination with death, failure and melancholy in Vienna, and this walk connects with that Ulrich Seidl mood.
Through humour, we want to make some serious points about the role of fashion, the popular press, city-planners, gentrification, postmodernism, UNESCO and greedy developers.
We want to start a debate – and so participants vote on the attractiveness of each building. This is one of the cities with the biggest gap between its fantasy and reality. We want to explore that gap, and maybe close it a little. Vienna is more interesting than its reputation. In the spirit of Conchita, we want to transgress, and surprise people. To show another Vienna, beyond the tired cliches of Sissi and Schnitzel, a city which is more creative, contemporary and adventurous.
You have to come on the walk to find out which buildings we consider ugly! We include old and new architecture. Some structures are both beautiful and ugly. Only through ugliness can we discover true beauty, and the two have an interesting relationship in Vienna. Beauty can be boring – but ugly never is. And we love the cinematic qualities of Vienna at night, so some of our walks start at midnight.
Current tours of Vienna focus on the old city. We need new stories to tell.
From Participants:
‘unconventional, charming, has a good revolutionary spirit & is a lot of fun too. I absolutely loved it.’
‘Über 2 Stunden wurden wir alle gefesselt vom rhetorischen Wissens-Feuerwerk von E. Eine super Erfahrung, habe noch nie eine so leidenschaftliche Städtetour erleben dürfen, danke.
‘Eugene conveys a deep knowledge of, and affection for Vienna.’
‘Eugene Quinn versteht es einfach uns die ganz andere Seite von Wien zu zeigen und es unterhaltsam, witzig und lehrreich zugleich zu präsentieren.’
‘The Vienna Ugly Tour is a beautiful tour of ugly buildings…cool, funny, refreshing.’
‘Grandioser, lustiger Tour-Guide, wirklich spannende Tour- auch für alle, die schon länger in Wien leben, gibt es immer neue Hässlichkeiten zu entdecken.’
‘Unique…. concerned with ideas as much as images…’
‘Es ist erfrischend durch einen Nicht-Wiener zu hören und sichtbar gemacht zu bekommen, was man vielleicht hätte nicht errichten müssen.’ ‘More connections to this city’s inner life than any other tour could offer – a must!’
‘Zu jedem Haus gibt es eine interessante Geschichte und immer wieder wird zwischendurch abgestimmt, wie die Gruppe die „hässlichen“ Gebäude wahrnimmt.’ ‘…learned a lot about Vienna now (& architecture in general) which I hadn’t learned from the more typical tours – specially given the price which is a bargain.’
‘Hilariously ugly buildings… charming with a British/Austrian black sense of humor.’
‚Very ugly indeed. I live in Vienna and afterwards was recognizing more details in the streets.’
‘…challenges your classic picture of the city. I joined a midnight (!) edition, which gave the whole tour a special adventurous atmosphere.’
Public Transport: U2, Taborstrasse (Endpoint: near Gartenbaukino)
Cost contribution: 10€
No registration is possible. Just pay on the day. Any questions: Eugene Quinn +43 680 1254 354
eugene.quinn@spaceandplace.at
All walks are in English, led by Eugene Quinn. This walk can be arranged for private groups, birthdays, special events and school students, to practice their English. Und es gibt auch ein deutschsprachige Haessliches Wien Spaziergang.
Time: 10:30-13:00
Dates
2 March
13 April
Meeting Point: Augarten park entrance, Obere Augarten Strasse 1, 1020 (opposite Ob. Augarten Str 40 – don’t believe Google Maps guidance, please. See map below).Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, questioned by French police over allegations about a prostitution ring, has been released from custody, without being charged, although investigators say they have not finished their inquiries.
If more incriminating evidence is found, Mr Prokhorov could be dragged back into the affair.
Mikhail Prokhorov is one of Russia's most prominent businessmen and is the world's 89th richest person, according to Forbes magazine. He co-owns the Norilsky Nickel mining company.
Mr Prokhorov, along with the company's vice president and two managers, was detained by French authorities on January 9 in the luxury alpine ski resort of Courchevel. Police suspected Russian prostitutes had been brought to the resort and paid with gifts from luxury boutiques.
The French police have been investigating the alleged international prostitution ring for about 8 months. Whatever the outcome, it would seem Mr. Prokhorov will be left with a dent in his reputation.The Anaheim Ducks will have to win 52 of their remaining 72 regular-season games to come close to the 109 points and Pacific Division title won last season. With every loss, Anaheim, a team favoured by many to win the Stanley Cup, is inching closer to being a non-playoff team.
Unbelievable.
The urgency of the situation isn't lost on Ducks players, coaches or management and was driven home by Thursday’s 2-1 loss to the Blues in St Louis. It was a loss amplified by Tarasenko's tying goal scored on a two-on-oh, followed by Colton Parayko's game winner on a shot from the point that sailed wide of the net before ricocheting off the end boards and into the Ducks net off goalie Frederik Andersen's skate.
The loss in St Louis comes two nights after a meltdown in Dallas, where the Stars scored four unanswered goals in a 4-3 win that left Anaheim demoralized.
Bruce Boudreau will require treatment in a local burn unit based on his media placement on a hot seat that has reached lava-like temperature. The question now is will Boudreau be behind the bench for the Ducks next home game on Sunday?
General manager Bob Murray may have more slack left in the rope, or may opt to make a trade to shake things up. However, a trade can't guarantee success and it makes little sense to trade Sami Vatanen or Hampus Lindholm, young defencemen teams are interested in, unless Anaheim is getting quality young assets back. It’s too early for a transaction like that to materialize.
"I really don’t like commenting on rumors, but I will say this: We were one game away from the Final just five months ago," he said on |
Core Rulebook (320 page, hardcover book)
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, digital)
RED AEGIS Digital Boxed Set
* RED AEGIS Tactics (digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Monoliths(digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Blood & Iron(digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Pathfinder (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Fate Core (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to 13th-Age (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Dungeon World (digital) [Unlocks at $60k]
RED AEGIS Player’s Guide (digital)
Access to Aegis Insider community at Loremaster.org
High Loremaster ($150)
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, signed & numbered leatherbound book)
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, digital)
RED AEGIS Online Tools
RED AEGIS Digital Boxed Set
* RED AEGIS Tactics (digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Monoliths(digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Blood & Iron(digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Pathfinder (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Fate Core (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to 13th-Age (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Dungeon World (digital) [Unlocks at $60k]
RED AEGIS Player’s Guide (digital)
Access to Aegis Insider community at Loremaster.org
Associate Game Designer ($250)
Mentoring with a member of the RED AEGIS design team
Opportunity to secure a contract to design content for the RED AEGIS Roleplaying Game
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, signed & numbered leatherbound book)
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, digital)
RED AEGIS Online Tools
RED AEGIS Digital Boxed Set
* RED AEGIS Tactics (digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Monoliths(digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Blood & Iron(digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Pathfinder (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Fate Core (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to 13th-Age (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Dungeon World (digital) [Unlocks at $60k]
RED AEGIS Player’s Guide (digital)
Access to Aegis Insider community at Loremaster.org
Chosen One ($500)
A seat at a private game of RED AEGIS with the lead designers at Gen Con 2014
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, signed & numbered leatherbound book)
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, digital)
RED AEGIS Online Tools
RED AEGIS Digital Boxed Set
* RED AEGIS Tactics (digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Monoliths(digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Blood & Iron(digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Pathfinder (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Fate Core (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to 13th-Age (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Dungeon World (digital) [Unlocks at $60k]
RED AEGIS Player’s Guide (digital)
Access to Aegis Insider community at Loremaster.org
Producer ($1000)
Insider peak at the project plan, design documents, and draft manuscripts
Sit in on Skype meetings with the designers at various stages of the process
Commission an illustration of your design to be included in the Core Rulebook
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, signed & numbered leatherbound book)
RED AEGIS Core Rulebook (320 page, digital)
RED AEGIS Online Tools
RED AEGIS Digital Boxed Set
* RED AEGIS Tactics (digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Monoliths(digital)
* RED AEGIS Unleashed: Age of Blood & Iron(digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Pathfinder (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Fate Core (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to 13th-Age (digital)
* RED AEGIS Hacker’s Guide to Dungeon World (digital) [Unlocks at $60k]
RED AEGIS Player’s Guide (digital)
Access to Aegis Insider community at Loremaster.org
Stretch Goals
RED AEGIS Digital Boxed Set: Miscellaneous items like those included in tabletop boxed sets of yore, this collection of bonus goodies contains pregenerated character, encounter charts, maps, and more. The digital boxed also includes two notable exclusives: the RED AEGIS Hacker's Guide and RED AEGIS Unleashed (see descriptions below). Finally, the Digital Boxed Set also grants you access to the Red Aegis Online Tools (character builder, lineage designer, and so on). RED AEGIS Hacker's Guide: This accessory contains system "hacks" for incorporating RED AEGIS into other game systems. Initial target is the Pathfinder roleplaying game, with additional systems added with stretch goals. RED AEGIS Unleashed: An epic-sized adventure path that spans 9 time periods (through stretch goals). Each adventure is accompanied by a novelette that ties into the adventure arc. The first module will be penned by Brian R. James and Ed Greenwood. RED AEGIS Tactics: A tactical skirmish game that is designed for 2-6 players. Players construct an army using everything from axe-wielding barbarians, to spell-slinging archmages--from incredulous biker gang vagabonds, to futuristic space soldiers. This is truly the battle of all ages. Construct your army, deploy to the fields of battle, and defend the prestige of your legacy. Pyralithos
Join us in designing a tabletop roleplaying experience that you've never seen before!
RED AEGIS is an alternative take on the traditional roleplaying game. This is not just a game about fighting monsters and pillaging ancient ruins for treasure (though we have that too!).
RED AEGIS is an epic, millennia-spanning, strategic roleplaying game where you claim your birthright, rally loyal followers to your cause, and forge a dynasty to stand the test of time.
In RED AEGIS you command successive generations of heroes from the setting's ancient past to the far future–from axe-wielding barbarians to space marines packing gravity hammers, and everything in between.
RED AEGIS is about making difficult choices. These decisions will impact not only your tribe's future, but also the fate of your descendants and the world they inhabit.
We're excited to share with you our vision of epic storytelling. Vorpal Games is devoted to hiring the best talent in the industry to make that vision a reality.
Macuilanx
The Game
In addition to familiar tropes you'd expect from playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons®, RED AEGIS is also infused with millennia-spanning tactical strategy, inspired by games like Sid Meier's Civilization® and X-COM®.
The story of a RED AEGIS campaign is revealed over ten gaming sessions, where you command successive generations of heroes from the world’s ancient past to the far future.
In RED AEGIS all heroes die. Whether on the field of battle or of old age, your character will eventually die. At the start of each game session you play a new character, a descendant of your starting character’s bloodline.
In RED AEGIS your character abilities are not tied to the individual hero you are playing. Rather, your skills and powers are inherited from and infused with your bloodline, passed from one generation to the next.
LEARN ABOUT GAME PLAY
One of our major motivations with our gameplay experience is to have hundreds, if not thousands, of years pass between each session. Your character in the new session will be a descendant of your past character and will inherent characteristics of the applied dynasty. For example; if in the past your ancestor slayed the great Minotaur lord Kogulous, you would not only gain in-game story-based rewards for such a feat, you would also earn additional Prestige to use in the construction of your descendants in following sessions. Prestige is a value pool that is increased based upon the actions and exploits of your character. One might view this as a type of experience pool, and they wouldn’t be incorrect. Different players would earn at different rates, depending on their actions in the campaign, as well as other factors that we’re not ready to release just yet. In addition, we are implementing a dynamic system by which the storyteller/dungeon master/game master might change from session to session. We refer to this as the Arbiter. The Arbiter will be a role that players will aspire to become, due to the increase in Prestige and other story-based rewards. This process is governed by an element of the game that revolves around the RED AEGIS itself.
Another interesting aspect you may enjoy: as your descendants traverse the timeline your characters will be defined not by equipment (as is in traditional tabletop RPGS), rather by your followers. Followers will have specific skill-sets and professions that will aid your character, and will help define them as your dynasty evolves. This is going to allow for an immense amount of customization, and it’s something we’re eager to show off once completed.
Ikomatshe
The Products
RED AEGIS Player's Guide: An introductory guide to the Red Aegis Roleplaying Game, featuring a complete, learn-as-you-go adventure and a printable character sheet for your custom bloodline.
RED AEGIS RPG Corebook: A lovingly crafted, hardcover sourcebook with high quality maps and illustrations scattered throughout. The book will contain complete rules to build your bloodline, as well as guidance for designing custom monsters and encounters set in the RED AEGIS universe.
Sample Products (Not Final)
The System
The RED AEGIS Roleplaying Game is powered by the LGS (Loremaster Game System™) –a customizable tabletop game engine that supports multiple genres and play-styles.
Unlike most other systems, the LGS encourages the selection of a new game master for each session, allowing for a truly unique experience whereby the actions of the game master are encoded into your shared story!
Hoarthostat
The World
The starting region characters will explore during the game's first age is known to the indigenous tribes as Namarune. This is the cradle of civilization in the Red Aegis setting, and it serves as the region where your tribe will take its formative steps toward building a dynasty and an empire to stand the test of time.
The tribes of Namarune have always feared the world anchors–those crimson, impossibly massive stone monoliths that have stood, inscrutable, since the dawn of time. To approach one was forbidden and taboo. To ignore the omens would be to invite the wrath of the gods down upon yourself and your tribe.
Yet despite the warnings, each generation witnessed a foolish few that would make a pilgrimage to one the ancient monoliths in defiance of reason and self-preservation. The few that returned, if any, would often ramble of unimaginable wonders and lament of god-like powers wielded ever so briefly. Many of these individuals came to be shunned by their superstitious clan mates and driven into exile, while a rare few would be raised up and heralded as hero-kings.
During the first arc of the campaign, the player characters gather at one of the fabled monoliths, where they are imbued with fantastic powers and a mandate for greatness.
Which destiny will befall you when heeding the call of the Red Aegis?
Namrune: Age of Monoliths (click image to view map animation)
"No civilization lasts forever, and a society is most treacherous when facing its extinction. Countless inscrutable ruins dot the countryside of Namarune, like ichor-filled sores on a plague-ridden corpse. It’s curious that the most magnificent of these fallen structures often rest within sight of a world anchor—those most holy of stone monuments from which our own civilization was given rise."
Reward Add-Ons
You can add on individual copies of the Red Aegis RPG to any pledge that already is shipping a physical book by manually adding the appropriate amount on the pledge page:
+$15 for each additional softcover Red Aegis Player's Guide. Outside North America, please add an additional $10 shipping per book.
+$70 for each additional hardcover Red Aegis Roleplaying Game sourcebook. Outside North America, please add an additional $30 shipping per book.
+$15 for one (+$25 for two) Red Aegis challenge coin. It's a 1.5" diameter metal coin with colored inlays, numbered serially on the face. Outside North America, please add an additional $5 shipping (for 1 or more coins).
Challenge Coin (Not actual design)
+$30 for each Red Aegis T-shirt. Outside North America, please add an additional $5 shipping per shirt.
T-Shirt design not final
+$60 (limit 1 per backer) for the Namarune: Age of Monoliths map, printed on canvas. Outside North America, please add an additional $15 for shipping.
+$120 (limit 1 per backer) for the Namarune: Age of Monoliths map, printed on canvas and gallery wrapped (stretched over a 1.5" wooden frame suitable for hanging). Outside North America, please add an additional $25 for shipping.
Gallery Wrap Canvas Map (child not included)
Depending on how much funding the project secures, we may add other add-ons at a later date. Ideas we're considering include a RED AEGIS event card deck, pad of character sheets, miniatures, and a leather-bound premium hardcover. If you have any other suggestions, please add them to the comments.
Want to be a Game Designer?
At the start of this Kickstarter we said “Join us in designing a tabletop roleplaying experience that you've never seen before!” and we meant it!
We’re sincere in our desire to solicit feedback from the roleplaying community during every stage of the design. But contributing to online polls and filling out beta surveys only goes so far. For a few of you, that sort of impersonal feedback is not enough. You want to be more directly in contact with the designers and help shape the mechanics or lore of the game.
Backers at the Associate Game Designer level will be given a small section of the Corebook to design. Other RPG Kickstarters may allow you a token task like naming an NPC, or a city, or some such, but this opportunity is much grander than that. Who knows, if you complete your assignment as tasked and on deadline, you may even find additional, paying contracts in your future.
The extra cost associated with this reward level is really for the one-on-one mentoring the backer will have with an established game designer, who will offer advice, critique design work, and so on. There should be no pressure for a backer to turn over a perfect design. Our fantastic editors are here to make every designer’s work shine!
Limited to 20 slots only.
The Design Team
Vorpal Games LLC is devoted to hiring the best talent in tabletop games. The design team for RED AEGIS is highly regarded in the industry, each having designed multiple game sourcebooks for leading publishers, including Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and Kobold Press.
Brian R. James is an award-winning freelance game designer, co-owner of Vorpal Games, and lead story designer of RED AEGIS RPG. His game design credits include The Grand History of the Realms™, Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead™, Demonomicon™, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale™, and Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue™. Brian also co-authored Giants Revisited for Paizo Publishing. Follow Brian online at twitter.com/brianrjames.
Matt James is an award-winning game designer from Washington, DC, and co-owner of Vorpal Games. He has designed and developed game content for popular publishers such as Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and Kobold Press. In his spare time he authors short stories and other speculative fiction. Matt is also a disabled combat veteran, having earned the Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart during his service in Iraq back in 2005. Matt is the lead game developer for the RED AEGIS RPG. Follow Matt online at twitter.com/matt_james_rpg
Ed Greenwood is a Canadian writer and editor who created the Forgotten Realms. He invented the Forgotten Realms as a child, as a fantasy world in which to set the stories he imagined, and later used this world as a campaign setting for his own personal Dungeons & Dragons playing group. He began writing articles about the Forgotten Realms for Dragon magazine beginning in 1979, and he sold the rights to the setting to TSR in 1986. Greenwood has written many more articles and D&D game supplement books for the setting, and he has written Forgotten Realms novels as a freelance author.
Erik Scott de Bie is probably best known for his novels set in the Forgotten Realms setting, including Shadowbane (September 2011) and its sequel, Shadowbane: Eye of Justice (2012). He is also known in the gaming industry, having contributed to such successful Dungeons & Dragons products as Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea™, Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond™, and the popular Neverwinter Campaign Setting™. Follow Erik online at twitter.com/erikscottdebie
Stephen Radney-MacFarland began working on RPGs in 2000, when he became the RPGA editorial assistant at Wizards of the Coast. Over the years, he's administered the Living Greyhawk campaign, aided in the development of the D&D 3.5 rules, was a developer for D&D 4th Edition, and taught numerous game design classes in the Seattle area. He now works at Paizo as a designer for Pathfinder. His current credits include Advanced Race Guide, Ultimate Campaign, and Mythic Adventures.
Miranda Horner joined the West End Games team as an editor in 1994. Shortly thereafter, she became an editor for the AD&D core team at TSR, Inc., then made the move to Seattle to work with Wizards of the Coast. Since then, she has been an editor on AD&D, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, and D&D (various editions) projects. She also spent some time as a managing producer for several Wizards of the Coast trading card game websites. When she's not spending her working hours wrangling text for D&D and other roleplaying games, she's working on websites for various clients and companies.
Eytan Bernstein is a game designer, editor, and author from New York. He's best known for his work on countless D&D books and articles, as well as contributions to RPG products from numerous other game companies. Eytan is a passionate civil rights activist who champions diversity in gaming. For more information about him, go to http://eytanbernstein.com/.
Mike Schley has close to two decades of experience as a professional artist and designer. His current focus is on providing illustration and cartography services to a wide variety of book and game publishers. He particularly enjoys collaborating with creators of fantasy and science fiction realms such as Wizards of the Coast and Scholastic Books. More of his work and thoughts can be found at www.mikeschley.com
Claudio Pozas is a true dual-threat in the RPG industry with his creative writing ability and amazing artistic proficiencies. Claudio is a writer/artist who has been working with roleplaying games since 2001. His first project of notice was the Counter Collection series for Fiery Dragon Productions. In the past few years, Claudio started working on Dungeons & Dragons for Wizards of the Coast. His writing credits include Heroes of Shadow™ and Heroes of the Feywild™, and his art has been featured in several issues of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. He currently resides in his native Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Erik Nowak is an advertising graphic designer by day, and a freelance RPG graphic designer by night. (He is quite sure that sleep is for suckers.) Erik has done layout and design work for Goodman Games, Blackdirge Publishing, Dreamscarred Press, Winter Fantasy, The Gamers Syndicate, synDCon, and more. He is especially proud of designing the look for, and laying out, all three glorious issues of the short-lived LEVEL UP magazine by Goodman Games.
A huge THANK YOU from the team at...
Like the RED AEGIS RPG? Please LIKE our page on Facebook!The big news at the Beretta booth during the NRA show was the Pico. If you thought the Nano was small, well, the Pico is tiny. It is a double action only hammer fired.380 pistol with a six round magazine, and it was designed to be as thin and snag-free as possible – about.71″ at its widest point.
That’s great for pocket carry, but it does come at a price – the magazine release, which must be pulled down from both sides of the trigger guard, is almost impossible to use with a firing grip on the weapon. The slide stop simply cannot be used as a slide release with a firing grip. The magazine must be removed before the slide can be dropped. This is similar to some of the Kahr pocket pistols, but I think it’s taken even farther with the Pico.
I asked a Beretta rep about this, as I saw the difficulty in manipulating the controls to be a problem, not a benefit. He confirmed my observations, but said that with practice the magazine could be released with the firing hand only, and that the design lended itself well to pocket carry.
This was noticeably easier with the larger of the two magazine releases on the display pistols – one stuck out just a little more side-to-side than the other. Beretta is apparently still trying to decide which magazine release to use on the production firearms. Whether either mag release would be easy to use under stress is highly questionable. I asked why a heel magazine release wasn’t considered, as it might be easier to manipulate while still maintaining a thin profile, but the rep didn’t know.
There are two magazines included with the pistol – both hold six rounds, while one has a flush baseplate and the other has an extended pinky grip. At this time it looks like all of the extended grips are in black, which looks a bit odd on a white pistol with a stainless steel slide.
I liked the multiple available colors, especially the white. Apparently these grip portions can be swapped without changing the serial number of the pistol, but beyond matching a pistol to an outfit, I don’t really see why anyone would bother with that particular feature. On that note, who wants a flat dark earth pistol with a stainless slide? Someone must want that combination, or Beretta wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of manufacturing it.
Although I couldn’t compare it side by side with other pistols in its class, I felt that the Pico’s trigger was uncomfortably close to the backstrap. I normally wear large or extra large gloves, so perhaps those with smaller hands will find its dimensions in this regard to be ideal.
At $399 with standard sights, the Pico is pretty reasonably priced. I should mention that the sights were quite excellent for a subcompact pistol, if somewhat incongruous with the idea of making the pistol as snag-free as possible. There were also Trijicon night sights available, although the rep I spoke to didn’t know how much extra they’d be.
I don’t know that the Pico will make much of a dent in the crowded.380 pocket pistol market. Nor do I think that it’s anything I’ll look at buying any time soon, due to the difficulty I had in manipulating the controls. But I do applaud Beretta for putting some effort into making the Pico different than the competition.Thursday June 23, 2016 04:04 PM
Dylan Cozens scored on a wild pitch during an attempted intentional walk, giving Reading a bizarre 11-inning victory.
Dylan Cozens scored from third on a wild pitch as Akron was attempting to intentionally walk Jake Fox, giving Reading a bizarre 11-inning, 6-5 Eastern League victory this afternoon at FirstEnergy Stadium.
A passed ball with Fox batting allowed Cozens to move to third and Rhys Hoskins to second, opening first base. The Rubberducks opted to intentionally walk Fox at that point but reliever J.P. Feyereisen's pitch sailed six feet over the head of his catcher and to the backstop, giving the Fightin Phils (51-22) their second straight win as well as a series victory.
The RubberDucks (42-31) tied it 5-5 in the eighth on a homer by Eric Haase.
The Fightins broke on top with a four-run first. Jorge Alfaro delivered an RBI single and Harold Martinez an RBI double.
Left fielder Andrew Pullin had three hits in his Double-A debut, including a double in the first inning and a single in the second.
Tom Eshelman was in line to win his Double-A debut after pitching five innings and allowing sevens hits and one run. He left with a 4-1 lead.
The Fightins turned a triple play in the ninth inning, their first since 2005.More or less tax for businesses? The full Gonski spend or not? Should negative gearing be kept or scrapped altogether? Here’s where the major parties stand
Tax
Coalition: The Coalition wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 30% to 25% by 2026-27, and the tax rate for small businesses from 28.5% to 25% by 2026-27. It hopes the move will boost GDP, profits, jobs and wages. Workers earning more than $80,000 – the top 25% of income earners – will get a tax cut as the government moves the threshold for the 37% tax rate up to $87,000. The cut is worth about $315 a year for most higher income families.
Australian election 2016: Daily Telegraph endorses Albanese in preferences spat – politics live Read more
Labor: Labor says it will support the Coalition’s first tax cut for small business to 27.5%, but not for big businesses. It will not support the Coalition’s plan to change the definition of small business to include businesses with a turnover of up to $1bn. These are not small-businesses, Labor says. It also wants multinational corporations to “pay their fair share of tax”.
Greens: The Greens want to introduce a “buffett rule” to limit the deductions that the top 1% of income earners can claim. The measure will only apply to people who have a total income of $300,000 or more a year. It will oppose the government’s plans to cut the corporate tax rate. It also wants to clamp down on multinational tax.
Superannuation
Coalition: The Coalition is targeting super concessions at the top end, and at the bottom. A low-income super tax offset for contributions, up to $500, for people earning less than $37,000. For high-income earners, a $500,000 lifetime limit to be placed on post-tax contributions to replace a much more generous annual limit of $180,000 (this measure has proven controversial, because it will be backdated to 2007).
Labor: Labor says if it wins government future earnings on assets supporting income streams will be tax-free up to $75,000 a year for each individual from 1 July 2017. Earnings above the $75,000 threshold will attract the same concessional rate of 15% that applies to earnings in the accumulation phase. The reforms will affect roughly 60,000 super account holders with balances in excess of $1.5m. It may oppose the retrospective elements of Morrison’s super reforms.
Greens: The Greens want to reform the taxation of super to benefit lower income earners. They want to replace the current flat superannuation tax rate of 15% with a progressive system closely based on a person’s marginal income tax rate. They say that would bring in $10bn, over the forward estimates.
Health
Coalition: The Turnbull government has restored $2.9bn in health funding over the next three years after the Abbott government cut $57bn in long-term hospital funding which Labor had promised the states before it lost office.
Labor: Shorten has promised a Labor government would fund hospitals to “a far greater level than what the Turnbull government is doing”. Labor has criticised the $57bn in health cuts in the 2014 budget but has not yet committed to restore the full amount.
Greens: The party has proposed phasing out the private health insurance rebate, which costs the federal budget $5bn a year, and reinvesting the savings in the public health system. It has promised to restore the funding model where the commonwealth and the states share the rising costs in delivering hospital services evenly, which would reverse the $57bn health funding cut in the 2014 budget.
Schools
Coalition: The government announced $1.2bn in additional funding for schools in the 3 May budget but has not committed to restore $28bn of projected funding growth removed by the 2014 budget. Funding will be needs-based but contingent on reform efforts to get better outcomes for students and parents.
Labor: In the budget reply, Shorten committed to investing $37.3bn over 10 years to guarantee needs-based funding promised in the Gonski education reforms.
Bill Shorten makes education a priority as Labor 'underdogs' hit campaign trail Read more
Greens: The Greens are in favour of needs-based schools funding and aim to cut some of the federal government funding of wealthy private schools and redirect it to public schools.
Climate change
Coalition: The government has pledged to cut emissions by 26% to 28% by 2030. But experts have doubted that Direct Action and safeguards, designed to prevent increases in emissions beyond a baseline, can deliver cuts required to meet the target.
Labor: Labor’s target is to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 based on 2005 levels and it wants 50% of energy to be generated by renewables by 2030. It has proposed two emissions trading schemes – one for big industrial polluters and an electricity industry model. The electricity scheme would require generators with an emissions intensity above an industry-wide baseline to buy “credits” from those below it – effectively penalising polluting power stations and rewarding clean ones.
Greens: The Greens plan to shift Australia to 90% renewables by 2030 and want to increase clean energy finance to $30bn over 10 years. The party has announced a $2.9bn five-year support package for 1.2m homes and 30,000 businesses to take-up renewable energy storage units.
Housing affordability
Coalition: The government has promised not to touch negative gearing or the capital gains tax discount. It says the best way to make housing more affordable is to increase supply, and for that reason, it says zoning laws and land releases ought to be targeted.
Labor: Labor wants to limit negative gearing to new housing, from 1 July 2017 (while losses from new investments in shares and existing properties could still be used to offset investment income tax liabilities). It also wants to cut the capital gains tax discount from 50% to 25%, after 1 July 2017. It says this will improve the budget bottom line by $32.1 billion over ten years.
Greens: The Greens want to abolish negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. They plan to phase out negative gearing for all non-business asset classes, with grandfathering arrangements for existing investment. They also want to phase out the 50% CGT discount by 10% each year from 1 July 2016, until there is no discount at all, from 1 July 2020. They say their policies will save $119.5 bn over ten years.
Refugees
Coalition: the government has said it has “stopped the boats” carrying people seeking asylum to Australia by policies including detention on Manus Island and Nauru. It has stuck to its policy despite concerns about conditions in the centres and the return of boats to countries where asylum seekers would be in danger, which Amnesty International has said is in breach of international law.
Tragedy on Nauru: we do not need to act like a stupid and brutal nation | Sarah Mares Read more
Labor: Labor has said it will “not allow policy which sees the mass drowning of vulnerable people”, in effect replicating the government’s policy including use of controversial boat towbacks. Labor supports regional processing but doesn’t want it to degenerate into indefinite detention.
Greens: The Greens have proposed increasing Australia’s annual refugee intake to 50,000 and shutting the Manus and Nauru detention centres.
Industrial relations
Coalition: The government has promised to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which would extend the compulsory investigation powers held by the watchdog. It also wants to crack down on unions through a registered organisations commission with harsher penalties for misconduct including higher civil penalties and even criminal offences for serious breaches of union officials’ duties.
Labor: The opposition has proposed giving the Australian Securities and Investment Commission power to investigate serious industrial law breaches by unions or employers, instead of creating a new union watchdog. Labor opposes the ABCC on the basis it infringes workers’ rights and unfairly singles out the construction industry.
Greens: The Greens opposed both the ABCC and registered organisations commission. They want to give the Fair Work Commission powers to convert long-term casual employees to permanent full or part-time employees.
Tertiary and vocational education
Coalition: The 2016 budget delayed a 20% cut in per student subsidies until 2018 and fee deregulation had been dumped in favour of an options paper on higher education. The government has begun consultation about how to fix vocational education after reports of widespread unscrupulous vocational education providers.
Labor: Labor opposes fee deregulation and has announced it will cap student loans for vocational education at $8,000 per student per year to crack down on dodgy private colleges.
Q&A recap: questions about trickle-down economics open the floodgates Read more
Greens: The Greens support free university education and tertiary and further education.
Marriage equality
Coalition: The government has promised to hold a plebiscite on same-sex marriage. The attorney general, George Brandis, has ruled out suspending anti-discrimination law for the campaign, but has said the government has not decided whether to give public funds to the yes and no cases for the campaign.
Labor: Bill Shorten has pledged that Labor would hold a parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage within 100 days of the next election. Labor MPs will be allowed a free vote on the issue.
Greens: The Greens are unanimously in favour of same-sex marriage and want the issue dealt with by a parliamentary vote, not a plebiscite.Photo
The Justice Department is preparing a fresh round of attacks on the world’s biggest banks, again questioning Wall Street’s role in a broad array of financial markets.
With evidence mounting that a number of foreign and American banks colluded to alter the price of foreign currencies, the largest and least regulated financial market, prosecutors are aiming to file charges against at least one bank by the end of the year, according to interviews with lawyers briefed on the matter. Ultimately, several banks are expected to plead guilty.
Interviews with more than a dozen lawyers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations open a window onto previously undisclosed aspects of an investigation that is unnerving Wall Street and the defense bar. While cases stemming from the financial crisis were aimed at institutions, prosecutors are planning to eventually indict individual bank employees over currency manipulation, using their instant messages as incriminating evidence.
The charges will most likely focus on traders and their bosses rather than chief executives. As a result, critics of the Justice Department might view the cases as little more than an exercise in public relations, a final push to shape the legacy of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who was blamed for a lack of criminal cases against Wall Street executives.
Yet the breadth of the suspected wrongdoing in the currency inquiry — Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and UBS are among the dozen or so banks under investigation — might distinguish it from the piecemeal nature of the crisis-era investigations.
And prosecutors are testing a new negotiating tactic, two lawyers said, using the currency investigation as a cudgel to potentially reopen other cases. Arguing that the misconduct would violate earlier settlements involving interest rate manipulation, prosecutors have threatened to impose new penalties in the interest rate cases.
Those interest rate cases, which have already led to settlements with five banks and laid the groundwork for the currency investigation, are experiencing something of a resurgence. For one thing, prosecutors are preparing additional charges against at least one trader suspected of manipulating the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, a benchmark that underpins the cost of trillions of dollars in credit card, mortgage and other loans.
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Some banks also remain under investigation. In the last major rate-rigging case against a bank, prosecutors are discussing the possibility of forcing Deutsche Bank or one of its subsidiaries to plead guilty to manipulating Libor, the lawyers said. The lawyers added that the German bank’s New York branch faces a separate action from Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York State’s banking regulator, who until now has sat out the Libor settlements.
A spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank said the bank was “cooperating in the various regulatory investigations and conducting its own ongoing review into the interbank offered rates matters,” adding that “no current or former member of the management board had any inappropriate involvement.”
The Justice Department’s focus on financial misdeeds comes at a time of transition; top prosecutors are leaving its criminal division, which is handling the benchmark investigations along with the antitrust division. And for Mr. Holder, entering his final weeks at the Justice Department, the cases offer a last opportunity to address public and political complaints that prosecutors have gone soft on Wall Street.
He has sought to swing the tide through a series of recent cases: record fines against JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America and guilty pleas from Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas.
The public lust for charges is at odds with the view on Wall Street, where bankers and lawyers report fatigue with what seems like unrelenting investigations. With each inquiry, the fines have multiplied, stretching to nearly $17 billion for Bank of America.
And the scrutiny could drag on for years. The Justice Department, lawyers said, has widened its focus to include a criminal investigation into banks that set an important benchmark for interest rate derivatives, a previously unreported development that coincides with international regulators’ proposing overhauls to the rate-setting process.
The flurry of activity strikes at the heart of Wall Street’s role in setting benchmarks across the globe. The investigations suggest that banks, |
wins. Bradford, who attended the University of Oklahoma, was nominated for five Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week awards, winning twice.
Joe Haden, CB, Cleveland Browns Haden finished the year with 64 tackles, one sack, one forced fumble and six interceptions, which tied for fifth in the NFL and was second among rookies. He led the Haden finished the year with 64 tackles, one sack, one forced fumble and six interceptions, which tied for fifth in the NFL and was second among rookies. He led the Browns with 18 pass break-ups and added 57 tackles, one sack, one forced fumble and eight special teams stops. His six picks were the most by a Brown since 2007 and the most by a Browns rookie since 2001. In Weeks 10-13, he became the first Brown to record an interception in four straight games since Ernie Kellermann in 1968. Haden, who attended the University of Florida, was nominated for three Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week awards.
Devin McCourty, CB, New England Patriots McCourty started all 16 games and finished the season with 82 tackles, one sack, two forced fumbles, 17 passes defensed and seven interceptions. His interception total tied for second in the NFL and led all rookies. Four of the picks came during three consecutive games in Weeks 11-13. The seven interceptions by a McCourty started all 16 games and finished the season with 82 tackles, one sack, two forced fumbles, 17 passes defensed and seven interceptions. His interception total tied for second in the NFL and led all rookies. Four of the picks came during three consecutive games in Weeks 11-13. The seven interceptions by a Patriots rookie are second to the eight by Mike Haynes in 1976. McCourty, who attended Rutgers University, was nominated for two Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week awards.
Ndamukong Suh, DT, Detroit Lions Suh led the Suh led the Lions, NFL rookies and all defensive tackles with 10.0 sacks and recorded 66 tackles (49 solo), three passes defensed, one forced fumble, one interception and one fumble returned for a touchdown. Suh became the second rookie defensive tackle in NFL history to record 10.0 sacks. He also was the only rookie in the NFL to record a sack, an interception and a fumble return for a touchdown this season. He was selected to the 2011 NFC Pro Bowl team as a starter. Suh, who attended the University of Nebraska, was nominated for four Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week awards, winning once.
Mike Williams, WR, Tampa Bay Buccaneers Williams finished the year with 65 receptions for 964 yards and 11 touchdowns, helping the Williams finished the year with 65 receptions for 964 yards and 11 touchdowns, helping the Buccaneers go 10-6. Among rookie receivers, Williams finished first in all major categories. He also becomes the first rookie to have 10-plus touchdown receptions since Randy Moss in 1998. Williams was the only rookie receiver to have a reception in each of his teams games this season and he finished tied for the 11th-most receiving yards in the NFC. Williams, who attended Syracuse, was nominated for five Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week awards.
This is Pepsi's ninth year as the official soft drink sponsor of the NFL and the ninth year that Pepsi will present the NFL Rookie of the Week and NFL Rookie of the Year awards.In what looks set to be one of the most one-sided struggles in the history of Amazon forest conservation, an indigenous community of about 400 villagers is preparing to resist the Ecuadorean army and one of the biggest oil companies in South America.
The Kichwa tribe on Sani Isla, who were using blowpipes two generations ago, said they are ready to fight to the death to protect their territory, which covers 70,000 hectares of pristine rainforest.
Petroamazonas – the state-backed oil company – have told them it will begin prospecting on 15 January, backed by public security forces.
Community members are launching a last-ditch legal battle to stop the state-run firm assisted by a British businesswoman, who is married to the village shaman, and who was recently appointed to run the local eco lodge.
Mari Muench, who is originally from London, said the community decided at two meetings late last year to reject a financial offer from the oil firm because they were concerned about the long-term environmental impact of mining.
They recently learned, however, that the chief of the village has signed a contract giving the go-ahead for the oil exploration, even though they say he was not authorised to do so.
Earlier offers of a new school, university places for village children and better healthcare were dropped in the document, which provides compensation of only $40 (£24) per hectare, according to copies that the Guardian has seen.
The community secretary, Klider Gualinga, said more than 80% of the village is opposed to the oil deal, but a minority are pushing it through against their wishes and local rules.
"People think it is dishonest and the oil company is treating them like dogs. It does not respect the land or the planet. There is no deal, nothing is agreed. The people do not want the oil company. They're very upset and worried," Gualinga said. "We have decided to fight to the end. Each landholder will defend their territory. We will help each other and stand shoulder to shoulder to prevent anyone from passing."
If there is a conflict, their chances of success against the better armed and trained military are slim. The Sani Islanders say they scared but determined.
"If there is a physical fight, it is certain to end tragically," said Patricio Jipa, the shaman and former community chief. "We may die fighting to defend the rainforest. We would prefer passive resistance, but this may not be possible. We will not start conflict, but we will try to block them and then what happens will happen."
"It makes me feel sad and angry. Sad because we are indigenous people and not fully prepared to fight a government. And angry because we grew up to be warriors and have a spirit to defend ourselves. I wish we could use this force to fight in a new way, but our mental strength is not sufficient in this modern world. If the laws were respected we would win. But our lawyers have sent them letters and they won't even talk to us in Quito."
"We are now fighting against a signed contract. We must make people realise it is invalid but there is huge concern the oil company will move quickly to clear the land. When that happened elsewhere, they used armed troops, beatings and abductions to remove those who stood in their way."
The members of the Kichwa indigenous group are custodians of swaths of the most biodiverse areas in the world. Their land is close to the Yasuni national park. Scientists say a single hectare in this part of the Amazon contains a wider variety of life than all of North America.
Community members are appealing for outside assistance in their legal battle and efforts to find economic alternatives through their eco lodge.
Petroamazonas has yet to respond to the Guardian's request for comment.On Thursday, 17 developed and developing nations will attend a meeting on climate issues in L’Aquila, Italy, during the three-day Group of 8 summit meeting. In a draft of the declaration obtained by The New York Times that is scheduled to be released after the session, the countries say they agree on an “aspirational global goal” of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050, the same target President George W. Bush accepted a year ago at a Group of 8 meeting in Japan.
To achieve that, the draft document states, the United States and other advanced economies will have to reduce their emissions by 80 percent, consistent with Mr. Obama’s position and the House climate legislation. Several leaders who will be at the summit meeting are also hoping to overcome Washington’s reluctance to setting a temperature target.
The United States, however, has resisted European pressure to set strong goals over the next decade and has insisted on language that leaves vague the starting year against which emissions reductions will be measured. The Europeans wanted 1990, which would require much steeper near-term cuts, while the United States, Australia and Japan preferred a 2005 benchmark.
The draft is still subject to change before it is adopted on Thursday.
Mr. Obama, in an interview a week ago, said he recognized that Mrs. Merkel, other Europeans and many developing nations wanted more from the United States.
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“My argument to her and to the Europeans is we don’t want to make the best the enemy of the good,” Mr. Obama said.
The president and other American policy makers also insist that no deal can effectively reduce emissions unless China, India and other major developing countries are on board. The United States has been pursuing a separate track of climate diplomacy directly with Beijing.
Michael Starbaek Christensen, a senior climate-change official in Denmark, said he was worried that the United States and China — the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world — would cut a separate deal and push the rest of the world into a treaty that did too little to curb emissions.
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“I can only encourage Europe to stay in the lead and not let a bilateral U.S.-China relationship take over,” Mr. Christensen said, “because one concern I would have with the U.S.-China relationship is that they would find a lower common denominator.”
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Discussions between China and the United States have progressed, but the countries remain far apart on emissions targets, trade measures, technology transfer and payments from rich countries aimed at helping developing nations adapt to the anticipated effects of rising temperatures, surging seas and the clearing of forests. There appears little prospect for resolution of those differences before December.
The draft declaration for the meeting on Thursday says that aid to the poorest and most vulnerable countries is essential, but it does not specify a formula for contributions to such a fund or how the money should be spent.
Industrial countries do appear willing to commit to a smaller, immediate payment to the most vulnerable countries.
As diplomats from around the world wrangle over details, a parallel track is under way that tries to look at concrete actions that can be taken outside of a negotiated international framework.
Hal Harvey, the chief executive of ClimateWorks, a group that supports projects to reduce global warming, says there are steps individual nations are taking in their own best economic and environmental interest that, if accelerated, would go a long way toward easing the challenge of reaching a global deal.
China should do more to improve the energy efficiency of its industries, Mr. Harvey said. The United States and Europe should adopt greener building and appliance standards, he added, while Brazil should alter its forest practices.
Mr. Harvey said that Mr. Obama had begun to speak out on these measures.
“It’s such a breath of fresh air for the Obama administration to push for strong and aggressive policies that will flip the dynamic,” he said. “Good will is higher than ever. But that alone is not enough to make it happen. It’s going to require some political alchemy.”Where you live matters—and now, the government is taking a big step to help working-class families move into better neighborhoods.
Researchers in social policy-focused economics have found loads of evidence that the neighborhood you grow up in has a high correlation with your chances of economic success. Stanford's Raj Chetty, the most prominent expert in this field, has written, "the outcomes of children whose families move to a better neighborhood – as measured by the outcomes of children already living there – improve linearly in proportion to the time they spend growing up in that area."
So, if you want to improve the chances of upward mobility for working-class people, the solution is simple: help them move to better neighborhoods. The U.S. government seems to have woken up to this fact, and they're now doing something about it.
Last month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a proposal to overhaul Section 8 housing vouchers, also known as the Housing Choice Voucher Program. For decades, Section 8 rent subsidy formulas have been calculated on a metro-wide basis. So, if you lived in a bad neighborhood in Philadelphia and wanted to move to a slightly better neighborhood a few miles away, the government might give you a few hundred bucks a month toward your rent there. But if you wanted to move to a much better neighborhood in Philadelphia…well, you can't, because those same few hundred dollars won't go far enough to get you there.
The current policy made sense in an era when housing costs were less unequal within cities, and all a poor family needed was a little help to jump into a middle-class neighborhood.
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But with middle-class neighborhoods increasingly disappearing as rents soar, calculating subsidies on a citywide basis means the marginal improvement for every government dollar spent on housing help has diminished. Today, Section 8 holders are more likely to use their subsidies just to stay away from an even worse neighborhood than they are to catapult themselves into a better one. It has also created a situation where property investors are incentivized to drive up rents in Section 8-heavy neighborhoods because they know renters are trapped there, but that the government will foot part of the bill (usually whatever is leftover after a tenant pays 30% of their income) up to the city's fair market rent.
So HUD has put forth a new, simple proposal for calculating subsidies: Do it by ZIP code. The goal, as HUD puts it, is to give poor and working class families "a more effective means to move into areas of higher opportunity and lower poverty areas by providing them with subsidy adequate to make such areas accessible and to thereby reduce the number of voucher families that reside in areas of high poverty concentration."
In the process, HUD hopes to eliminate predatory slumlords by reducing payments available to ZIP codes with lower rents.
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Will the strategy work? If the experience of Dallas is any indication, the answer is yes. In 2007, a fair housing advocacy group sued the city's housing authority, saying the way housing vouchers were being administrated was perpetuating segregation. As part of a 2010 settlement, the city agreed to begin calculating subsidy formulas by ZIP code.
The result, according to calculations made by University of Chicago economists Rob Collinson and Peter Ganong in a recent paper: The quality of the neighborhood people moved into were 0.23 standard deviations higher than their old ones, "a substantial improvement," they write.
Here's a map they created showing what post-policy reform moves looked like. You can see a general trend of people moving out of lower-quality neighborhoods, in red, and into higher-quality ones, in blue..
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These moves produce dramatic changes in the lives of poor people, and especially poor minorities. Collinson told me that the gains from moves under the ZIP code policy were equivalent to closing one-third of the neighborhood quality gap (as measured by things like crime rates and test scores) between white people and Hispanics, and one quarter of the gap between white people and black people in Dallas.
One might think that this policy could leave poorer neighborhoods even worse off by increasing outflows of Section 8 participants. But Collinson told me that Section 8 was never meant to be used as a way to improve neighborhoods; rather, it's designed as a tool for families to improve their odds of success.
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His main concern, instead, is that some markets, like New York and San Francisco, have such bad housing shortages that landlords won't even be interested in the government paying a tenant's rent because they know they can find demand for stratospheric rents. (This is already happening in the San Francisco area, where lots of apartment listings come with "no section 8" clauses.)
But for the majority of cities being considered under HUD's new program, the benefits to low-income families are likely to be substantial. The reform could kick in as soon as next year; the department started seeking comments on it this month. For the more than 2 million families who use Section 8 vouchers, it can't come soon enough.
Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
It’s a question which has prompted debate for generations - who is the richest person ever to live?
Now a new rich list claims to have found the answer. And Bill Gates has been firmly put in his place - by Mansa Musa I.
The little-known 14th Century West African King has come out top in the latest rich list, which has been adjusted to account for inflation.
Compiled by website Celebrity Net Worth, the 25-strong list spans 1,000 years and the people on it have a combined wealth of $4.317 trillion (£2.678 trillion).
Only three individuals on the list are alive today - Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates who comes in at number 12, Mexican Business mogul Carlos Slim Helu who came 22nd and US investor Warren Buffett who was placed 25th.
The infamous Rothschild family is placed second. The list also includes Muammar Gaddafi, William the Conqueror and Scottish industry captain Andrew Carnegie.
But sitting in the top position is Mansa Musa I of Mali - ruler of the Malian Empire which is now modern day Ghana, Timbuktu and Mali.
The obscure leader was born in 1280 and had a personal net worth of $400 billion (£248 billion) by the time he died in 1337.
But just generations after his death, his wealth had diminished as his heirs struggled with civil war and invasions.
Website Celebrity Net Worth said: “We started off with roughly 50 people then finalised the top 25 after adjusting for inflation to bring the fortunes into 2012 dollars.
“For example, $100 million in the year 1913 is equal to $2.299.63 billion in 2012 dollars thanks to the annual rate of inflation of 2199.6%.
“Our list includes some familiar modern names like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and older magnates like Vanderbilt and Carnegie.
“This list also includes some lesser known billionaires that you may have never even heard of before.
“And we guarantee the number 1 person on this list will make your jaw drop.”
The list advertises itself as the “top 25” but there are actually 26 names on it because there are two people listed at number 22 with an equal fortune of $68 billion (£42 billion).
There are no women on the list and 14 out of the top 25 are Americans.
LIST OF TOP 25 ACCORDING TO CELEBRITY NET WORTH
1 Mansa Musa I, born 1280, Net Worth $400 Billion (£248 billion)
2 The Rothschild Family, born 1744, Net Worth $350 Billion (£217 billion)
3 John D. Rockefeller, born 1839, Net Worth $340 Billion (£211 billion)
4 Andrew Carnegie, born 1835, Net Worth $310 Billion (£192 billion)
5 Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, born 1868, Net Worth $300 Billion (£186 billion)
6 Mir Osman Ali Khan, born 1886, Net Worth $230 billion (£142 billion)
7 William The Conqueror, born 1028, Net Worth $229.5 Billion (£142 billion)
8 Muammar Gaddafi, born 1942, Net Worth $200 Billion (£124 billion)
9 Henry Ford, born 1863, Net Worth $199 Billion (£123 billion)
10 Cornelius Vanderbilt, born 1794, Net Worth $185 Billion (£114 billion)
11 Alan Rufus, born 1040, $178.65 billion (£110 billion)
12 Bill Gates, born 1955, Net Worth $136 Billion (£84 billion)
13 William de Warenne, birth unknown, died 1088, Net Worth $147.13 Billion (£91 billion)
14 John Jacob Astor, born 1763, Net Worth $121 Billion (£75 billion)
15 Richard Fitzalan 10th Earl of Arundel, born 1306, Net Worth $118.6 Billion (73 billion)
16 John of Gaunt, born 1340, Net Worth $110 Billion (£68 billion)
17 Stephen Girard, born 1750, Net Worth $105 Billion (£65 bilion)
18 A.T. Stewart, born 1803, Net Wort $90 Billion (£55 billion)
19 Henry Duke of Lancaster, born 1301, Net Worth $85.1 Billion (£52 billion)
20 Friedrich Weyerhauser, born 1834, Net Worth $80 Billion (£49 billion)
21 Jay Gould, born 1836, Net Worth $71 Billion (£44 billion)
22 Carlos Slim Helu, born 1940, Net Worth $68 Billion (£42 billion)
22 Stephen Van Rensselaer, born 1764, Net Worth $68 Billion (£42 billion)
23 Marshall Field, born 1834, Net Worth $66 Billion (£40 billion)
24 Sam Walton, born 1918, Net Worth $65 Billion (£40 billion)
25 Warren Buffett, born 1930, Net Worth $64 Billion (£39 billion)Seattle’s Cave Singers will release their third album, No Witch early next year. It’s their first for Jagjaguwar (Matador released their previous two records), and it was produced by Randall Dunn, who’s worked with labelmates Black Mountain, as well as Sunn O)), Wolves In The Throne Room, Six Organs Of Admittance, etc. They promise a more lush album this time around, and “Swim Club” builds on the warm instrumental and vocal harmonies they developed on “Beach House.” Singer Pete Quirk’s voice is raspy as ever, and it has a brittle, vulnerable quality here too.
The Cave Singers – “Swim Club”
No Witch is out 2/22 via Jagjaguwar. Cave Singers will go on tour with Cold War Kids in early December:
12/02 – Charlottesville, VA @ Jefferson Theater
12/03 – Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theatre
12/04 – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
12/06 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
12/07 – Charleston, SC @ Music Farm
12/08 – Jacksonville, FL @ Free Bird Live
12/10 – Birmingham, AL @ WorkPlay Theatre
12/11 – Memphis, TN @ Minglewood HallGet the biggest business 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
Drones will replace difficult work done by surveyors, says a Manchester property business.
LC Building Consultants, a chartered building surveying business, which is part of the Ardwick-based Livingcity Group, has launched a new drone to help survey buildings.
And one of their surveyors has been awarded a pilot’s licence to fly it.
The drone is called Ascent, and officially it is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).
The cutting edge quad-copter, camera and gimbal system takes HD quality video at 60 frames per second, which can then be converted into high quality still images.
Robert Barnes, the firm’s senior building surveyor, has gained his remote pilot qualification and obtained approval from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly the drone commercially.
Established in 2000, Livingcity Group works in the property asset sector managing residential, mixed use and some commercial buildings and Barnes is the first practising Chartered Building Surveyor to gain CAA approval to operate a drone commercially.
Ascent will be used to survey building elevations in real time, including areas where access would otherwise prove difficult or prohibitively expensive.
The drone provides a unique perspective for condition surveys, dilapidation and checking the roof and is a cost effective alternative to existing access options, such as scaffolding and cherry pickers.
It is also safer than asking staff to work at great heights.
Ascent can also be used for marketing/ promotional videos and photography, as well as for any other corporate requirement that demands an aerial capability. Each flight will be planned in advance and will strictly adhere to the guidelines set out by the CAA, including rigorous pre-flight checks.
Relevant notifications are also made to neighbourhoods where Ascent is being used.
Barnes said: “The popularity of UAVs has soared over the past 12 months but Ascent is not a toy; it is a professional service so it was imperative that we launched it with the approval of the CAA.
“The examinations and flight assessment that I went through were tough but the process was worth it.
“I’m now looking forward to rolling Ascent out to clients across the UK.”Thai MPs elected Yingluck Shinawatra on August 5 as the country's first female prime minister.
[For more on Thailand and the Red Shirt movement, click HERE.]
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
August 14, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- We are starting to see the results of a “new settlement” between the Pheu Thai party [led by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra] and the elites, in order to “resolve” the Thai crisis in the interests of the latter. This may or may not be a formal agreement, but we are already seeing the effects.
Following the last crisis during the Cold War conflict with the Communist Party of Thailand, the elites crafted a settlement in which parliamentary democracy was tolerated so long as elections could be dominated by money politics and there was no challenge to the ruling class. Today’s “settlement” is designed to allow the Pheu Thai party to form a government and to bring its leaders, including deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra, back into the elite’s exclusive club. We must remember that previous to the 2006 crisis, Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai party were a recognised part of the ruling elites.
The anti-Thaksin elites could not crudely and directly prevent the formation of the Pheu Thai government because the election result was so clear. But at the same time Pheu Thai was prepared to enter into a process of compromise, under the banner of "reconciliation", by promising not to touch the military or any interests of the royalist elites. In the past we saw the 19th September military coup, followed by the judicial coup against the Palang Prachachon government. Now we are seeing a silent coup resulting from pressure being applied behind the scenes in order to achieve the new settlement, which betrays the aspirations of most Red Shirts.
Let us look at a number of important issues.
Lèse majesté
On August 5, Norwet Yotpiyasatien, a recent graduate from Kasetsart University in Bangkok, was arrested and jailed under the draconian lèse majesté law for copying an article on to his PC from the internet. He has now been released on bail. It was the deputy rector of Kasetsart University, Nipon Limlamtong, who filed charges against the student with the police. Nipon has special responsibility for student activities. In other words he is there to enforce censorship and prevent academic freedom in the university.
On August 13, group captain Anudit Nakorntap, the new information and communications technology minister, declared that the Yingluck government would be even more repressive in the use of lèse majesté and the computer crimes law. Clearly, nothing has changed on the issue of lèse majesté.
Lèse majesté prisoners such as Somyot Prueksakasemsuk, Surachai Danwattananusorn, Da Torpedo (Daranee Chanchoengsilpakul) and many others are still in jail. Some are awaiting trial and others have been found guilty by kangaroo courts.
The lèse majesté law is vitally important to the military’s influence on Thai politics because the military uses the monarchy for its legitimacy and then uses lèse majesté against those who oppose it. Pheu Thai’s defence of lèse majesté shows that it is prepared to accept the continuing influence of the military in politics and hopes that the military and royalists will stop accusing Thaksin and Pheu Thai of being against the monarchy.
Civil war in the south
The Phua Thai party promised before the elections to resolve the conflict in Thailand's south peacefully and by political means instead of using repression. A limited degree of autonomy and self-government was proposed. This was an important step forward, given the history of violent repression against Malay Muslims by the Thai Rak Thai government in 2004.
But on August 10, Sudeereuman Mala was sentenced by a court to two years in prison. He was accused by Pol. Maj. Gen. Jaktip Chaijinda of a “giving a false statement” about being tortured by police in the 2004 case of gun theft from an army barracks. Yet, there is ample evidence that defendants were tortured into providing false confessions by the police. Defence lawyer Somchai Neelapaichit, who helped these victims of torture, was murdered by police during the Thaksin government. So the gross injustice in the south continues.
On August 11, in the southern province of Naratiwat, police raided the local prison looking for drugs. This caused a riot and the authorities then brought in military snipers to crush it. Luckily, no one was killed. This is just typical of the Thai state, which continues to use violence against unarmed civilians.
There are a number of important questions. 1. Since everyone knows that the prison guards are the people who bring drugs into prisons, why crack down on the prisoners? 2. When will the authorities use political and social methods to solve problems instead of armed snipers? 3. How can this possibly help bring peace to the south? 4. Even if the Yingluck government did not directly order the prison crackdown, which is debatable, the government could make a statement criticising the methods used. Why has it not done so?
It is clear from pre-election statements made by the army chief Prayut that the military do not favour any autonomy or political solution to the southern conflict. The military wants a military solution, which can never be successful. This means that these recent events raise questions about the new government’s sincerity about building peace in the south if it means going against the military.
Red Shirt political prisoners
There are still many Red Shirt political prisoners held in Thai jails on charges resulting from last year’s pro-democracy protests. People are still being arrested. Most Red Shirts have not received bail. It seems like nothing has changed and there has been no announcement that there will be a thorough investigation into the killing of unarmed civilians by the military last year.
The new cabinet is in mourning for a minor royal and has agreed with the spending of millions in public money on an elaborate funeral. But these politicians have never worn black for those who were killed by the military while trying to defend democracy. The head of the Department of Special Investigation, which has covered up the killings and which has initiated trumped up charges against Red Shirts is still in post.
The “settlement” with the elites means that it will be harder to bring to justice those who were responsible for ordering the killings of civilians last year.
The military
The “settlement” with the elites is more than anything a settlement with the military. The appointment of a military officer, with a dubious background in human rights, to the post of defence minister, shows that this government has no intention of creating a culture where elected civilians control the military. The head of the army General Prayut, who showed such contempt for the Red Shirts, and who opposed Pheu Thai during the election campaign, has yet to be sacked.
Red Shirts
Red Shirts must organise a thorough debate within the movement in order to determine their strategy to counter the settlement with the elites that betrays everything for which they have been fighting and all their dreams and aspirations. This government should be pressured into making real democratic reforms, and if it will not listen, it must be vigorously opposed. The election was important in that it showed that most Thais opposed the military dictatorship and the Democrat Party. But the election only marks the next round of the struggle.
Thailand: Red Shirts and the new cabinet
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
August 11, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Most politicians in the Pheu Thai party no doubt believe that having Red Shirts in Yingluck Shinawatra's cabinet would create a “bad image”. This is true if you believe that a “good image” is one of doing absolutely nothing to solve the crisis of democracy and social justice in Thailand.
The new cabinet contains people like Chalerm Yubamrung, a thuggish politician who sums up the term “legal double standards” from when his son was charged with murdering a police officer in a pub brawl. He is also
suspected by some of having profited from drug dealing. This is a “good image” for the new government.
I don’t know General Yuttasak Sasiprapa, the new defence minister. Some say he had a hand in gunning down student protesters in 1973. I don’t know the truth about this. He might be a democratic soldier. But the big question is why any democratically elected Thai government needs to put a military man in charge of defence. Surely the time has come to kick the military out of politics and ban all military and police ranks from parliament. The military just expects to have the “right” to intervene in politics for its own benefit. Then it claims to defend the King, to justify its actions, and uses lèse majesté to shut up its opponents.
Another “image” associated with this cabinet is the image of the elected speaker of the house grovelling on the floor before the unelected king. In Britain, the queen must read out the policies of a newly elected government in parliament
Another, supposedly, “good image” of the new cabinet, as they all posed for their collective photo outside Government House, was their black arm bands, a sign of mourning for some minor royal who just died. When will
the cabinet wear mourning for the nearly 90 unarmed red shirts gunned down by the military last year?
If these are all part of the “good image”of the new cabinet then thank heavens there are no Red Shirts in the government! It would immediately sully their reputations.
But there are more important reasons why Red Shirt leaders should not hold cabinet posts. In the past, Filipino and British governments have brought in leftists to head labour ministries, in order to create an image, shut them up and then make them fall guys. It would have been a disaster if a Red Shirt had been appointed as minister of justice, only to be made impotent and then blamed for not achieving justice for those killed by the army last year.
The fact that there are no Red Shirts in the cabinet is a golden opportunity for the Red Shirt movement to prove that it is independent from the Pheu Thai government. They can then organise mass protests to demand justice, the freeing of political prisoners, the punishing of those responsible for the 2010 massacre, the end to censorship and lèse majesté and the reform of the army and the judiciary.
The question is: are the Red Shirt leaders up to this? If they are not, will new groups of leaders emerge who can take the movement forward?
Some say we must be patient. But on this I agree with Arisman Pongreuangrong, another Red Shirt activist, who says that we cannot wait. Now, just after the election victory, is exactly the time to strike out for democracy and justice. A timetable should be set for the freeing of prisoners and the bringing to justice of those who committed
state crimes against the people. “If not now, then when?” (paraphrasing Tracey Chapman). Wait until the elites regroup and crush us again?
The recent election had only one important meaning and that was to prove that the military and the Democrat Party were illegitimate. Having a newly elected Pheu Thai Party government is totally meaningless if nothing changes. It is time to take the gloves off and stop worrying about the feelings of the government. If they wish to betray the people
who sacrificed their lives for democracy, or those who are currently in jail, then they are not on our side. Red Shirts will have to fight this government in order to gain democracy and social justice.
[Giles Ji Ungpakorn is a political commentator and dissident. In February 2009 he had to leave Thailand for exile in Britain because he was charged with lèse majesté for writing a book criticising the 2006 military coup. He is a member of Left Turn Thailand, a socialist organisation. His latest book, Thailand’s Crisis and the Fight for Democracy, will be of interest to activists, academics and journalists who have an interest in Thai politics, democratisation and NGOs. His website is at http://redthaisocialist.com/.]Every police officer should be trained to take down "active shooter" terrorists and all police cars need to be equipped with long-arm firearms, the state police union has demanded in a suite of tough election requests.
The Police Association of NSW's pre-election submission has exposed weaknesses in the force's ability to deal with "lone wolf" terror attacks, including shortfalls in staff, poor training and inadequate tactics.
"Not only should all these requests be fulfilled, they should have been fulfilled yesterday": NSW Police Association president Scott Weber. Credit:Domino Postiglione
Both major political parties have been asked to move towards an aggressive US-style model of policing that allows first responders – usually general-duties frontline police – to take down terrorists on the street immediately rather than waste crucial minutes waiting for specialist units to arrive.
"The traditional methods of containment and negotiation, or 'buying time' until specialist teams can arrive, is not effective," the union's submission says.The Radeon HD 7970 was released sa good day ago and it has been received quite positive. In our previous review we explained the card, the technology, architecture and of course have shown you all the ins and outs in terms of performance.
There's that other factor though that kept tickling my mind, if you purchase a graphics card, you'll need the infrastructure and the processor to allow the graphics card to do its job properly. Your PC forms a symbiosis of components.
With the incredible amount of processors available these days I really wanted to see how the Radeon HD 7970 behaves with different processors. Now we assume that if you are going to purchase a Radeon HD 7970 card that |
I had volunteered with, say, a church youth group, it would probably boost my chances of getting the job.
Now, two new studies confirm that line of thinking.
Michael Wallace and Bradley Wright, professors at the University of Connecticut, sent out thousands of fake resumes to a variety of employers who posted ads on a website like Monster.com (they didn’t specify). Embedded in those resumes were mentions of the fictional job-seekers’ religious identities — atheist, Catholic, evangelical Christian, Jewish, pagan, Muslim, pagan, “Wallonian” (a fake religion, just for control), or none at all.
What they found was that, yes, it sucks to be an atheist… or a member of any faith group, for that matter:
In general, Muslims, pagans, and atheists suffered the highest levels of discriminatory treatment from employers, a fictitious religious group and Catholics experienced moderate levels, evangelical Christians encountered little, and Jews received no discernible discrimination. We also found evidence suggesting the possibility that Jews received preferential treatment over other religious groups in employer responses.
Atheist wasn’t even the worst thing to be. It’s especially tough to get a response if you’re a Muslim:
“Just by adding the word ‘Muslim’ to an application, its chances of receiving an employer contact were reduced by between a third and almost half,” Wright said.
In general though, they found that it was bad to even mention your religious beliefs on a resume. Sounds like common sense to me, but there you go:
The results bore that out in the New England study: applicants expressing any religious identification received 19 percent fewer overall contacts than the applicants from the non-religious control group.
The two studies they published focused on different regions — the South and New England. While the trends were similar, there was one notable (and totally predictable) difference:
New Englander are a little more tolerant and they seemed not to care as much about religion. But in the South, the differences, particularly for applicants from minority religions show up more sharply, said Wallace.
The clear takeaway is that you shouldn’t mention your religion on your resume — at least if your faith has nothing to do with the job you’re trying to get. Focus on your tangible skills, not your beliefs about the supernatural. And if all of your accomplishments come from your faith/non-faith-based work, then you better have some luck on your side.
Or be Jewish.
(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to @anirvan for the link)Looking for news you can trust?
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On March 11, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, strode on to the Senate floor and made a shocking charge: The CIA had spied on committee investigators who were examining the CIA’s past use of harsh interrogation techniques (a.k.a. torture). She essentially confirmed media reports that the agency had accessed computers that had been set up in a secured facility for her staffers to use—and that this high-tech break-in was related to a CIA memo that the agency had not turned over. The document was far more critical of the CIA’s interrogation program than the agency’s official response to the still-classified (and reportedly scorching) 6,300-page report produced by Feinstein’s committee. As Feinstein described it, the CIA, looking to find out how her sleuths had obtained this particular memo, had been spying on the investigators who were paid by the taxpayers to keep a close watch on America’s spies.
Feinstein’s public statement—unprecedented in US national security history—caused an uproar. I noted that this clash between the Senate and Langley threatened a constitutional crisis. After all, if the CIA was covertly undercutting and interfering with congressional oversight, then the foundation of the national security state was at risk, for the executive branch, in theory, can only engage in clandestine activity as long as members of Congress can keep an eye on it. Yet the system of oversight appeared to have broken down.
That same day, CIA chief John Brennan was speaking at a previously-scheduled event at the Council on Foreign Relations. After he uttered a few opening remarks, moderator Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News correspondent, asked the obvious question: Can you respond to Feinstein’s allegations? Brennan assured the crowd that the CIA was not “trying to thwart” the Senate intelligence committee’s work on torture. And he said: “As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s—that’s just beyond the—you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”
Brennan deployed the usual dodge: He couldn’t talk details because the matter was now under investigation. But he added: “When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.”
The facts have come out—well, in a way—and, it turns out, Brennan has been proved wrong. As McClatchy News reported on Thursday morning, a CIA inspector general investigation has determined that CIA employees did improperly access the computers used by Senate intelligence committee investigators. A CIA spokesman noted that the IG report concluded that “some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding between [the Senate committee] and the CIA.” Brennan apologized to Feinstein this past Tuesday.
There are two possible explanations for Brennan’s misleading statements in March. Either he knew that his subordinates had spied on the Senate staffers but had claimed otherwise, or he had not been told the truth by underlings and had unwittingly provided a false assertion to the public. Neither scenario reflects well upon the fellow who is supposed to be in-the-know about the CIA’s activities—especially its interactions with Congress on a rather sensitive subject. (The Senate committee’s study reportedly concludes that the CIA’s use of torture produced little and that CIA officials misled Congress about the program’s effectiveness.)
Brennan has sent the inspector general’s findings to an accountability board that could propose disciplinary measures. But what happens to the CIA’s Senate spies is only part of the issue. Brennan owes the nation an explanation for his own actions. Why did he put out a false cover story? Was he bamboozled by his own squad? Was he trying to stonewall?
The CIA conducts much of its business in secrecy; and most of Congress’ vetting of the CIA likewise occurs out of public view. Effective oversight requires trust and cooperation between the two—and there must be that trust and cooperation for the public to have confidence that the oversight system works. But there also has to be public trust in those who lead the CIA. Brennan’s initial public statements about this scandal severely undermine his credibility. He owes the public a full accounting. If he remains in the job, President Barack Obama will owe the public an explanation for why he retained an intelligence chief who misled the public about CIA misconduct.This embed is invalid
Pub crawls are getting more and more popular in the Twin Cities these days, between brewery hopping, pedal pubs and, of course, the infamous zombie crawl that attracted over 15,000 of the undead to Minneapolis a few weeks ago – which earned the award for "largest gathering of zombies" from the Guinness Book of World Records.
But this year Minneapolis has added a whole new crawl category to the list – donuts.
It's the same setup as a standard pub crawl: A prepaid ticket – $25 in this case – gets you access to the event, a cup of coffee at Five Watt on Nicollet Avenue, a free t-shirt, a few coupons for any future forays in frosted confections, and of course, a specially made donut at Bogart's Donuts, Mel-O-Glaze Bakery and A Baker's Wife.
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Tickets sold out for the Nov. 8 event only two weeks after they first went on sale, but on Saturday organizers announced a second day for crawlers to get their sugar fix.
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If any of your favorite donut shops aren't on the crawl this year, never fear. CityPages reports they hope to tack on a few more stops next year, including Glam Doll, Granny's Donuts, YoYo and Denny's 5th Avenue Bakery.
If three donuts just doesn't cut it for you, there's always the VIP package. For $65, you'll get an extra donut at each shop and a commemorative zip-up hoodie in place of the t-shirt.
And the icing on the cake (or rather, the frosting on the donut): all proceeds from the crawl go to Second Harvest's food programs fighting hunger in the Twin Cities.
Donut crawls across the country
Minnesotans aren't the only ones to plan a donut crawl. Pastry enthusiasts in the nation's capital started the DC Donut Crawl in 2013. Buzzfeed devised its own donut journey earlier this year that hit a full dozen shops across Manhattan and Brooklyn.
In fact, this donut crawls isn't even new to Minnesota. Organizer Jason Westplate told CityPages he took part in the Twin Cities' "Sugar Slam" donut crawls last November and early this summer.It might seem counterintuitive, but tropical forest soils are, almost universally, terrible for farming. That’s due primarily to the insanely dense amount of life in these environments: In less alive forests, dead plant and animal matter has time to decompose and leach its nutrients into the soil. But in the tropical forest, huge numbers of insects, fungi, and bacteria devour any decomposing matter before it has a chance to enrich the soil.
But people around the world live in tropical forests, and have had to figure out some way to make the soil actually productive. (The effects of the destruction of these forests on the eco-system notwithstanding.) One of the oldest techniques, long documented in the Amazon rainforest, is what’s known as “black earths” or “terra preta.” For hundreds of years, rainforest farmers have figured out that you can enrich soil with biochar: charcoal, basically. Wet vegetation is burned, producing little bits of charcoal, which are ground into the soil. Eventually, this creates an incredibly rich, fertile soil.
In only the past few years, researchers at universities around the world have realized that the Amazonian technique is replicated in various forms around the world, including West Africa. This new study, led by researchers at the University of Sussex, analyzed 177 sites in Liberia and Ghana and proved that biochar additions, practiced for centuries in these areas, have increased the carbon levels in the soil by two to three times.
By living in villages in these countries, researchers described the techniques: ash and bones, along with kitchen waste, are recycled back into the soil.
The press release for the study says the practice “could help mitigate climate change.” What they mean by that is that the biochar method transfers carbon to the soil, reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. But that depends on the specific method: The infamous slash-and-burn method, in which material like trees and plants are simply burned in open fires, transfers a very small percentage of carbon to the soil, releasing much of it into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. But slash-and-char, in which wet vegetation under a layer of straw is burned into charcoal, is much more efficient, transferring almost half of its carbon content into the soil.
Both slash-and-burn and slash-and-char include, you might notice, the word “slash” and involve deforestation, one of the most destructive acts for the environment. The carbon sequestration that results from slash-and-char makes it the lesser of two evils – but not “good,” exactly.
That said, there are sustainable sources of biochar that can be had by the home gardener, if you want to use the technique without burning down the woods in back of your house. Check out this Washington State University guide for more.The sea ice, which forms close to land, prevented the dolphin from swimming away or diving underneath.
A dolphin caught in sea ice was rescued off Cape Cod Bay in Truro after a beachgoer called the International Fund for Animal Welfare hotline on Tuesday, the organization’s officials said.
A team of six to eight rescuers saved the common dolphin from the slushy waters at about 4 p.m., said Brian Sharp, division head of the marine mammal rescue and research team.
“Luckily, its head was above the ice so it was able to breathe,” he said.
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The sea ice, which forms close to land, prevented the dolphin from swimming away or diving underneath because of the mix of snow and ice.
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Sharp said the rescuers pulled the dolphin out of the water and took it to a trailer where it underwent a health assessment, including blood tests.
After the dolphin cleared the assessment, it was taken to Provincetown shores and released into the water.
“There’s no sea ice in Provincetown and [the dolphin] has access to deep waters from there,” Sharp said.
The rescuers also attached a temporary satellite tag on to the dolphin’s dorsal fin that will allow them to keep track of the animal for 45 days, Sharp said. Once the small battery on the tag dies, the tag then falls off the dolphin.
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As of Wednesday morning, the dolphin was detected 13 miles north of Provincetown in another area clear of sea ice.
Sharp said this was the first dolphin the Animal Welfare group found alive in sea ice.
“The whole reason this was possible was because the beachgoer called the hotline,” he said. “We are very thankful for that.”
The International Fund for Animal Welfare hotline is 508-743-9548.
Rebecca Fiore can be reached at rebecca.fiore@globe.com.For other people named James Watson, see James Watson (disambiguation)
American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist
James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Watson earned degrees at the University of Chicago (BS, 1947) and Indiana University (PhD, 1950). Following a post-doctoral year at the University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaloe, Watson worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator Francis Crick.
From 1956 to 1976, Watson was on the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology. From 1968 he served as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), greatly expanding its level of funding and research. At CSHL, he shifted his research emphasis to the study of cancer, along with making it a world leading research center in molecular biology. In 1994, he started as president and served for 10 years. He was then appointed chancellor, serving until he resigned in 2007 after making comments claiming a genetic link between intelligence and race. Between 1988 and 1992, Watson was associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project.
Watson has written many science books, including the textbook Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965) and his bestselling book The Double Helix (1968).
In January 2019, following the broadcast of a television documentary in which Watson repeated his views about race and genetics, CSHL revoked honorary titles that it had awarded to him and severed all ties with him.
Early life and education [ edit ]
James D. Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, as the only son of Jean (Mitchell) and James D. Watson, a businessman descended mostly from colonial English immigrants to America.[11] His mother's father, Lauchlin Mitchell, a tailor, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and her mother, Lizzie Gleason, was the child of parents from County Tipperary.[12] Raised Catholic, he later described himself as "an escapee from the Catholic religion."[13] Watson said, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God."[14]
Watson grew up on the south side of Chicago and attended public schools, including Horace Mann Grammar School and South Shore High School.[11][15] He was fascinated with bird watching, a hobby shared with his father,[16] so he considered majoring in ornithology.[17] Watson appeared on Quiz Kids, a popular radio show that challenged bright youngsters to answer questions.[18] Thanks to the liberal policy of University president Robert Hutchins, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a tuition scholarship, at the age of 15.[11][17][19]
After reading Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life? in 1946, Watson changed his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to genetics.[20] Watson earned his BS degree in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1947.[17] In his autobiography, Avoid Boring People, Watson described the University of Chicago as an "idyllic academic institution where he was instilled with the capacity for critical thought and an ethical compulsion not to suffer fools who impeded his search for truth", in contrast to his description of later experiences. In 1947 Watson left the University of Chicago to become a graduate student at Indiana University, attracted by the presence at Bloomington of the 1946 Nobel Prize winner Hermann Joseph Muller, who in crucial papers published in 1922, 1929, and in the 1930s had laid out all the basic properties of the heredity molecule that Schrödinger presented in his 1944 book.[21] He received his PhD degree from Indiana University in 1950; Salvador Luria was his doctoral advisor.[17][22]
Career and research [ edit ]
Luria, Delbrück, and the Phage Group [ edit ]
Originally, Watson was drawn into molecular biology by the work of Salvador Luria. Luria eventually shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the Luria–Delbrück experiment, which concerned the nature of genetic mutations. He was part of a distributed group of researchers who were making use of the viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages. He and Max Delbrück were among the leaders of this new "Phage Group," an important movement of geneticists from experimental systems such as Drosophila towards microbial genetics. Early in 1948, Watson began his PhD research in Luria's laboratory at Indiana University.[22] That spring, he met Delbrück first in Luria's apartment and again that summer during Watson's first trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).[23][24]
The Phage Group was the intellectual medium where Watson became a working scientist. Importantly, the members of the Phage Group sensed that they were on the path to discovering the physical nature of the gene. In 1949, Watson took a course with Felix Haurowitz that included the conventional view of that time: that genes were proteins and able to replicate themselves.[25] The other major molecular component of chromosomes, DNA, was widely considered to be a "stupid tetranucleotide," serving only a structural role to support the proteins.[26] Even at this early time, Watson, under the influence of the Phage Group, was aware of the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment, which suggested that DNA was the genetic molecule. Watson's research project involved using X-rays to inactivate bacterial viruses.[27]
Watson then went to Copenhagen University in September 1950 for a year of postdoctoral research, first heading to the laboratory of biochemist Herman Kalckar.[11] Kalckar was interested in the enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids, and he wanted to use phages as an experimental system. Watson wanted to explore the structure of DNA, and his interests did not coincide with Kalckar's.[28] After working part of the year with Kalckar, Watson spent the remainder of his time in Copenhagen conducting experiments with microbial physiologist Ole Maaloe, then a member of the Phage Group.[29]
The experiments, which Watson had learned of during the previous summer's Cold Spring Harbor phage conference, included the use of radioactive phosphate as a tracer to determine which molecular components of phage particles actually infect the target bacteria during viral infection.[28] The intention was to determine whether protein or DNA was the genetic material, but upon consultation with Max Delbrück,[28] they determined that their results were inconclusive and could not specifically identify the newly labeled molecules as DNA.[30] Watson never developed a constructive interaction with Kalckar, but he did accompany Kalckar to a meeting in Italy, where Watson saw Maurice Wilkins talk about his X-ray diffraction data for DNA.[11] Watson was now certain that DNA had a definite molecular structure that could be elucidated.[31]
In 1951, the chemist Linus Pauling in California published his model of the amino acid alpha helix, a result that grew out of Pauling's efforts in X-ray crystallography and molecular model building. After obtaining some results from his phage and other experimental research[32] conducted at Indiana University, Statens Serum Institut (Denmark), CSHL, and the California Institute of Technology, Watson now had the desire to learn to perform X-ray diffraction experiments so he could work to determine the structure of DNA. That summer, Luria met John Kendrew,[33] and he arranged for a new postdoctoral research project for Watson in England.[11] In 1951 Watson visited the Stazione Zoologica 'Anton Dohrn' in Naples.[34]
Identifying the double helix [ edit ]
DNA model built by Crick and Watson in 1953, on display in the Science Museum, London
In mid-March 1953, Watson and Crick deduced the double helix structure of DNA.[11] Crucial to their discovery were the experimental data collected at King's College London — mainly by Rosalind Franklin, under the supervision of Maurice Wilkins.[35] Sir Lawrence Bragg,[36] the director of the Cavendish Laboratory (where Watson and Crick worked), made the original announcement of the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on April 8, 1953; it went unreported by the press. Watson and Crick submitted a paper entitled Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid to the scientific journal Nature, which was published on April 25, 1953.[37] Bragg gave a talk at the Guy's Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday, May 14, 1953, which resulted in a May 15, 1953, article by Ritchie Calder in the London newspaper News Chronicle, entitled "Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life."
Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton were some of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Crick and Watson; at the time, they were working at Oxford University's Chemistry Department. All were impressed by the new DNA model, especially Brenner, who subsequently worked with Crick at Cambridge in the Cavendish Laboratory and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology. According to the late Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA.[38]
The Cambridge University student newspaper Varsity also ran its own short article on the discovery on Saturday, May 30, 1953. Watson subsequently presented a paper on the double-helical structure of DNA at the 18th Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Viruses in early June 1953, six weeks after the publication of the Watson and Crick paper in Nature. Many at the meeting had not yet heard of the discovery. The 1953 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was the first opportunity for many to see the model of the DNA double helix.
Watson's accomplishment is displayed on the monument at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Because the monument memorializes only American laureates, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins (who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) are omitted.
Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their research on the structure of nucleic acids.[11][11][39][40] Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958 and was therefore ineligible for nomination.[35]
The publication of the double helix structure of DNA has been described as a turning point in science: understanding of life was fundamentally changed and the modern era of biology began.[41]
Use of the King’s College results [ edit ]
Watson and Crick's use of DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling was unauthorized. They used some of her unpublished data—without her consent—in their construction of the double helix model of DNA.[35][42] Franklin's results provided estimates of the water content of DNA crystals and these results were consistent with the two sugar-phosphate backbones being on the outside of the molecule. Franklin told Crick and Watson that the backbones had to be on the outside; before then, Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had erroneous models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards.[21] Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the two DNA strands were antiparallel.
The X-ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. Watson and Crick had three sources for Franklin's unpublished data:
Her 1951 seminar, attended by Watson,[43] Discussions with Wilkins,[44] who worked in the same laboratory with Franklin, A research progress report that was intended to promote coordination of Medical Research Council-supported laboratories.[45] Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin all worked in MRC laboratories.
According to one critic, Watson's portrayal of Franklin in The Double Helix was negative and gave the appearance that she was Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data.[46] The accusation was indefensible since Franklin told Crick and Watson that the helix backbones had to be on the outside.[21]
A review of the correspondence from Franklin to Watson, in the archives at CSHL, reveals that the two scientists later exchanged of constructive scientific correspondence. Franklin consulted with Watson on her tobacco mosaic virus RNA research. Franklin's letters begin on friendly terms with "Dear Jim", and conclude with equally benevolent and respectful sentiments such as "Best Wishes, Yours, Rosalind". Each of the scientists published their own unique contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA in separate articles, and all of the contributors published their findings in the same volume of Nature. These classic molecular biology papers are identified as: Watson J.D. and Crick F.H.C. "A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" Nature 171, 737–738 (1953);[37] Wilkins M.H.F., Stokes A.R. & Wilson, H.R. "Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids" Nature 171, 738–740 (1953);[47] Franklin R. and Gosling R.G. "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate" Nature 171, 740–741 (1953).[48]
Harvard University [ edit ]
In 1956, Watson accepted a position in the Biology department at Harvard University. His work at Harvard focused on RNA and its role in the transfer of genetic information.[49]
He championed a switch in focus for the school from classical biology to molecular biology, stating that disciplines such as ecology, developmental biology, taxonomy, physiology, etc. had stagnated and could progress only once the underlying disciplines of molecular biology and biochemistry had elucidated their underpinnings, going so far as to discourage their study by students.
Watson continued to be a member of the Harvard faculty until 1976, even though he took over the directorship of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1968.[49]
Views on Watson's scientific contributions while at Harvard are somewhat mixed. His most notable achievements in his two decades at Harvard may be what he wrote about science, rather than anything he discovered during that time.[50] Watson's first textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Gene, set a new standard for textbooks, particularly through the use of concept heads—brief declarative subheadings.[51] His next textbook was Molecular Biology of the Cell, in which he coordinated the work of a group of scientist-writers. His third textbook was Recombinant DNA, which described the ways in which genetic engineering has brought much new information about how organisms function. The textbooks are still in print.
Publishing The Double Helix [ edit ]
In 1968, Watson wrote The Double Helix,[52] listed by the Board of the Modern Library as number seven in their list of 100 Best Nonfiction books.[53] The book details the sometimes painful story of not only the discovery of the structure of DNA, but also the personalities, conflicts and controversy surrounding their work. Watson's original title was to have been "Honest Jim", in that the book recounts the discovery of the double helix from Watson's point of view and included many of his private emotional impressions at the time. Some controversy surrounded the publication of the book. Watson's book was originally to be published by the Harvard University Press, but Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins objected, among others. Watson's home university dropped the project and the book was commercially published.[54][55]
During his tenure at Harvard, Watson participated in a protest against the Vietnam War: along with "12 Faculty members of the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology" including one other Nobel prize winner, he spearheaded a resolution for "the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam."[56] In 1975, on the "thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima," Watson along with "over 2000 scientists and engineers" spoke out against nuclear proliferation to President Ford in part because of the "lack of a proven method for the ultimate disposal of radioactive waste" and because "The writers of the declaration see the proliferation of nuclear plants as a major threat to American liberties and international safety because they say safeguard procedures are inadequate to prevent terrorist theft of commercial reactor-produced plutonium."[57]
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory [ edit ]
In 1968, Watson became the Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Between 1970 and 1972, the Watsons' two sons were born, and by 1974, the young family made Cold Spring Harbor their permanent residence. Watson served as the laboratory's director and president for about 35 years, and later he assumed the role of chancellor and then Chancellor Emeritus.
In his roles as director, president, and chancellor, Watson led CSHL to articulate its present-day mission, "dedication to exploring molecular biology and genetics in order to advance the understanding and ability to diagnose and treat cancers, neurological diseases, and other causes of human suffering."[58] CSHL substantially expanded both its research and its science educational programs under Watson's direction. He is credited with "transforming a small facility into one of the world's great education and research institutions. Initiating a program to study the cause of human cancer, scientists under his direction have made major contributions to understanding the genetic basis of cancer."[59] In a retrospective summary of Watson's accomplishments there, Bruce Stillman, the laboratory's president, said, "Jim Watson created a research environment that is unparalleled in the world of science."[59]
In 2007, Watson said, "I turned against the left wing because they don't like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system."[60]
Human Genome Project [ edit ]
Watson in 1992
In 1990, Watson was appointed as the Head of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, a position he held until April 10, 1992.[61] Watson left the Genome Project after conflicts with the new NIH Director, Bernadine Healy. Watson was opposed to Healy's attempts to acquire patents on gene sequences, and any ownership of the "laws of nature." Two years before stepping down from the Genome Project, he had stated his own opinion on this long and ongoing controversy which he saw as an illogical barrier to research; he said, "The nations of the world must see that the human genome belongs to the world's people, as opposed to its nations." He left within weeks of the 1992 announcement that the NIH would be applying for patents on brain-specific cDNAs.[62] (The issue of the patentability of genes has since been resolved in the US by the US Supreme Court; see Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)
In 1994, Watson became President of CSHL. Francis Collins took over the role as Director of the Human Genome Project.
He was quoted in The Sunday Telegraph in 1997 as stating: "If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her."[63] The biologist Richard Dawkins wrote a letter to The Independent claiming that Watson's position was misrepresented by The Sunday Telegraph article, and that Watson would equally consider the possibility of having a heterosexual child to be just as valid as any other reason for abortion, to emphasise that Watson is in favor of allowing choice.[64]
On the issue of obesity, Watson was quoted in 2000, saying: "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."[65]
Watson has repeatedly supported genetic screening and genetic engineering in public lectures and interviews, arguing that stupidity is a disease and the "really stupid" bottom 10% of people should be cured.[66] He has also suggested that beauty could be genetically engineered, saying in 2003, "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."[66][67]
In 2007, James Watson became the second person[68] to publish his fully sequenced genome online,[69] after it was presented to him on May 31, 2007, by 454 Life Sciences Corporation[70] in collaboration with scientists at the Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine. Watson was quoted as saying, "I am putting my genome sequence on line to encourage the development of an era of personalized medicine, in which information contained in our genomes can be used to identify and prevent disease and to create individualized medical therapies".[71][72][73]
Later life [ edit ]
In 2014 Watson published a paper in The Lancet suggesting that biological oxidants may have a different role than is thought in diseases including diabetes, dementia, heart disease and cancer. For example, type 2 diabetes is usually thought to be caused by oxidation in the body that causes inflammation and kills off pancreatic cells. Watson thinks the root of that inflammation is different: "a lack of biological oxidants, not an excess", and discusses this in detail. One critical response was that the idea was neither new nor worthy of merit, and that The Lancet published Watson's paper only because of his name.[74] Other scientists have expressed their support for his hypothesis and have proposed that it can also be expanded to why a lack of oxidants can result in cancer and its progression.[75]
In 2014, Watson sold his Nobel prize medal to raise money;[76] part of the funds raised by the sale went to support scientific research.[77] The medal sold at auction at Christie's in December 2014 for US$4.1 million. Watson intended to contribute the proceeds to conservation work in Long Island and to funding research at Trinity College, Dublin.[78][79] He was the first living Nobel recipient to auction a medal.[80] The medal was later returned to Watson by the purchaser, Alisher Usmanov.[81]
Notable former students [ edit ]
Several of Watson's former doctoral students subsequently became notable in their own right including, Mario Capecchi,[5] Bob Horvitz, Peter B. Moore and Joan Steitz.[6] Besides numerous PhD students, Watson also supervised postdoctoral students and other interns including Ewan Birney,[7] Ronald W. Davis, Phillip Allen Sharp (postdoc), John Tooze, (postdoc)[9][10] and Richard J. Roberts (postdoc).[8]
Other affiliations [ edit ]
Watson is a former member of the Board of Directors of United Biomedical, Inc., founded by Chang Yi Wang. He held the position for six years and retired from the board in 1999.[82]
In January 2007, Watson accepted the invitation of Leonor Beleza, president of the Champalimaud Foundation, to become the head of the foundation's scientific council, an advisory organ.[83][84]
Watson has also been an institute adviser for the Allen Institute for Brain Science.[85][86]
James Watson (February 2003)
Avoid Boring People [ edit ]
Watson has had disagreements with Craig Venter regarding his use of EST fragments while Venter worked at NIH. Venter went on to found Celera genomics and continued his feud with Watson. Watson was quoted as calling Venter "Hitler".[87]
In his memoir, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science, Watson describes his academic colleagues as "dinosaurs," "deadbeats," "fossils," "has-beens," "mediocre," and "vapid." Steve Shapin in Harvard Magazine noted that Watson had written an unlikely "Book of Manners," telling about the skills needed at different times in a scientist's career; he wrote Watson was known for aggressively pursuing his own goals at the university. E. O. Wilson once described Watson as "the most unpleasant human being I had ever met", but in a later TV interview said that he considered them friends and their rivalry at Harvard old history (when they had competed for funding in their respective fields).[88][89]
In the epilogue to the memoir Avoid Boring People, Watson alternately attacks and defends former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, who stepped down in 2006 due in part to his remarks about women and science. Watson also states in the epilogue, "Anyone sincerely interested in |
India) October 27, 2016
More arrests followed as four men said to be Akhtar's associates were apprehended.
But the real twist in the tale was something else.
Akhtar had apparently first produced an Aadhaar document with his photograph, which identified him as Mehboob Rajput, son of Hasan Ali, residing at 2350, Gali Near Madari, Rodgran Mohalla in Chandni Chowk.
The address was correct, police said, except that the house with this number is actually on GB Road, Delhi’s red light area, nearly a kilometre away. There is no Rodgran mohalla nor gali near Madari located in Chandni Chowk.
The Aadhaar document had clearly been obtained using fraudulent means, police concluded, once Akhtar's identity as a Pakistani national was established.
“We have written to the Unique Identification Authority of India but they are yet to respond on the matter,” said Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav.
Getting an Aadhaar number
“He [Akhtar] often used to approach people who used to come to the visa department," said a police official who was privy to the investigation. "This is how he came in contact with a person identified as Ashiq Ali.”
“Ali later introduced Akhtar to another man, Yaseer, who has helped him to acquire the Aadhaar number,” the officer said. “The only things that Akhtar gave Yaseer were a fake name and two passport sized photographs, and the rest was left to his imagination.”
The police suspect the involvement of one or more Aadhaar operators employed with some enrolment agency – private bodies entrusted with the task of collecting the biometrics under the largely outsourced unique identity programme.
The incident gains prominence as earlier this month the Supreme Court of India referred to a larger bench all petitions challenging Aadhaar as an authenticating proof of identity and availing of social benefits by citizens that the central government is soon to notify through its gazette regulations approved by the UIDAI under the Aadhaar Act, 2016.
“The Pakistan spy’s fake Aadhaar number is only one case. There could be thousand others,” said Col (retd) Mathew Thomas, one of the first persons to file a civil suit against the UID system in 2011. “One has to see what kind of information these enrolment agencies are dealing with. There is nothing too shocking about the Pakistani spy having acquired an Aadhaar number through forged means. The entire process takes place with literally no cross verification.”
Indeed, the weaknesses in the system have been exposed by media reports about Aadhar numbers being issued to Lord Hanuman and Tommy Singh, a dog, among others.
The Act says that any person who has lived in India for 182 days in one year preceding the date of application for enrolment is eligible for acquiring an Aadhaar number. All that is needed in addition is a designated introducer – no documentary proof of identity or address is required.
“These provisions demand for a stricter verification process, which does not happen,” said Prasanna S, a Delhi-based lawyer representing several petitioners challenging the unique identity programme at the Supreme Court. “This is how we have so far come across Aadhaar numbers issued to Lord Hanuman and other fictitious characters.”
In the 2014 case, the man who got enrolled as Hanuman had later claimed to be the victim of a technical glitch and told police that he did so after the system refused to accept his biometrics which he had already registered.
"If Lord Hanuman can get an Aadhaar number, why can't a Pakistani spy?" Prasanna asked.
The roles of enrolment agencies have always been a subject of dispute ever since the UPA-led government started issuing Aadhaar numbers in 2010 under an executive order, pointed out lawyer Rahul Narayan, who is the counsel for several petitioners challenging the unique identification project in the Supreme Court.
“What are the credentials of these people who shall deal with data of utmost privacy? What is the guarantee that they will not misuse or leak those data? These questions have often been taken up since the inception of the programme,” Narayan said.
Days before the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, Narendra Modi had called the Aadhaar project a political gimmick with no vision. Two years down the line, the project has fired the imagination of policy-makers who are convinced that biometrics is the best possible way to help the state in identifying and verifying beneficiaries of social welfare schemes, allow portability of benefits across states and enable administrators to link and track multiple databases at one go.
To expand enrolment under the scheme, the Centre has often asked the state government to ask residents to produce Aadhaar for a range of interactions with the state. These have ranged from employment in government schemes, participating in elections, opening bank accounts, registering for marriage to, more recently, adopting a child. The Supreme Court has had to intervene time and again in the past two years, passing orders saying that the Aadhaar number cannot be a pre-condition for availing public services.
A forged Aadhaar number?
“Technically, there is no such thing as a forged Aadhaar number,” said a former senior UIDAI officer who did not want to be identified. “The unique identity is a combination of a set of biometrics with some basic details like name, address, date of birth, etc. What is often called a forged identity is actually a possible mismatch in the said combination.”
Elaborating on the technicality, he further said, “For instance, if a person acquires a driving license and a voter’s identity card through forged documents and then registers under the unique identity scheme, will that be considered a forged Aadhaar registration? No, because the forgery took place at other points.”
He further said, “In the past two years, we have received thousands of enquiries from police across the country asking us to cross-verify what they considered forged Aadhaar documents and in most cases we landed in a similar situation. In many of those cases, probes were initiated and only on obtaining sufficient evidence to suggest that information produced by the enrolled person were wrong, we deactivated their accounts.”
“One has to be really cautious in dealing with such cases as the other person can also take up the matter in a court because to get a legitimate unique identity number is also his right. In one particular case, documents of a candidate whose papers were forwarded by the OSD [Officer on Special Duty] of a union minister had come under scrutiny” he said.
However, the officer said that it is not very difficult to trace the background of a candidate under scrutiny because all documents submitted at the time of enrolment are uploaded in a central database.
On being asked about the role of enrolment agencies, he said that these private entities are approved by the headquarters and the machine operators working under them have to clear a test.
“It is not that operators do not indulge in mischief. In past one year, nearly 200 operators were blacklisted.”
The senior officer, however, could not recall any instance of having blacklisted any enrolment agency.Sega Goes Nuclear On YouTube Videos Of Old Shining Force Game
from the and-here-comes-the-fallout dept
Pictured: Constitutional DRM
Image source: CC BY 2.0
Sega has a history of being less than friendly to their fans and customers. Recall that they were unable to respond to one customer's concerns about SOPA, other than to ramble on about reboots and hard resets. Then there was their DRM fiasco when an iteration of their popular Football Manager franchise had DRM every bit as functional and effective as Congress.
Well, Sega has apparently decided to buck their trend of being mildly annoying to their fans... by upping the ante and going full-blown fan-screw-crazy. They have apparently been going on a YouTube video take down blitz for anything related to their Shining Force franchise to somehow protect an upcoming PSP release in the series from being... well... maybe they think that... no, that doesn't work... you know what? I don't know what the hell they're afraid of, but they're pooping all over a bunch of fan videos.
Many YouTube channels have already been hit, including that of popular game critic TotalBiscuit, who has since removed all Sega content from his page out of disgust. No type of content was spared -- Let's Plays, walkthroughs, and random gameplay clips all got flagged. Hell, even videos of fans just talking about the Shining series with no accompanying game footage whatsoever are apparently copyright violations!
Remember earlier this year when the Internet took a stand against SOPA / PIPA? This was the kind of nonsense we were fighting against. This is unbelievably bad form. It makes no sense either, because why are just the Saturn Shining games catching most of the heat? Why isn't Sega going after the whole pie? If you are going to be a dick, don't stop in mid-f*ck.
If you've spent ten seconds searching for any game on YouTube, you know that the plethora of fan videos, playthroughs, and Let's Plays are more abundant than gold rings in a Sonic game. And if the rest of the gaming world is anything like me, and there's a frighteningly good chance that it is, they use those kinds of things to either influence whether they purchase a game or not or to enhance their gaming experience via the walkthroughs. Either way, Sega, yanking those videos offline in some misguided attempt to avoid confusion with a new upcoming game (because everyone knows how easily fooled the rabid fanbase of an RPG franchise is), can only cause anger in established fans/customers and ward off purchases by potential customers who can no longer get a glimpse of what they would be buying.At this point, I would usually make some kind of grand statement mixed with a little vulgarity to wrap all this up into a fine point, but the afore linked Destructoid does it as well or better than I could, so I'll give them the final word:
Filed Under: censorship, copyright, fans, shining force, takedowns
Companies: segaLast we checked in with former Seattle SuperSonics lottery pick Robert Swift, he was addicted to heroin, getting arrested for armed robbery, and having police raid a house in which he was living and finding, among other things, a grenade launcher. It’s been 20 months since then, and from the picture of his life that Sports Illustrated’s Chris Ballard painted today, it seems that Swift is somewhat turning his life around, and will soon make an attempted comeback to professional basketball (likely in the D-League or in Japan).
Two weeks pass. Swift texts. He’s ready to talk. About all of it. So here we are, in his room on the third floor of the Extended Stay America Hotel in Roseville. Outside, I-80 rushes by, just down from the credit union, 7-Eleven and Family Christian store. Plastic shelving holds Campbell’s Chunky soup, next to giant bottles of protein powder. Melatonin and supplements surround his bed. A drained sixer of Sudwerk beer rests on the floor, next to empty fast food bags. The closet is draped with hoops gear. A pile of books leans against his backpack; once interested in philosophy, the man who now uses the runic alphabet to jot private notes reads tomes like The Philosophy of the Dark Knight and a Game of Thrones companion book. He clears clean laundry off a swivel chair for me, apologizing for the mess. “I’ve clearly done nothing but go to the gym the last week or so,” he says. [...] All Swift can do is hope you believe him. He talks about how he is “older and less emotional.” How he can understand a GM’s perspective now. The “downward spiral,” as he terms it? “I was lost, angry, scared,” Swift says. “I had no goals. I was living literally minute-by-minute. And now, I’m absolutely goal-oriented, I have a long-term plan, I know what I want to do. I know what the next step is. Every decision is based off, ‘Is this going to get me to the next step?’ I do very few instant-gratification things.” He pauses. “If me of all people can make it back, I know other people can.” Besides, he says, he has a support system now. During our conversation, he receives a text from Jordan Wilson, his phone cackling with the sound of the Joker (Swift is a huge Batman fan). A quiet 24-year-old point guard, Wilson played at William Jessup University, a Christian school in Rocklin, and then in New Zealand. He and Swift work out four or five days a week. Swift texts him daily. Says Wilson: “I know it’s just an adult league, but it’s kind of refreshing to see how serious he takes basketball.”
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It’s not sunshine and roses. Swift still has an extremely strained relationship with his family (he says he only communicates with his mother through Facebook, which sounds like hell), still owes child support payments that were set when he was earning millions in the NBA, still has no steady source of income, still seems to drink a lot of beer for a recovering drug addict, and seems to mostly subsist on a diet of fast food and protein powder. Ballard bought two meals for Swift while profiling him, and Swift was worried he was about to get evicted from the hotel he has been living in.
But really, anything is better than living in the back room of your heroin dealer’s house in exchange for cleaning it up some and acting as his enforcer to collect debts, better than regularly passing out in a lawn chair in the living room after having stayed awake for days on a cocktail of booze, coke, heroin, and meth. Robert Swift has lived a tortured existence in his 30 years on earth; hopefully the next 30 are kinder.
[Sports Illustrated]In perhaps Horse Racing’s story of the year, 2012 Haskell Invitational winner Paynter appears to making nothing short of a miraculous recovery from several life threatening situations. The good looking three year old by Awesome Again has been hospitalized since August 26, initially with a critical case of colitis, followed by the complication of laminitis, and an infection from an inserted IV.
As of this past Monday (Sept. 10), his condition has been upgraded from “critical” to “stable”. The Zayat family, who own the colt, said thru Twitter that Paynter “continues to gradually improve. He is passing manure and eating, and walks freely around his stall. His fever is under control and his protein levels have stabilized.”
“We continue to be blessed by a special horse; he continues to defy the odds,” primary owner Ahmed Zayat reported in a series of tweets (on Monday.)
“We have a happy horse today, no fever, all blood work is good. He is comfortable, stable and eating well.
“His protein level is good all in all looks like Payter continues to turn the corner and winning his battle with his colitis and on his fight with his fight with his laminitis, let me explain more in detail”.
“Paynter has three of his legs with casts to support the (three affected) feet. He has had no rotation at any point since the start of his illness in any of his feet”. (Laminitis is when the coffin bone inside the hoof begins to rotate downward…in severe cases it sometimes will penetrate the bottom of the hoof)
“None of them have shown any sinking ever since the beginning of his diagnosis” Zayat went on to say.
“It is fair to say that we caught a very mild laminitis in the first stages. We have taken today for the first time new sets of X-rays on his three feet since he has been in the casts since last Sunday.
“Dr. Laura (Javsicas) was extremely happy to see that there was no radiological changes from last week”.
‘In fact there has been much improvement from the way his feet looked before being in the cast”.
“So she feels very hopeful and encouraged that if we continue to have comfortable feet, and we feel blessed that this courageous Paynter, not only beaten colitis but he has a very good chance of beating laminitis.
“Miracles can happen; I am very heartened and encouraged that not only Paynter will survive as a stallion, but in 10 days when his casts are off, we can be in for a surprise that we have a chance of seeing him back as a racehorse in 2013.”
Zayat added that retirement was also an option.
“That’s always a possibility,” Zayat said. “The colt will always come first — he will tell us.”
Speaking from 33 years of experience, I am not completely convinced that Paytner, who is as gusty a horse as I’ve seen thru the years, is not out of the woods just yet. Laminitis can come back at anytime and will have to be monitored almost constantly.
I’ve been fooled once before by a super horse that suffered a catastrophic injury followed by a bout with laminitis. This horse lived some seven months and was doing well the whole time, and I thought he was going to make it. But as fate would have it, suddenly (no pun intended) the wheels came off and he had to be euthanized….perhaps you remember him….his name was Barbaro.Former Arizona Coyotes forward David Moss has inked a deal with the Swiss club HC Biel in the National League A (NLA) for the remainder of the 2015-16 season, the team announced
The 33-year-old winger played nine NHL seasons, starting at age 25, but couldn’t find a new contract over the summer, eventually taking a professional tryout contract (PTO) with the Milwaukee Admirals, AHL affiliate of the Nashville Predators. A contract didn’t materialize during his time there.
Last season the veteran scored four goals and eight assists through 60 games with Arizona. That was a significant step back in production from the kind of secondary scoring Moss had provided previously during his 501 career NHL games split between the Coyotes and Calgary Flames. In the 2013-14 season he put up eight goals and 14 assists through 79 games while averaging just under two minutes more than he did last season.
Moss is one of many regular NHLers who had a tough time finding work over the summer, with the cap going up less than expected and teams turning to younger players en masse. Some, like Curtis Glencross, decided to retire, while others took their time hoping for another PTO — Martin Havlat and Dainius Zubrus took in-season PTOs that turned into contracts — but found themselves signing overseas after nothing came through, like David Booth did just last week.
RELATED: Bern Fires Guy Boucher, Will Return to North AmericaNew protection against discrimination of gays, lesbians in the military
Defense Secretary Ash Carter participates in the LGBT Pride Month ceremony and gives the keynote address in the Pentagon Auditorium on Tuesday, June 9, 2015.
WASHINGTON — Gay and lesbian servicemembers who experience discrimination in the military can now seek recourse after Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced a change in Pentagon policy Tuesday.
Carter’s delivered the news as part of his remarks celebrating the Department of Defense Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month.
“Four years after the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ — following years and years of gay and lesbian servicemembers having to hide who they are — today we take pride in how they’re free to serve their country openly,” he said. “Because we believe in getting to a place where no one serves in silence, and where we treat all our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines with the dignity and the respect that they deserve.”
The change adds sexual orientation to the list of non-discrimination categories — including race, religion and age — meaning gay servicemembers who feel they are being discriminated or retaliated against can file an equal opportunity complaint. That protection was afforded to civilian employees of the Department of Defense but even after the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell four years ago, gay troops were not covered by the Pentagon’s anti-discrimination policy.
The policy does not change the current ban on transgender people serving in the military.
Denny Meyer, a spokesman for American Veterans for Equal Rights, which advocates on behalf of LGBT veterans, applauded the move but said the Pentagon needs to go further and protect transgender servicemembers.
“It’s yet another piece that is being repaired years too late, but it’s about time,” he said. “It’s another step forward — we deserve full and equal rights like everyone else.”
“We must start from a position of inclusivity, not exclusivity,” Carter said. “Anything less is not just plain wrong; it’s bad defense policy, and puts our future strength at risk.”
The new regulations are meant to mirror the department’s existing prohibition on discrimination or retaliation of civilian employees on basis of “race, color, sex (to include sexual harassment, pregnancy, transgender and gender identity), disability, age (40 or older), sexual orientation, national origin, religion or genetic information.” It means, for example, if a superior is working to deny a soldier a promotion based on his sexual orientation, that soldier can now seek relief.
Illustrating the patchwork nature of reforms aimed at welcoming LGBT servicemembers, though, it is unclear whether transgender troops serving despite the ban are now covered by the Pentagon’s anti-discrimination policy.
Asked whether the new policy affected transgender troops, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cdr. Nathan Christensen referred to the existing policy banning transgender troops from serving and an ongoing review of the military’s policy on who can serve.
“I’m just going to leave it at that,” he said.
druzin.heath@stripes.com
Twitter: @Druzin_StripesAustralian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is in hospital this afternoon after attempting to put out the ongoing New South Wales fires with nothing but his own chest.
Abbott, who earlier today was visiting Winmalee – the scene of one of many unfolding fire-related disasters across the state – told media that he was “fearful for all the ladies out there,” and would do whatever he could “to keep them protected.”
“Men can cope with fire,” he explained, wiping sweat from his brow. “It’s hot, but we’re used to hot. Uh, heat.
“But for all the sexy ladies across New South Wales? This is tough, tough indeed.”
The Prime Minister and Minister for Women was shown several private properties that were in immediate danger of being incinerated by fire, and at one point, became so emotional that he took matters into his own hands.
“Why are we just standing here?” he asked, visibly frustrated. “We have to protect all the women!”
Abbott then tore off his shirt and ran towards the blaze, before tripping over a log, landing face first on the ground, and catching fire.
The Minister for Women had to be rescued by eight firefighters, who moved swiftly to put him out and airlift him to hospital.
As he was being loaded into the helicopter, Abbott chastised a senior fireman for allowing female firefighters near the blaze, saying it was “not safe for them here.”
Speaking from a hospital bed following the incident, Abbott blamed his inability to put out the fire on “science.”In a fresh blow to the fundamental integrity of the internet, a hacker last week obtained legitimate web certificates that would have allowed him to impersonate some of the top sites on the internet, including the login pages used by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo e-mail customers.
The hacker, whose March 15 attack was traced to an IP address in Iran, compromised a partner account at the respected certificate authority Comodo Group, which he used to request eight SSL certificates for six domains: mail.google.com, www.google.com, login.yahoo.com, login.skype.com, addons.mozilla.org and login.live.com.
The certificates would have allowed the attacker to craft fake pages that would have been accepted by browsers as the legitimate websites. The certificates would have been most useful as part of an attack that redirected traffic intended for Skype, Google and Yahoo to a machine under the attacker's control. Such an attack can range from small-scale Wi-Fi spoofing at a coffee shop all the way to global hijacking of internet routes.
At a minimum, the attacker would then be able to steal login credentials from anyone who entered a username and password into the fake page, or perform a "man in the middle" attack to eavesdrop on the user's session.
Comodo CEO Melih Abdulhayoglu calls the breach the certificate authority's version of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"Our own planes are being used against us in the C.A. [certificate authority] world," Abdulhayoglu told Threat Level in an interview. "We have to up the bar and react to these new threat models. This untrusted DNS infrastructure cannot be what drives the internet going forward. If DNS was trusted, none of this would have been an issue."
Comodo says the attacker was well prepared, and appeared to have a list of targets at the ready when he logged into the company's system and began requesting certificates.
In addition to the bogus certificates, the attacker created a ninth certificate for a domain of his own under the name "Global Trustee," according to Abdulhayoglu.
Abdulhayoglu says the attack has all the markings of a state-sponsored intrusion rather than a criminal attack.
"We deal with [cybercriminals] all day long," he said. But "there are zero footprints of cybercriminals here."
"If you look at all these domains, every single one of them are communications-related," he continued. "My personal opinion is that someone is trying to read people's e-mail communications. [But] the only way for this attack to work [on a large scale] is if you have access to the DNS infrastructure. The certificates on their own are no use, unless they have access to the DNS infrastructure itself, which a state would."
Though he acknowledges that the attack could have originated anywhere, and been routed through Iranian servers as a proxy, he says Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime is the obvious suspect.
Out of the nine fraudulent certificates the hacker requested, only one – for Yahoo – was found to be active. Abdulhayoglu said Comodo tracked it, because the attackers had tried to test the certificate using a second Iranian IP address.
All of the fraudulent certificates have since been revoked, and Mozilla, Google and Microsoft have issued updates to their Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer browsers to block any websites from using the fraudulent certificates.
Comodo came clean about the breach this week, after security researcher Jacob Appelbaum noticed the updates to Chrome and Firefox and began poking around. Mozilla persuaded Appelbaum to withhold public disclosure of the information until the situation with the certificates could be resolved, which he agreed to do.
Abdulhayoglu told Threat Level that his company first learned of the breach from the partner that was compromised.
The attacker had compromised the username and password of a registration authority, or R.A., in southern Europe that had been a Comodo Trusted Partner for five or six years, he said. Registration authorities are entities that are authorized to issue certificates after conducting a due-diligence check to determine that the person or entity seeking the certificate is legitimate.
"We have certain checks and balances that alerted the R.A. [about the breach], which brought it to our attention," he said. "Within hours we were alerted to it, and within hours we revoked everything."
It's not the first time that the integrity of web certificates has come into question.
Security researcher Moxie Marlinspike showed in 2009 how a vulnerability in the way that web certificates are issued by authorities and authenticated by web browsers would allow an attacker to impersonate any trusted website with a legitimately issued certificate.
*Photo: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gestures as he talks at a 2006 news conference. (Misha Japaridze/AP)
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__ See also:__After more than five decades of service and but a single call to combat, the Israeli army has decided, amid budgetary constraints, to replace the parachutes of old with a new US-made model.
The T-11, known as the Stork in Israel, is non-steerable, like its predecessor, but its square canopy allows it to carry more weight while offering a gentler landing – a feature that, several hundred thousand Israeli paratroopers can attest, was sorely lacking in the previous model. It was first used in a training course earlier this month and will serve the Paratrooper Brigade from the November 2014 class forward.
“Our goal is to parachute a large troop force, quickly, into a certain area,” the commander of the IDF’s jump school, Maj. Elad Grossman, told the army weekly magazine Bamahane last week. “And the new Stork parachute allows that to happen within the shortest amount of time and with the greatest degree of secrecy.”
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The new parachute has many advantages over the earlier Tzabar model. It can be deployed from a plane moving at a greater speed, meaning that the bulky Hercules cargo plane used for these missions — an easy target for modern anti-aircraft missiles — will spend less time over enemy soil. It also comes with a reserve chute that can be opened with either hand — the Tzabar was right hand only, which presented a problem in the event of, say, a broken arm — and that pops open far from the body, reducing the chances of entanglement with the main chute. And there is a built-in slider that keeps the cords from twisting beneath the canopy, a common problem with the old model.
And yet, some 59 years after the IDF’s last combat deployment of troops by parachute, there is little proof that paratroopers are needed on the modern battlefield.
Jump back in time
The first person to fathom modern airborne troops, Benjamin Franklin, was inspired by a hot air balloon ascension in 1783. He deemed the invention a “new turn in human affairs,” which might “convince sovereigns of the folly of wars.” His reasoning, penned in a 1784 letter, was that 5,000 balloons, carrying two men each, would cost less than five ships and would devastate an enemy.
“Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, so that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?” he wondered.
Some 156 years later, in April 1940, German Fallschirmjäger troops put the theory to a test, parachuting into Denmark and Norway, and, later, Holland. The Allies reciprocated with an array of airborne assaults. The results were mixed. The novelty faded along with the element of surprise; the price in blood was often high.
The Zionist enterprise, though, as the genocide in Europe reached its final and feverish stage, sent 39 of its best men and women to be trained and airlifted by the British into Nazi-occupied Europe.
Of those, 26 were deployed, often in their native lands; seven were discovered and killed, either by execution or in death camps. Most prominent among them, at least in death, was Hannah Senesh, who was tortured and killed by the Gestapo in Hungary but whose legend played an outsized role in the formation of the Zionist fighting and literary ethos.
In June 1948, just one month after Israel’s Declaration of Independence and amid an ongoing war, the newly formed IDF, impressed with the heroism of the WWII paratroopers and perhaps willfully ignorant of the mixed results, sent a batch of 50 paratroopers to Czechoslovakia; they were trained there, with Israeli pilots, and then flown to an Israeli air base, Tel Nof, where they were dropped from the sky.
The glory days, however, came under the command of Ariel Sharon, culminating in an October 29, 1956, jump, during the soft darkness of evening, when 395 paratroopers were dropped deep in the Sinai desert, some 150 miles into Egyptian territory.
Since then, the paratroopers have managed to liberate the Western Wall and the Old City of Jerusalem (1967), and led the counterattack across the Suez Canal (1973) and pushed north, through the mountainous route, to reach Beirut first during the Lebanon War (1982). But neither the conscripted brigade nor its reserves brigades were ever called on again to parachute behind enemy lines, and many believe they never will be.
“Operationally speaking, the aerial flanking maneuver – the leapfrog over the enemy – is done today by helicopter, which is faster and more flexible,” said Brig. Gen. (ret) Uzi Eilam, who joined the first paratroop battalion, 890, in 1954, served in the 1956 Suez War in Motta Gur’s battalion, which did not jump, and went on to head the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Ministry’s R&D department.
“In terms of morale, it remains important,” he added. “That’s one of the ways the brigade draws quality individuals.”
Col. (ret) Gabi Siboni, a former head of the Golani Brigade’s recon unit and a close friend of the incoming chief of the General Staff, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, also of the Golani Brigade, refused to make explicit his opinion of the investment in paratroops in this day and age, but his intent was clear.
“As a common Golanchik,” the head of the INSS think tank’s military and strategic affairs program said, “you can just imagine what I think of the entire parachute apparatus.”
Tradition, tradition!
The paratroopers’ military capacity as an airborne unit has always been to deliver large forces, if necessary, far behind enemy lines. During the 1991 Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein’s troops fired missiles at Israel from western Iraq, Israel contemplated dropping paratroopers into the region, the late Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron revealed in a 1999 Israel Air Force magazine article. He did not elaborate, saying the plans may be needed in the future.
But the main reason that that option was not exercised, aside from the obvious commitments to the allied force, was the same as it always is: the troops are easily spotted upon arrival, the planes are susceptible to surface-to-air missiles, and the troops can only jump with limited supplies, necessitating a re-supply run, and they are not protected by armor or artillery.
Today, more than ever before, there is an aircraft capable of replacing the paratrooper. The V-22 Osprey takes off and lands like a helicopter – vertically – and can fly, by tilting its rotors, as far and as fast as a cargo plane, which has a range that far exceeds a traditional helicopter.
In 2013, the US cleared the sale of six Ospreys to Israel, the first to a foreign country, for roughly $400 million in aid money. In October 2014, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon reportedly decided to cancel the still-unsigned agreement.
The army did not respond to a request for an estimate of the total annual cost of running its parachute training course – the chutes, instructors, parachute packers, base and, especially, air time involved.
“Operationally, the chances of using paratroopers dwindles with every passing year,” Maj. Gen. (ret) Yoram Yair told the IAF publication. But certain things, he said, have the “added value” of tradition and carry the mark of excellence, which helps the army maintain its hierarchy of units.
The central reason for continuing with parachute training, though, may not relate solely to budgetary concerns, tradition or prestige. An IAF colonel, unidentified in the article, submitted that a young soldier placed at the open door of an airplane and told to jump into the cold wind is left with a lasting impression.
“I’ve been in the IDF for nearly 30 years and fought in several wars,” he said, “and I don’t know of anything as similar to the order to get up and charge the enemy as the situation at the door of the plane, when they say ‘jump!’ and you hop out.”This is NGC 1332, a galaxy with a black hole at its center whose mass has been measured with high precision by ALMA. Photo: Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey High Res
It’s about 660 million times as massive as our sun, and a cloud of gas circles it at about 1.1 million mph.
This supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy dubbed NGC 1332, which is 73 million light years from Earth. And an international team of scientists that includes Rutgers associate professor Andrew J. Baker has measured its mass with unprecedented accuracy.
Their groundbreaking observations, made with the revolutionary Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, were published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. ALMA, the world’s largest astronomical project, is a telescope with 66 radio antennas about 16,400 feet above sea level.
Black holes – the most massive typically found at the centers of galaxies – are so dense that their gravity pulls in anything that’s close enough, including light, said Baker, an associate professor in the Astrophysics Group in Rutgers’ Department of Physics and Astronomy. The department is in the School of Arts and Sciences.
A black hole can form after matter, often from an exploding star, condenses via gravity. Supermassive black holes at the centers of massive galaxies grow by swallowing gas, stars and other black holes. But, said Baker, “just because there’s a black hole in your neighborhood, it does not act like a cosmic vacuum cleaner.”
Stars can come close to a black hole, but as long as they’re in stable orbits and moving fast enough, they won’t enter the black hole, said Baker, who has been at Rutgers since 2006.
“The black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which is the biggest one in our own galaxy, is many thousands of light years away from us,” he said. “We’re not going to get sucked in.”
Andrew J. Baker, associate professor and member of the Astrophysics Group at Rutgers.
Photo: Courtesy of Andrew J. Baker High Res
Scientists think every massive galaxy, like the Milky Way, has a massive black hole at its center, Baker said. “The ubiquity of black holes is one indicator of the profound influence that they have on the formation of the galaxies in which they live,” he said.
Understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the major challenges for modern astrophysics. The scientists’ findings have important implications for how galaxies and their central supermassive black holes form. The ratio of a black hole’s mass to a galaxy’s mass is important in understanding their makeup, Baker said.
Research suggests that the growth of galaxies and the growth of their black holes are coordinated. And if we want to understand how galaxies form and evolve, we need to understand supermassive black holes, Baker said.
Part of understanding supermassive black holes is measuring their exact masses. That lets scientists determine if a black hole is growing faster or slower than its galaxy. If black hole mass measurements |
ler has accused Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, the commander of the Reserve, of violating the Pentagon’s whistleblower protection policy last year when he forced Brezler to go before a board of inquiry.
The IG informed Brezler that it was launching the investigation in an Aug. 19 letter, which was obtained by Stars and Stripes. Brezler filed the complaint in June.
Brezler, a Bronze Star recipient, is cooperating with investigators. He spent four hours with them last month giving a sworn statement, according to his lawyer, Kevin Carroll.
In accordance with policy, spokespersons for the IG and Marine Forces Reserve would not say whether an investigation was ongoing.
According to Carroll, Brezler believes that high-ranking Marine Corps officials sought to take him down after it was discovered that he was providing information to Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and the U.S. District Attorney’s Office-Eastern District of New York, about an insider attack at Forward Operating Base Delhi, Afghanistan.
In July 2012, Brezler sent an email to Marine Corps officials in Helmand province, giving them information implicating Sarwar Jan, an Afghan police chief who was suspected of having Taliban ties and sexually assaulting children.
Despite Brezler’s information, no action seems to have been taken against Jan. And in August 2012, just weeks after Brezler sent the email, a teenager under the influence of Jan entered a base gym, shooting three Marines dead and wounding a fourth.
King wrote multiple letters to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos about the Delhi incident and about Brezler’s accusations that he was being unfairly punished. King’s efforts to get more information about Delhi and clear Brezler garnered significant media attention last year.
In December, the board of inquiry recommended Brezler be separated from the Marine Corps for “substantiated allegations of substandard performance of duty and misconduct.”
The recommendation for separation must be approved by the secretary of the Navy before Brezler can be kicked out of the service.
Before going before the board, the Naval Academy graduate had previously been found to have mishandled classified information, including an instance when he used his personal email to send classified information to Marine Corps officials regarding Jan.
Brezler and another officer, who received the information, later self-reported the inappropriate transmission. Brezler did not believe that the information about Jan was classified when he emailed it, according to Carroll, saying some documents had “incomplete classification markings.”
A subsequent Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation discovered that Brezler had improperly stored classified documents on his personal laptop, in violation of regulations.
Carroll said that no classified information held by Brezler was ever given to anyone who wasn’t authorized to have it.
Brezler hopes the IG can save his military career.
“We would like to see the full facts come out about the homicides at Forward Operating Base Delhi,” Carroll said “and [the recommendation for separation from the Marine Corps] to be withdrawn … because it appears to have been an illegal act of whistleblower retaliation.”
harper.jon@stripes.com
Twitter: @JHarperStripesCLOSE Watch as the research team OCEARCH captures, tags and releases the great white shark Katharine off Cape Cod in August 2013. OCEARCH video. Posted Jan. 18, 2014.
At 11:28 a.m. Monday, Katharine the great white shark pinged well north of the Brevard County coast. (Photo: OCEARCH)
Update, July 21, 12:02 p.m.
Katharine the great white shark shot past the Space Coast this morning.
At 11:28 a.m. Monday, Katharine pinged east well off the coast of Daytona Beach - flying past the Space Coast. Katharine's last ping was Saturday afternoon off the south Florida coast near West Palm Beach.
The 14-foot 2-inch shark was tagged off the coast of Cape Cod in August and has logged more than 4,000 miles in her travels down the East Coast, into the Gulf of Mexico and back again.
Katharine appears near the Bahamas on July 17, 2014. (Photo: Ocearch)
Update, July 17, 2014:
Katharine the great white shark has departed the Gulf of Mexico.
At 1:51 p.m. Thursday, the satellite transmitter-equipped shark "pinged" between Islamorada and The Bahamas. The transmitter attached to her dorsal fin hadn't revealed her location since July 6, when she was swimming in the Gulf off the coast of Port Charlotte.
Here, Katharine appears to be close to Betsy, another shark tracked by Ocearch. (Photo: Ocearch)
Update, June 9, 2014:
Katharine could be reuniting with an old friend.
The 14-foot great white shark tracked by research group Ocearch pinged off the coast of Southwest Florida at 10:56 a.m. on Monday.
Another shark tracked by the group, Betsy, appears to be very close to Katharine. Betsy last surfaced on Thursday, June 5. She's a 12-foot great white shark that weights 1,200 pounds.
While Betsy was last tracked moving toward the Gulf of Mexico, Katharine's ping history points to a movement aimed at Cape Coral.
RELATED:Track Katharine and Betsy's latest progress
Both sharks were originally tagged only seven days apart in August 2013 in Cape Cod, Mass.
Katharine became a Space Coast celebrity when she pinged several times off the coast in May before continuing on her journey down and around the southern tip of Florida.
Update: June 2, 2014:
Katharine the great white shark continues swimming westward from Dry Tortugas National Park.
At 4:03 a.m. today, Katharine "pinged" roughly70 to 80 miles from the national park.
Update, May 30, 2014:
Katharine pings again south of Dry Tortugas National Park. At 4:40 a.m. Friday, the great white shark was southwest of Key West. In the past 24 hours, the shark has surfaced long enough for the GPS tracker affixed to her dorsal fin to communicate with overhead satellites a total of five times.
You can track all of Katharine's progress on OCEARCH's website: http://www.ocearch.org or by downloading the Shark Tracker app for your mobile device. You can follow on twitter at @OCEARCH and @Shark_Katharine
Update, May 29, 2014:
Katharine the great white shark may be swimming into the Gulf of Mexico.
At 2:19 p.m. Thursday, the satellite transmitter attached to Katharine's dorsal fin "pinged" from a position southwest of Key West and southeast of Dry Tortugas National Park. She has
Katharine appears to be heading toward the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo: Ocearch)
spent the past week traveling generally westward from Marathon.
Katharine was captured and tagged Aug. 19, 2013, off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, by OCEARCH. She measured 14 feet, 2 inches and weighed 2,300 pounds.
Two weeks ago, she generated headlines by swimming southward off the Space Coast and approaching less than 1 mile offshore from Sebastian Inlet State Park.
Katharine continues her journey south as seen on Sunday, May 18, 2014. (Photo: Ocearch)
Update, 2:20 p.m. Sunday, May 18:
Katharine the great white shark has swam southward past Miami, and she is approaching the Florida Keys.
At 11:05 a.m. Sunday, Katharine's satellite transmitter "pinged" at Biscayne National Park. She is OCEARCH's southernmost shark off Florida's Atlantic coast, and founder Chris Fischer hopes she will provide data on the route followed by great whites that enter the Gulf of Mexico.
Katharine was located near Sebastian Inlet State Park on Monday afternoon.
Update, 12:18 p.m. May 15
At 12:18 p.m. Thursday, Katharine's dorsal fin and attached GPS tracker broke the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast near Boynton Beach.
RELATED: Katharine's Space Coast travels enthrall
12:18 p.m. Thursday off Boynton Beach (Photo: OCEARCH)
Update, 9:30 p.m. May 13:
As of 6:10 p.m. on Tuesday, Katharine appears to have moved even further south.
Her latest "ping" originated just east of Port St. Lucie. Katharine has been steadily moving south since her arrival in Brevard County on May 12.
Track her movements here: Ocearch.org.
UPDATE 6:57 A.M., May 13
Tuesday morning, 6:57 a.m. (Photo: OCEARCH)
Katherine, the great white shark, has left the popular Sebastian Inlet surfing spot known as "Monster Hole," and continued south on her journey along Florida's East Coast.
At 6:57 Tuesday morning, the shark pinged well off the coast between Fort Pierce and Jensen Beach. According to http://www.ocearch.org the shark began her southern trek just a week ago. On Twitter, you can follow both @Ocearch and @Shark_Katharine.
UPDATE 5:01 P.M. (May 12)
If we thought Katharine was close to shore before...
The great white shark has "pinged" again today - this time just offshore and slightly south of the inlet. Here's the latest tracking image from Ocearch regarding Katharine's location. You can follow her movements at http://www.ocearch.org and follow her on Twiitter at @Shark_Katharine
Great white shark Katharine is just off the Sebastian Inlet entrance to the Indian River Lagoon. (Photo: OCEARCH)
UPDATE 11 A.M.
Katharine has surfaced again, just a short distance from Sebastian Inlet. Check out this screen grab from the http://www.ocearch.org web site, which is tracking the great white shark. This distance appears to be the closest Katharine has ever been to the Brevard shoreline.
Where's Katharine, the great white shark? Right off the Brevard County coastline, as of 10:35 a.m. (Photo: OCEARCH)
UPDATE 10:30 A.M.
Katharine has pinged again. This time, her direction has changed. Her latest ping has her still off the coast of Sebastian Inlet but heading northwest back toward Brevard County coastline.
UPDATE 8 A.M. MONDAY
The great white shark Katharine has surfaced this morning. At 7:27 a.m., Katharine pinged the GPS tracker off the coast of Sebastian Inlet, well south of her last known location off the coast of Cape Canaveral.
EARLIER REPORT
A 2,300-pound great white shark tracked by research group Ocearch has moved further south since its last "ping" Saturday night.
Named Katharine, the 14-foot shark pinged just off the coast of Kennedy Space Center at 6:01 a.m. this morning. Katharine's GPS tracker has logged two more pings, which only register when the shark surfaces: 7:13 a.m., and 9:45 a.m. Both show an eastward movement out into the Atlantic.
Ocearch's Global Shark Tracker shows that Katharine has traveled about 125 miles in 72 hours, with a total log of 3,560 miles.
Katharine was originally tagged off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The shark was named after Katharine Lee Bates, a songwriter known for writing the American patriotic song "America the Beautiful."
You can track Katharine's movements here or at ocearch.org.
Read or Share this story: http://on.flatoday.com/1lck7TcA great book about an even greater book is a rare event in publishing. Robert Darnton’s history of the Encyclopédie is such an occasion. The author explores some fascinating territory in the French genre of histoire du livre, and at the same time he tracks the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. He is concerned with the form of the thought of the great philosophes as it materialized into books and with the way books were made and distributed in the business of publishing. This is cultural history on a broad scale, a history of the process of civilization.In tracing the publishing story of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, Darnton uses new sources—the papers of eighteenth-century publishers—that allow him to respond firmly to a set of problems long vexing historians. He shows how the material basis of literature and the technology of its production affected the substance and diffusion of ideas. He fully explores the workings of the literary market place, including the roles of publishers, book dealers, traveling salesmen, and other intermediaries in cultural communication. How publishing functioned as a business, and how it fit into the political as well as the economic systems of prerevolutionary Europe are set forth. The making of books touched on this vast range of activities because books were products of artisanal labor, objects of economic exchange, vehicles of ideas, and elements in political and religious conflict.The ways ideas traveled in early modern Europe, the level of penetration of Enlightenment ideas in the society of the Old Regime, and the connections between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution are brilliantly treated by Darnton. In doing so he unearths a double paradox. It was the upper orders in society rather than the industrial bourgeoisie or the lower classes that first shook off archaic beliefs and took up Enlightenment ideas. And the state, which initially had suppressed those ideas, ultimately came to favor them. Yet at this high point in the diffusion and legitimation of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution erupted, destroying the social and political order in which the Enlightenment had flourished.Never again will the contours of the Enlightenment be drawn without reference to this work. Darnton has written an indispensable book for historians of modern Europe.Paperback available from Harvard University PressThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: What about what’s happening right now in Brazil, where protests are continuing over the Legislature’s vote to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial? Now El Salvador has refused to recognize the new Brazilian government. The Brazilian—the Salvadoran president, Cerén, said Rousseff’s ouster had, quote, “the appearance of a coup d’état.” What’s happening there? And what about the difference between—it looked like perhaps Bush saved Latin America simply by not focusing on it, totally wrapped up in Iraq and Afghanistan. It looks like the Obama administration is paying a bit more attention.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I don’t think it’s just a matter of not paying attention. Latin America has, to a significant extent, liberated itself from foreign—meaning mostly U.S.—domination in the past 10 or 15 years. That’s a dramatic development in world affairs. It’s the first time in 500 years. It’s a big change. So the so-called lack of attention is partly the fact that the U.S. is kind of being driven out of the hemisphere, less that it can do. It used to be able to overthrow governments, carry out coups at will and so on. It tries. There have been three—maybe it depends how you count them—coups, coup attempts this century. One in Venezuela in 2002 succeeded for a couple of days, backed by the U.S., overthrown by popular reaction. A second in Haiti, 2004, succeeded. The U.S. and France—Canada helped—kidnapped the president, sent him off to Central Africa, won’t permit his party to run in elections. That was a successful coup. Honduras, under Obama, there was a military coup, overthrew a reformist president. The United States was almost alone in pretty much legitimizing the coup, you know, claiming that the elections under the coup regime were legitimate. Honduras, always a very poor, repressed society, became a total horror chamber. Huge flow of refugees, we throw them back in the border, back to the violence, which we helped create. Paraguay, there was a kind of a semi-coup. What’s happening—also to get rid of a progressive priest who was running the country briefly.VLC Player, one of the best and most widely used media players has found to be vulnerable to a remote hijack. The reported vulnerability makes it possible for a malicious user to run arbitrary code, potentially taking remote control of the host machine.
VLC is a popular media player among BitTorrent users. Not just for the fact that it is free, also because it includes a huge number of the video codecs, so it can play virtually every video file available.
Unfortunately, the latest versions of VLC have a security flaw according to a report from Luigi Auriemma. The vulnerability can be exploited to compromise a user’s system, as it leaves it wide open for a malicious user to run arbitrary code.
The problem occurs when a someone loads a subtitle file, which causes a buffer overflow that can be exploited. The security flaw is platform independent, which means it affects Windows, Mac and Linux users.
Initially it was reported that the flaws in version 0.8.6d were fixed in the latest release, but this turns out not to be the case. Auriemma writes: “The old buffer-overflow in the subtitles handled by VLC has not been fully patched in version 0.8.6e.”
“The funny thing is that my old proof-of-concept was built just to test this specific buffer-overflow and in fact it works on the new VLC version too without modifications,” he adds.
For now, the only solutions are not to run any subtitle files, or to grab one of the nightly builds. The downside is, however, that these might not be as stable as the regular releases.Everything there is to know about the F2 2018 specifications
Dimensions
• Overall length: 5224 mm
• Overall width: 1900 mm
• Overall height: 1097 mm (including FOM roll hoop camera)
• Wheelbase: 3135 mm
• Overall weight: 750 kg (driver on-board)
Engine
• V6 - 3.4 litre single turbo charged Mecachrome engine.
• Rated to 620 HP @ 8750 rpm.
• Fly by wire accelerator system.
• Rebuild after 8000 km.
• Maximum Torque 570 Nm @ 6000 rpm.
Performances
• Acceleration: 0 - 100 km/h, 2.90 sec
• Acceleration: 0 - 200 km/h, 6.60 sec
• Maximum speed: 335 km/h (Monza aero configuration + DRS)
• Max. braking deceleration -3.5 G
• Max. lateral acceleration +/- 3.9 G
Safety standards
• Full FIA F1 2017 safety standards.
• Halo F1 specification.
Monocoque and Bodywork
• Survival cell - Sandwich Carbon/aluminium honeycomb structure made by Dallara.
• Front and rear wing - Carbon structures made by Dallara.
• Bodywork - Carbon - Kevlar honeycomb structures made by Dallara.
DRS
• Same functionality of DRS used in Formula One.
• Hydraulic activation.
Gearbox
• 6-speed longitudinal Hewland sequential gearbox.
• Electro-hydraulic command via paddle shift from steering wheel.
• ZF SACHS Carbon clutch.
• No on-board starter, anti-stall system.
• Non hydraulic ramp differential.
Fuel cell
• FIA Standard.
• Premier FT5 125 litres.
Electronic features
• Magneti Marelli Marvel SRG 480 ECU/GCU including data logging system.
• Magneti Marelli PDU 12-42 power supply management unit.
• CAN data acquisition pre-equipment.
• Beacon receiver.
Suspension
• Double steel wishbones, pushrod operated, twin dampers and torsion bars suspension (F) and spring suspension (R).
• Adjustable ride height, camber and toe.
• Two way (F) / Four way (R) adjustable Koni dampers.
• Adjustable anti-roll bar (Front/Rear).
Brakes
• 6 pistons monobloc Brembo callipers.
• Carbone Industrie carbon-carbon brake discs and pads
Wheels and tyres
• F1 2016 standard wheel dimension.
• O.Z. Racing.
• Magnesium rims
• 13” x 12” front F1 2016 standard wheel dimension.
• 13” x 13.7” rear F1 2016 standard wheel dimension.
• F2 specific Pirelli slick / wet tyres.
Steering system
• Non assisted rack and pinion steering system.
• XAP steering wheel with dashboard, gear change, clutch and DRS paddles, marshalling & VSC display.
Camera equipment
• Roll hoop, nose cone and face shot camera pre-equipment.Anthony Davis New Orleans Pelicans take on the Orlando Magic
New Orleans Pelicans forward Anthony Davis (23) drives for a dunk against Orlando Magic forward Tobias Harris (12) as the New Orleans Pelicans defeat the Orlando Magic 101-84 at the New Orleans Arena, Tuesday, October 28, 2014. (Photo by Ted Jackson)
Since early last week Anthony Davis Sr.'s phone has been ringing constantly from family members and friends.
All of them have been inquiring about tickets and when is his son, Pelicans star forward Anthony Davis, scheduled to arrive in town.
Like most of his family members, Anthony Davis Sr. said Saturday night can't come soon enough. It is when Davis will make his long-awaited return to his hometown of Chicago to play his first NBA game against the Bulls at the United Center.
Last season, Davis was forced to miss his homecoming game because of a fractured left hand that occurred on the night before the Chicago game against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
During his rookie season in 2012-13, Davis missed his only opportunity to play in Chicago after suffering a mild concussion in a game played against the Utah Jazz on the night before they were scheduled to face the Bulls.
This time, Davis Sr. and his wife, Erainer Davis, along with the rest of their family members, are hoping nothing unforeseen happens on Friday night when the Pelicans play the San Antonio Spurs to prevent Davis from finally playing in Chicago.
''It's going to be great,'' Davis Sr. said. ''I keep getting phone calls every day and everybody is just excited. And I'm so excited for him.''
Davis Sr., said he doesn't have an exact estimate of how many family members and friends will attend Saturday night's game, but it could total more than 100.
Davis grew up on Chicago's rough South Side and was an unheralded guard at Perspectives Charter School before a growth spurt occurred between his freshman to senior year, in which he went from 6-foot to 6-10.
Davis said he's been eagerly anticipating playing against the Bulls at the United Center for the first time. While his parents have received numerous requests for tickets, Davis said it has been relatively quiet on his end.
''I told them (family and friends) don't bother me with that,'' Davis said. ''They can call my parents and you all work that out. So that's been going on for three years now. They already know, so I haven't got any calls really about tickets or anything like that.''
Until this summer when he played an exhibition game for Team USA against Brazil, Davis hadn't played at the United Center since high school when he participated in the McDonald's All-American game before heading off to the University of Kentucky as a freshman in 2011.
''The feeling is great to go back home any time,'' Davis said.''Personally, I don't get that much time back home. Chicago is in the Eastern Conference and we only play there once. That's tough because I have a lot of family and friends get tickets or whatever to come watch me play and I haven't played.''
Davis said it's going to be special to play in front of some of his former high school teammates.
''They always said it, even some of the regular kids at my high school, that you're going to go to NBA one day and be big,'' Davis said. ''Now it's starting to come around and lot of them look up to me. It's just real special to see.''
Davis is leery after missing his previous two opportunities to play in Chicago because of injury. Appearing unsure, he said after Friday morning's shootaround, ''Hopefully, I will get to play. If I do, then it's going to be a fun experience.''
While growing up in Chicago, Davis said he was not much of a Chicago Bulls fan.He recalls going only to a few games at the United Center. Davis said he didn't have a favorite team he followed but was an avid LeBron James and Kevin Garnett fan.
Now, in only his third NBA season after he was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, the 21-year-old Davis has emerged as an early MVP favorite this season. Going into Friday night's game against the Spurs, Davis had scored 30 or more points in four of his last seven games.
He's had eight 30 point, 10-rebound performances and three 25-point,10-rebound and five block performances. Davis currently ranks fourth in the NBA in scoring with 24.5 average and he leads the NBA in blocks with a 2.8 average.
And Davis' popularity continues to soar. During player introductions this Tuesday when the Pelicans played the Indiana Pacers at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, the crowd cheered when Davis' name was called.
''He's talked a lot about playing in Chicago for the first time,'' Pelicans shooting guard Tyreke Evans said. ''Hopefully he will get the opportunity to do that and I hope he has a good game.''
In the first NBA All-Star Game voting returns released by the league on Thursday, Davis had the most votes among the Western Conference frontcourt players with 524,623 votes that was more than 216,000 more votes than Los Angeles Clippers Blake Griffin, who has the second most votes with 307,908.
Houston Rockets coach Kevin McHale said Davis is deserving of any honor he receives because he has put in the work to become a special player.
''The guy has become really special and has took huge leaps,'' McHale said. ''He keeps on making these big improvements. It's a credit to the kid. He must works hard because he's getting better right before your very eyes. He's a handful - he's a special player. He's so young and I do believe he's got another couple of big leaps I know.''
In Chicago, a city with a rich basketball tradition of having standout players that includes Chicago Bulls' star Derrick Rose, Davis Sr. says he gets stopped all the time from fans wanting to talk about his son's rapid raise.
''When I go out, I hear a lot,'' Davis Sr. said. "I go to a lot of basketball games around the city and everybody says that my son is doing this and it's incredible how he is doing. Just the other night I was talking to my cousin and she was saying they are talking about Anthony on the Kobe Bryant level. Everybody is saying, 'Wow, We can't believe it, he's really making a big jump in the NBA.
''But we've been knowing all along what he's capable of doing. A lot of people hadn't seen his offensive game, especially when he was playing at Kentucky. It wasn't needed as much because of all the great players they had. But just to see him put it together on the NBA level has been spectacular.''Reuter concession was a contract signed in 1872 between Baron Julius de Reuter (born Israel Beer Josaphat), a British banker and businessman, and Nasir al-Din Shah, Qajar king of Persia. The concession gave him control over Persian roads, telegraphs, mills, factories, extraction of resources, and other public works in exchange for a stipulated sum for 5 years and 60% of all the net revenue for 20 years. The concession was so immense that even imperialists like Lord Curzon characterized it as the most complete grant ever made of control of resources by any country to a foreigner.[1] Local clergy were outraged by the concession and flyers were distributed in Tehran proclaiming that a Jew, Baron Reuter, will be in charge of country's affairs and that he plans to pass the railroad through the holy shrine in south Tehran. Clergy believed that this railroad plan is the work of Satan and will bring corruption to the Muslim lands.[2] The concession was met with not only domestic outrage in the form of local protests but the Russian government was also hostile towards the concession as well.[3] Under immense pressure, Nasir al-Din Shah consequently canceled the agreement despite his deteriorating financial situation. The concession cancellation was also due to British government refusing to support Reuter's unrealistic ambitions. While the concession lasted for approximately a year, the entire debacle set the foundation for the revolts against the tobacco concession in 1890 as it demonstrated that any attempt by a foreign power to infringe upon Iranian sovereignty would infuriate the local population as well as rival European powers, in this case the Russian government, who had their own interests in the region.[4]
Reuter concession cancellation however resulted in the second Reuter concession which led to the formation of Imperial Bank of Persia by Baron Julius de Reuter.
References [ edit ]
^ Curzon, Persia, p480. ^ Iran's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook, Massoumeh Price. ^ Keddie, p. 5. ^ Lambton, Ann. Qajar Persia. University of Texas Press, 1987, p. 223.CLOSE Detroit's demolition program and asbestos: What you need to know Detroit Free Press
Buy Photo Women hold signs for the media thanking the city of Detroit as they watch the City of Detroit Construction Services workers tear down an abandoned structure across from Bennett Elementary School in Detroit on Thursday, May 12, 2016. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
A state audit of Detroit’s blight demolition initiative suspected “possible bid rigging” last year in the midst of an ongoing federal investigation into the program, according to records obtained by the Free Press.
But a state official involved in the audit said Thursday that the bid rigging suspicions discussed privately in August 2016 ultimately did not turn out to be true.
"We didn't see any bid rigging," Mary Townley, a state housing official who was at a meeting last year where bid rigging was discussed as a possibility, said in an interview Thursday. "It was probably brought up not knowing what we were dealing with until we further completed, or further got into our analysis."
A state analysis released in January may not have specified “bid rigging,” but it found $7.3 million in improper billings from Detroit seeking federal funds for demolitions, including about $900,000 in billings tied to bid manipulation in which demolition costs were moved from one house to another so that prices did not exceed a cap of $25,000 per house.
The city ultimately agreed to repay $6.3 million of the billings.
More on Freep.com:
The suspicions of bid rigging arose in the summer of 2016 during a forensic audit of the city demolition program performed by two firms hired by the state— Holland & Knight and Ernst & Young. The suspicions coincided with a three-month suspension of the city's federally funded demolition program imposed by the U.S. Treasury.
The possibility of bid rigging was raised at an Aug. 17, 2016, meeting of the Michigan Homeowner Assistance Nonprofit Housing Corporation, or MHA, which began its audit the previous December.
“Holland & Knight along with Ernst & Young have been digging deep into the Detroit Building Authority and findings are not very good. Possible bid rigging going on. Funding has been immediately suspended,” minutes from the meeting show.
The minutes represent the first known instance of state officials involved in the Detroit demolition program discussing possible criminal activity.Detroit's demolition program has been under heavy scrutiny for the last two years. Following media reports in the fall of 2015 of skyrocketing demolition prices under Mayor Mike Duggan, federal authorities launched a criminal investigation that remains ongoing.
The MHA, along with its partner agency, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA), reviews the city's demolition invoices and approves federal funding for demolitions of vacant, blighted properties in Detroit.
Last week, government watchdog Robert Davis received complete, detailed minutes of private MHA board meetings as part of a lawsuit his nonprofit, A Felon's Crusade for Equality, Honesty and Truth, filed against the MHA in October. The lawsuit seeks to make sure the MHA is subject to the state’s Open Meetings Act, and it seeks a copy of the state’s audit report.
Davis gave copies of the MHA meeting minutes to the Free Press. Although the MHA was created by the state to distribute federal funds, it does not consider itself a public body subject to the state’s Open Meetings Act.
The minutes show the MHA board received regular updates on the state's audit of the Detroit demolition program. While the meeting minutes say bid rigging was believed to be in play, specific contractors or employees were not named.
The audit findings ultimately were given to the FBI and SIGTARP, a federal watchdog tasked with monitoring the federal funds made available to Detroit for demolitions.
Townley, vice president of the MHA board, said she typically updated the board on the state's Detroit demolition audit. She said she likely was the person who brought up bid rigging as a possibility. But on Thursday she could not immediately recall what auditors had found that drove the discussion.
Davis said the records put the federal demolition investigation in a new light. He said Duggan and state officials have misled the public by downplaying the state audit findings. When discussing the findings at a press conference in January, Duggan said he saw nothing to suggest anything criminal was going on in the demolition program.
“This is why transparency is so important in government,” Davis said. “When you have governmental entities conspiring with one another with concealing the truth to the public. The governor and (the state) all should’ve came out when the mayor flat-out lied and said this is more serious.”
Duggan spokesman John Roach denied assertions that the mayor misled the public concerning the demolition program.
"Robert Davis is the one who continually says things that are not true and the facts continue to prove that," Roach said.
Erica Ward Gerson, chairwoman of the Detroit Land Bank Authority, said the state audit was thorough.
"At the end of an exhaustive audit process that lasted several months, (the state) did not find any bid rigging," she said in a statement.
"We worked closely with the state to implement a series of new internal controls. Since those improvements were put in place, MSHDA and the Treasury Department have released another $130 million to continue the demolition program and MSHDA has fully released us from any claims regarding the bid process."
Duggan met with state auditors on Jan. 4 in Chicago to discuss the audit that ultimately found $7.3 million in improper billings.
When the audit was released in January, the city agreed to repay only $1.3 million of the improper billings. The city disputed the rest.
"The feds are doing what they should be doing. We have given them, I think, every single document that exists," Duggan said then. "I have not seen anything in this that suggests anyone did anything criminal."
Eventually, the city and the state reached a settlement. The Detroit Land Bank Authority agreed to repay $5 million in outstanding claims of improper billings. At the same time, the state agreed to make $5 million available to the city to pay for more demolitions.
Contact Joe Guillen: 3131-222-6678 or jguillen@freepress.com.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2BVcWzgCurrent Nightwing scribe Tim Seeley may be just about ready to move on from Dick Grayson's comic book adventures and head over to Green Lanterns, but with a movie coming up based on the adventures of Batman's first ward, it seemed like it was worth at least asking whether or not he had ever considered what he would do for a film version.
Seeley, who co-wrote a screenplay based on his creator-owned comic Revival with Sarah Fischer for director Luke Boyce, told ComicBook.com during a recent interview that he has given serious thought to how he would tackle a Nightwing movie.
“I have it in my head actually,” said Seeley. “I would do a very similar thing to what we did in the first six issues of Nightwing — the Raptor story. If the story is going to have to be about a guy who was trained by Batman going off to fight on his own, then having him fight a guy who wants to be his new mentor and changes, I think that’s the perfect story for it. I think the first act is, he’s dealing with a villain — it could be the Court of Owls or something but it could be anything else. The threat is a threat that affects Batman and the family, because you want to have some relationship with that, then he gets corrupted, and has to fight Raptor. I think that’s your three-act movie.”
Seeley joked that he would used Raptor “not just because I would love the sweet royalties of having a character in the movie that I made up but also because [Nightwing rogue] Blockbuster would be really hard to film, I think. The reflection that is Blockbuster, he’s Hulk-powered, and having Dick fight him as an equal in a film I think would be hard to do. You could move up to it, but it would be a challenge.”
Of course, if not for the fact that he appears to be the villain in Matt Reeves' The Batman, Deathstroke the Terminator would be an obvious choice, given his long history as a foil for both the Bat-family and the Teen Titans, of which Dick used to be a member.
“Barring them using Raptor, I think you could do a very similar storyline with Deathstroke if you wanted to — although the hard thing about Deathstroke is that he’s an assassin so believing that Dick would follow him is tough,” Seeley said. “I think making it Raptor and having him be somehow attached to Dick’s past, to his mother, I think that’s how you do superhero movies. I think it would work pretty well.”
The actual Nightwing movie, directed by Chris McKay, is expected to start shooting in 2018 for a February 2019 release.
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Santa Barbara and San Diego. Does your liveaboard experience resemble the perspectives shared by these vessel dwellers? Are you ready to take the jump and live on the water?
Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara Harbor is unique in permitting a handful of houseboats to complement the 113 allowable liveaboards. At least one person has experienced residing in a houseboat and as a liveaboard at Southern California’s northernmost harbor.
“It was a fantasy of mine,” said Helene Webb, a former Santa Barbara Harbor Commissioner. “I grew up in Florida and I’d go to the marinas and see the boats and thought, ‘it’d be so cool to live on a boat.’”
Webb currently lives on one of four houseboats permitted in Santa Barbara Harbor. She was also a liveaboard there.
The liveaboard lifestyle became a reality for Webb when she moved from New York City to Los Angeles, where she spent time living aboard a vessel in Marina del Rey. She eventually fell in love with Santa Barbara and took up residence at the city-owned harbor.
“I love watching the sunrises, the sunsets, you’re close to nature,” Webb said of her attraction to the liveaboard lifestyle, adding her experiences living aboard have far exceeded her expectations.
The natural diversity surrounding Santa Barbara Harbor and community feel on the docks helps make living aboard a vessel a pleasurable experience, Webb said.
Another major perk Webb and other liveaboards identify with is privacy.
“You know people on the dock for years and you see them, [but] most of the time you don’t go on their boats. To go onto a boat you have to be invited. I like that, people respect that privacy because [boats] are real small spaces,” Webb said.
There are some challenges to living aboard a boat, of course. Webb pointed out rain and windy weather can cause some challenges. Sometimes your neighbor might be less-than-ideal.
“If you’re next to someone who is loud, or has an unkempt boat, that could be a challenge,” Webb said.
Overall, though, Webb said she enjoys the Santa Barbara Harbor community, adding people are personable, respectful of privacy and collegial.
Ventura Harbor
The marinas in Ventura Harbor are rather friendly to liveaboards, providing a sense of community. Many liveaboards also enjoy access to the Channel Islands National Park to the west and mountains to the east.
Tony Porter, a liveaboard in Ventura Harbor, has observed some families living aboard boats where his vessel is docked.
“There are families with children and I see how those kids are really happy and safe playing around. There aren’t many communities you can do that in,” Porter said. “It’s a little like I imagine the kind of life when people lived in villages used to live.”
Tony Alcock first lived aboard a boat in the 1970s and returned to the lifestyle again a couple years ago. He wrote a book about living aboard a boat entitled “Life at the End of a Rope;” the book is expected to be available online and at bookstores in March.
“It’s a lovely life. It’s very safe and people look out for each other. We all share the same problems and challenges,” Alcock said.
John Howard, who has lived aboard for about 30 years, said being a liveaboard is “enriching.”
“My backyard is millions of square miles. It’s the Pacific Ocean, and we’re four or five docklines away from exploring that,” Howard said. “We get together and cook, we go out to wineries and wine taste, and we sometimes work together.”
Kevin, who requested to be cited by first name only for this story, has lived aboard a boat with his family for more than four years. He said being a liveaboard helps minimize clutter often found in homes on land.
“On a boat it’s simple. You realize you don’t need a lot of the extra junk. That in turn saves you money for other stuff,” Kevin said. “We do a lot of traveling outside of the country.”
Living aboard a vessel means being okay with downsizing on material goods, according to Mary Lee Huber.
“The biggest transition is learning to live small, [but] it is also incredibly freeing,” Huber said, adding dock parties, dinner dates and “buddy boating” are common phenomena among Ventura’s liveaboards.
“There are dock parties when the weather is nice. People come out onto the dock and mingle. Everyone brings a snack,” Huber said. “You make relationships with people you’re going to go to dinner with other couples. There are times you might go with other people on your boat or have two boats go out at a time to the islands and spend a weekend.”
Maintaining a vessel can be challenging, each liveaboard stated, but with patience and work many issues can be solved.
“There’s a learning curve to everything,” Kevin said. “I don’t think you have to know a lot about boats to do it, you just have to be comfortable with yourself and realize it’s not a house, it’s different, and just go with the flow.”
Monthly costs associated with being a liveaboard can vary from resident to resident, according to Alcock. Living aboard a 40-foot vessel in a marina where the slip fee is $20 per foot means a liveaboard would pay $800 per month to the marina. Other costs include electricity, sewage pumpout, bottom cleaning, topside cleaning, maintenance, insurance and taxes. These costs could add another $500 to $600 or more per month to living expenses. Another potential monthly expense: payments, if any, on the vessel.
San Diego County
Randy Sysol has lived aboard a 55-foot trawler at National City’s Pier 32 Marina with his wife and son for about four years. Transitioning from a land residence to one on the water was not easy, he said.
“The process of moving aboard was painstaking as we sold our home of 16 years and divested ourselves of anything that did not fit on the boat. “We did this as we were planning on travelling for a couple of years and didn’t want to be worried about storage of ‘stuff,’” Sysol explained.
He continued the relative newness of Pier 32 Marina makes it an ideal location for liveaboards.
“[The marina] has tons of amenities and a good liveaboard community. We like the pool in the summer and the jacuzzi anytime. We don’t particularly like the location of the marina as much as others but the amenities certainly make up for the long run out of the bay,” Sysol said. “The liveaboards here are a friendly group, looking out for one another as well as having occasional parties and potlucks. It’s been a welcoming place to live; lots of dogs, too.”
Being a liveaboard does come with a few pitfalls, Sysol observed, though specific shortcomings obviously vary from boater to boater.
One San Diego boater said being a liveaboard could be cheaper than living in a land-based house or apartment, but the affordability of residing in a recreational vessel ultimately depends on marina rates and boat’s type, size and quality.
Los Angeles and Orange counties
Donna Ethington has lived aboard a boat for decades and currently makes port in Wilmington, which is home to Island Yacht Anchorage, Cerritos Yacht Anchorage, Lighthouse Yacht Landing, Pacific Yacht Landing, California Yacht Marina and Holiday Harbor.
Finding a liveaboard slip at any of the Port of Los Angeles marinas is no easy task. The Port of L.A. limits living aboard a vessel to 5 percent of available slips at each marina.
Those who do decide to live along the Cerritos Channel and adjacent the Port of L.A.’s East Basin will find a unique blend of charm and challenges, Ethington said.
“You have a lot of different reasons why people move in [to any of the port’s marinas]. It’s kind of a vacation atmosphere. You’re always on the water and in touch with the weather,” Ethington said, adding liveaboards also live in San Pedro or Wilmington for camaraderie, solitude, or they may be in between residences. “I’m totally fascinated with the port. I think a lot of people are. It is a really good environment.”
Liveaboard slip rates in Wilmington are generally competitive and more affordable than marinas in Long Beach or San Pedro, Ellington said.
Challenges include frequent ship traffic, industrial noise and air pollution.
Ethington added liveaboards in San Pedro and Wilmington play a unique role in watching over local marinas.
“The only reason the Port of L.A. allows any liveaboards is for safety and security. No marina owners live in these marinas and only a few of the marina managers are liveaboards,” Ethington said. Because they walk by the same boats every day, liveaboards notice if a boat is taking on water, or if there’s a boat that doesn’t belong here. Because they’re familiar with the surroundings, liveaboards will call the Port Police if there’re unusual activities in their marina or in the area, and many of us have had valuable CERT and USCG training.”
Neighboring Long Beach allows up to 230 liveaboards, or 7.8 percent of slips, in all of its marinas, according to the city’s marine operations manager, Elvira Hallinan. Shoreline Marina in downtown Long Beach has the highest number of liveaboards in the city, with 169 slips (10.5 percent of the clip count) assigned to those living aboard a vessel; Alamitos Bay is home to 58 liveaboard slips (4.5 percent of slip count) while three vessels at Rainbow Harbor/Marina double as a primary residence (3.5 percent of slip count).
A handful of boaters call their respective vessels home at Avalon Harbor, where liveaboards experience busy summers and potentially tumultuous winters.
“There are a select few and hardy individuals that not only choose to live in Avalon but choose to live in Avalon Harbor,” Avalon Harbormaster Brian Bray said. “While the summers are busy and full of activities, the winter can be quiet, peaceful and sometimes stormy. Avalon Harbor is not considered a ‘safe’ harbor and can be a dangerous place during the winter adverse weather conditions, especially during Northeastern wind events.”
Winter weather is just one of a few considerations liveaboards should take into account before taking residence on a mooring in Avalon Harbor. Boaters planning to stay in the harbor for two weeks or longer must fill out a long-term vessel application and meet the city’s insurance requirements. Moorings are also privately owned, which, according to Bray, means liveaboards might have to change mooring locations on a daily basis.
“They may also be moved outside of Avalon Harbor to a mooring in one of the outer coves, Descanso Bay or Hamilton Cove,” Bray added.
Access to amenities is yet another factor liveaboards should think about before claiming a mooring in Avalon for two weeks or longer.
“Shoreside facilities, like groceries, public showers, restrooms and laundry, are available in Avalon. However the facilities are not available in a single location as in other harbors, and are spread throughout the town,” Bray said. “None are inaccessible, though, as Avalon is a small town with these facilities generally located within a six-block-by-two-block area.”
Current mooring fees range from $31 to $126 per night depending upon length of the vessel; all vessels there are also required to have a working head and be dye-tabbed to insure compliance with the harbor’s no discharge policy.
A small number of liveaboard permits are available on the central Orange County coast, where Newport Beach Harbor Resources Manager Chris Miller said the city only permits liveaboards on its offshore moorings. City code permits no more than 7 percent of all offshore moorings in Newport Harbor to be occupied by a liveaboard.
“We currently have about 20 liveaboards that are permitted by us. Liveaboards are not permitted in front of residential homes. However, we do not control liveaboards at private commercial marinas, so I don’t have a count as to how many there are,” Miller said. “However, anecdotally, I don’t think many of the marinas in the harbor permit large number of liveaboards, if any at all, so I’m guessing the numbers are really small.”
Sunset Aquatic Park at Huntington Harbour is home to a couple liveaboards. Whether there are any liveaboards (and, if so, how many) at nearby 325-slip Peter’s Landing Marina was not readily accessible.
The Dana Point Marina Co. manages liveaboard permits at Orange County’s southernmost harbor. A prospective tenant must meet certain requirements and pay an appropriate rent and fee to obtain a liveaboard permit in Dana Point. A liveaboard vessel, for example, at least 140 square feet of livable space for one person and an additional 40 square feet for per tenant. The liveaboard fee is 40 percent of the basic slip rent. So the owner of a 35-footer, the smallest vessel allowed in a liveaboard slip at Dana Harbor, would pay $622 in rent plus $248.80 in liveaboard fees for a total rent of $870.80.
Liveaboards are also permitted at Redondo Beach and Marina del Rey; liveaboards are not permitted to be adjacent to or across from one another at Redondo Beach’s King Harbor Marina.
Are you looking to be a liveaboard? Many marinas provide boaters with extensive information about some of the elements involved, including monthly fees and amenities offered. Some marinas have quotas on how many liveaboards are permitted there or other restrictions.
Be sure to visit each harbor or marina website to find out whether liveaboards are permitted there. What restrictions apply to liveaboard tenants? Is there a wait list for a liveaboard slips? How much is the liveaboard fee? Also inquire about amenities, such as parking, security, restrooms, showers, community rooms, WiFi access, and proximity to dining, highways and shopping.EDITOR’S NOTE: Frank White played 18 seasons for the Kansas City Royals and won eight Gold Gloves. He is regarded as one of the best second basemen in MLB history and is adored by Royals fans everywhere. White’s career is unlike any other in Kansas City sports history and even in retirement he is still giving back to the community he loves.
Topeka Capital-Journal Royals reporter Jeff Deters spoke with White and several other past Royals greats and each have wonderful stories about their time with the Royals and their careers afterward. This is the first in a five-part series.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s been more than 25 years since Frank White last played for Kansas City, but at age 65 the Royals legend is still going strong and winning in a new arena.
White, a Democrat who entered politics in 2014, won his primary last week in his re-election bid for County Executive in Jackson County, Mo. He ran unopposed.
"I really enjoy the political arena," White said. "Sometimes the games that are played aren’t fun to play. But I think that if you look into your heart and you say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Well, I’m doing it to be able to help the people of Jackson County. I’m doing it to be able to do things that are going to improve the quality of life for the people of Jackson County. I’m doing it to make sure that we’re good stewards of the taxpayer dollars.
"I think that my goal is to make a difference for the time that I have and not necessarily make decisions based on whether or not I get re-elected, but make the right decision at the right time on the right situation. If you do that enough times the election takes care of itself. So really it’s just making sure that every time you make a decision, you think about the people you have underneath you. They look to you for leadership."
White certainly provided leadership during a playing career with the Royals that began in 1973 and ended in 1990. White won eight Gold Gloves, tying Bill Mazeroski for what was then the most ever by a second baseman.
White nearly won a ninth Gold Glove in 1988, but despite having the best fielding percentage in the league (.994) and the fewest errors (4) White did not win. Instead, Seattle’s Harold Reynolds won the award despite committing 18 errors.
White, however, didn’t go home empty-handed. At a luncheon, Royals fans presented him with a Gold Glove of their own.
"It was well done," White said. "It showed me how much the fans were behind me. It was awesome."
Three times in his career White led all second basemen in the league in fielding percentage and he finished second four times. White actually began his career as a backup before he became one of the greatest to play the position.
"The thing that I think back to was just being in a position to where I was able to come to the big leagues at an early age and be in a position where I could learn from playing behind Cookie (Rojas) and Freddie Patek for two or three years, and then once the opening came I was able to step in and play regularly and play for a pretty long time, which I thought was pretty cool."
White grew up near old Municipal Stadium in Kansas City. As a kid he watched the A’s play, and then he watched them leave town for Oakland following the 1967 season. After Ewing Kauffman brought baseball back to Kansas City in 1969, White, while he was still in the minor leagues, worked on the new stadium that was being built during the winter of 1972-73 smoothing cement, sealing floors and performing other laborious tasks.
"There were a lot of days during the winter where you look down on the field and wonder if you are ever going to be able to take that on and become a major league player," White said. "So when I first got that call-up on June 12, 1973, then I realized that I was setting my feet on the field at then-Royals Stadium for the first time."
White’s path to the big leagues was certainly a unique one. He was the first member of the Royals Academy to make it to the major leagues. Though it lasted just a few years, the academy was an innovative idea by Kauffman. And had it not been for the academy, White may have never made it to the big leagues.
"Baseball was going through a transition when Mr. Kauffman took over the team in ’68," White said. "There was a redevelopment of the scouting system, and that’s why the academy was so prominent because it gave the Royals another opportunity to find players who were looked over in the draft. A lot of scouts didn’t go in the inner cities to scout the African-American players at that time.
"So he wanted a different way to find players other than the traditional scouting system and that’s where I came into play in terms of being a member of the Royals first Baseball Academy class, so he definitely had some insights there."
In August 1971, the Royals sent Art Stewart to the complex in Sarasota, Fla., to evaluate White and the first class. Stewart watched the group intently for 10 days.
"I wrote up three players in that first class, and he was one of them," Stewart said. "He was the star of the academy, but a lot of people don’t know that we had 14 players from the academy make the big leagues so the academy was really a success."
White played in five All-Star Games and hit a home run in the 1986 Midsummer Classic in Houston. He also was a key member of the 1985 World Series team.
"Going into that playoffs with the Blue Jays being down 3-1 and going into the Cardinals series being down 3-1, I think when you get your back against the wall it really shows the character of your ballclub," White said. "And we were a team that was determined not to lose that year.
"And I think that beating the odds by losing two games to (Toronto starter) Dave Stieb and coming back and beating him in Game 7, and losing two games to (Cardinals starter) John Tudor and coming back to beat him in Game 7, I was really proud of our team for being able to withstand that pressure and do something that really hadn’t been done in baseball."
After White retired, he became a coach with the Red Sox before joining the Royals staff from 1997-2001. White then joined the Royals front office before managing the Double-A team in Wichita from 2004-06. White then became a broadcaster for the Royals until he was let go. White then became a first base coach with the Kansas City T-Bones before joining the political realm.
White was at the White House when President Barack Obama honored the 2015 World Series champions last month, and though Obama will not be on the ballot in November, White’s name will once again be there for the general election. White is again running unopposed, so he has essentially already been re-elected and his term will run through 2018.
"I love the challenge," White said. "I love being in position where I can make decisions that can benefit people. And I always say that my legacy is not going to be on bricks and mortar. It’s going to be on how many people I can improve their quality of life, whether it be through salaries or through programs, things like that. That’s my goal."
WHITE FILE
Yr GP H Avg. HR RBIs
1973 51 31.223 0 5
1974 99 45.221 1 18
1975 111 76.250 7 36
1976 152 102.229 2 46
1977 152 116.245 5 50
1978 143 127.275 7 50
1979 127 124.266 10 48
1980 154 148.264 7 60
1981 94 91.250 9 38
1982 145 156.298 11 56
1983 146 143.260 11 77
1984 129 130.271 17 56
1985 149 140.249 22 69
1986 151 154.272 22 84
1987 154 138.245 17 78
1988 150 126.235 8 58
1989 135 107.256 2 36
1990 82 52.216 2 21
Totals 2324 2006.255 160 886SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Singapore minister said on Friday the threat of an extremist attack was higher now than earlier this year as hardline Islamists are increasingly pushing their agenda in neighboring Indonesia.
People walk past the skyline of Marina Bay central business district in Singapore April 26, 2013. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
Law and Home Affairs Minister Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam, speaking to the Foreign Correspondents Association in Singapore, did not specify whether the threat had increased just in the city state or in Southeast Asia generally.
But he made specific reference to last year’s events in Indonesia, where authorities were on high alert and made several arrests but could not stop an attack.
His comments came as tens of thousands of Muslims poured into central Jakarta on Friday to protest against the city’s governor, a Christian accused of insulting the Koran.
“The threat if anything, I think, has increased, compared to last year and earlier this year,” said Shanmugam.
“We see an increasing tempo in terms of the news that is coming out of Indonesia... So I will take the news coming out of Indonesia very seriously. We are in close touch with them,” he said.
Multi-ethnic Singapore, a major commercial, banking and travel hub that is home to many Western expatriates, has never seen a successful attack by Islamist militants. But in recent months, the government has warned the population that a militant attack is a matter of “when”, not “if”.
Authorities broke up a plot to bomb several embassies soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. A Singaporean militant was accused of plotting to crash a hijacked plane into the city’s airport in 2002.
Earlier this year, Indonesian police arrested six suspected militants believed linked to the Islamic State group and plotting an attack on Singapore.
Shanmugam said at the time the men had planned a rocket attack on Marina Bay, a central entertainment area with a waterfront promenade, giant ferries wheel and casino resort.
Singapore has also jailed six Bangladeshis who were charged with contributing money for attacks in Bangladesh in Singapore’s first ever case of “financing terrorism”.
Shanmugam estimated that about a thousand people had left Southeast Asia to war zones in Syria and Iraq to fight for Islamic State, mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia.
“We probably have had about two families from Singapore,” he said. “We are talking about less than 10 (people).”Introducing: The First Organic, Vegan Food Truck in the South East!
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Dank Drank: Made-to-Order juice of Beets, Carrots, Celery and Apple.
Herbal Teas.For a self-described community organizer, full of the anti-colonial dreams of his father, Obama seems to enjoy inordinately rubbing shoulders with monarchs and princes. The BBC this week hailed his embarrassingly empty chat with Prince Harry as his first post-presidential interview (it was actually conducted last September but released only on Tuesday). The interview allowed two vapid liberals to wallow in their privilege while babbling about a world without privilege. Nothing phrases like “platforms of change” tumbled forth as they both longed for greater egalitarianism. The prince and the community organizer agreed that they are both “passionate” about helping paupers.
Obama, who is earning millions of dollars for twenty-minute speeches these days, says that he is concerned about unfair pay, while Prince Harry worried about the lack of seriousness accorded young people before asking Obama to choose his favorite Kardashian.
Trying hard to sound sage, Obama offered up self-serving platitudes about the dangers of the Internet. Under the guise of lamenting a partisan media, he called for a return to the old one. He misses the liberal media monopoly terribly and wishes for a suppression of dissenters from it: “One of the dangers of the internet is that people can have entirely different realities. They can be cocooned in information that reinforces their current biases.” It is safe to say he is not referring to viewers of CNN and MSNBC. Obama will let us know which “facts” can be used in any debate and which opinions deserve to be heard: “The question has to do with how do we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn’t lead to a Balkanization of society and allows ways of finding common ground.”
The “danger” to which Obama refers, then, is nothing more than the left’s lack of control over political debate and journalism. Of course, he says nothing in the interview about the famously nihilistic uses to which the Internet is put. Those dangers go unmentioned. In fact, he spends much of the interview lavishing praise upon a generation famous for its misuse of social media: “this generation coming up is the most sophisticated, the most tolerant, in many ways, the most embracing of diversity, the most tech-savvy, the most entrepreneurial. But they don’t have much faith in existing institutions.” Prince Harry readily agreed: “It’s too easy for people to criticize millennials for being superficial, selfish and self-obsessed.”
Obama presented himself as the Pied Piper of this astonishingly wise and virtuous army of young people, whose staggering decency will save our rotten politics. After all, he said, they elected him: “You have this African-American, mixed race, born in Hawaii, named Barack Hussein Obama and somehow he becomes president. How did that happen? Well, it happened primarily because you had a bunch of 20-year-olds and 23-year-olds and 25-year-olds who started going out into communities that oftentimes they’d never been in before and believed in the possibilities of a different kind of politics.”
The interview overflows with such prattle, with Obama alternating between praising and condemning the superficial politics he helped create. One moment, he is talking about the apolitical depth of his wife, the next he is warning against the hashtag activism for which she was famous. He says that he deplores our fact-free politics, then weaves a fantasy about how climate-change activism can stop hurricanes. For all of his much-advertised “experience,” he is still the senatorial punk who thinks he can stop the rise of the oceans. That his first post-presidential interview was with Harry is fitting. It captures the fatuousness of his presidency and its celebrity-seeking champagne socialism.
One of the few honest moments between the two touched on encroachments upon their luxury. They shared a laugh about one of Obama’s greatest post-presidential annoyances — getting stuck in traffic. “I didn’t use to experience traffic,” he said. So much for the dreams of Obama’s father, whose contempt for the British monarchy was enormous, a contempt that Obama pretended to share. (Gone was the Churchill bust from the Oval Office and so on.) Obama’s father dreamed of a world in which rich and poor alike bore the same miseries, a world without monarchies and colonies and ancestral rights. And here his son was complaining about traffic with a prince. The fulfillment of his dream wasn’t a toppled monarchy but a pampered son who pants after its privileges.Taxi drivers block Toulouse's ringroad in April this year during a protest against Uber | Remy Gabalda/AFP via Getty Images Uber case on hold over Le Pen fears Fearing populist backlash, Commission chief overrules colleagues to pause infringement case against France.
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's team is holding back a legal case against France over its treatment of Uber at least until after the country’s elections next year, according to two people briefed on the case.
The American ride-hailing company’s complaint was last week left off the Commission’s monthly list of actions against countries that violate the European Union’s laws. Uber’s Chief Executive Travis Kalanick had visited Brussels earlier this month to lobby officials, and Internal Market Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska last week said there was no legal reason the case could not proceed.
Juncker's decision to overrule at least four Commissioners and hold off on the case reflects his concerns about the growing appeal of populist parties in the EU, the people briefed on the case said. Uber is a symbol of globalization and a lightning rod for irate incumbent taxi companies, particularly in France. The National Front of Marine Le Pen, which pushes an anti-globalization and anti-EU agenda, is polling strongly ahead of May's presidential election.
A Commission spokeswoman said the EU’s executive arm "decides on infringements cases based on their merits and legal complexity, not for political reasons. There are no deadlines for assessing complaints."
The paperwork for the case has been ready since the summer, according to three people at the Commission with first-hand knowledge. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc, whose legal team drafted the case; Commissioner Bieńkowska and Vice Presidents Jyrki Katainen and Andrus Ansip, all supported moving forward with the case, according to multiple sources with first-hand knowledge.
Uber's complaints from 2014 and 2015 say France's actions constitute a violation of several EU laws, including the E-Commerce Directive and the Services Directive.
Rather than reject Uber’s complaint, a senior Commission official said Juncker's team is employing "the black box technique, where something goes into the president’s cabinet and it disappears.”
In 2014, France barred private-hire vehicles like Uber's from using certain digital tools to match riders with drivers, and the country now requires private-hire drivers — other than licensed taxis — to return to a base after every ride. The company has been the subject of mass protests by taxi drivers complaining about Uber's arrival in the French market. Two French executives were arrested in June of 2015 over enabling illegal taxi services, among other charges, and the company’s Paris offices were raided. In February, the two executives were banned from running a company for five years and each faced fines of €50,000 and €70,000 respectively.
Uber's complaints from 2014 and 2015 say France's actions constitute a violation of several EU laws, including the E-Commerce Directive and the Services Directive.
Senior Uber lobbyists met with Juncker's Chief of Staff Martin Selmayr and his Senior Legal Adviser Michael Shotter on November 8, according to the Commission’s meeting register.
During the gathering, Selmayr told the company's lobbyists, including Agata Wacławik-Wejman, that the Commission would not launch legal action against France based on Uber's complaint for an indefinite amount of time, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
"Obviously we try to handle complaints as fast as possible," adding that the Commission is "engaged in dialogue with the relevant authorities to clarify the merits of the complaints," Commission spokeswoman Lucia Caudet said.
After Commission Vice President Ansip met with Uber's Kalanick on November 15, he tweeted: “Just saw @travisk again — but issues stay same: we need more progress in workable @Uber / gov't cooperation and less unnecessary pushback.”
"The meetings are a matter of public record," said Gareth Mead, a spokesman for Uber. "Across Europe there is significant and growing recognition of the value that companies like Uber can offer the citizens of the EU and the cities in which we live."
Uber also complained to the Commission last year about laws restricting its freedom to operate in Spain and Germany, and filed a complaint against Hungary in 2016.
The Commission is also watching a parallel case between Uber and Spain before the European Court of Justice. The court is expected to rule on whether Uber should be classified as a transportation service or a passive digital intermediary. That case likely won't be resolved until well into 2017.
Uber also complained to the Commission last year about laws restricting its freedom to operate in Spain and Germany, and filed a complaint against Hungary in 2016.
None of them has moved forward.
Nicholas Hirst and Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting.OBJECTIVE:
To report a case of severe serotonergic symptoms following the addition of oxycodone to fluvoxamine.
CASE SUMMARY:
A 70-year-old woman developed severe serotonergic features, including confusion, nausea, fever, clonus, hyperreflexia, hypertonia, shivering, and tachycardia, following the addition of oxycodone 40 mg twice daily to fluvoxamine 200 mg/day, easily fulfilling diagnostic criteria for serotonin syndrome. Discontinuation of the offending drugs resulted in resolution of her symptoms over 48 hours, and no other cause of the syndrome was identified. Use of the Naranjo probability scale indicated a probable relationship between the serotonergic symptoms and the addition of oxycodone to fluvoxamine therapy.
DISCUSSION:
Serotonin syndrome is a serious adverse reaction usually due to interactions with serotonergic drugs. There have been only 3 previous reports involving oxycodone. Most previous reports of serotonin syndrome involving analgesics have been associated with meperidine, dextromethorphan, and tramadol. Unlike these synthetic opioids, however, oxycodone does not inhibit the reuptake of serotonin. In addition, there are a number of other possible pharmacologic mechanisms for the interaction we observed.
CONCLUSIONS:
Monitoring for serotonergic adverse events should be done when oxycodone is given to patients receiving serotonin-reuptake inhibitors.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Will Ross: "Some girls escaped by jumping off the vehicles"
Nigeria's military has admitted that most of the teenage girls abducted by suspected Islamist militants have not been freed as it earlier stated.
There has been confusion about the number of girls missing after they were kidnapped from a boarding school in the north-east on Monday night.
According to education authorities in Borno state, 85 girls are still missing and 44 in total have managed to escape.
Intensive efforts to find |
is to cause liver cancer in children."
In 1998 Woolsey and his law firm, Shea & Gardner, were instrumental in obtaining $100 million from Congress to fund the Iraqi National Congress, a group of refugees, opportunists, and political hangers-on dedicated to regime change in Iraq. The INC was led by master fraudster Ahmed Chalabi, who, before he became a favorite of Congress and the vice president’s office, had been convicted in absentia of embezzling $230 million from Petra Bank in Jordan. Chalabi’s objective was not only to use Uncle Sam to remove Saddam from power but also to get himself appointed in Saddam’s place.
To build the case for war, Chalabi provided a steady stream of Iraqi defectors with fake stories about Iraqi WMDs and Saddam’s al-Qaeda connections. Favored members of the media were also made privy to the defectors’ tall tales. In February 2002 Woolsey personally arranged to have Mohammad Harith, an INC-supplied defector, introduced to the Department of Defense and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Harith claimed falsely that the Iraqi regime had bioweapons labs disguised as yogurt and milk trucks. Ultimately Harith’s story made it into the Bush administration’s case for invasion, even though the CIA had labeled Harith a fabricator. Woolsey also met with another Chalabi-sponsored defector, who famously but falsely claimed that an Iraqi training facility at Salman Pak was being used to instruct Iraqis and foreign jihadists in aircraft hijacking.
Not satisfied with the overthrow of the Iraqi regime, Woolsey has argued vehemently that Syria, Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, and even the U.S.-allied military dictatorship in Egypt all represent major threats to the United States. In the wake of the U.S.’ initial apparent success in Iraq, Woolsey remained a strong advocate of remaking the Middle East by force and even gave the name "World War IV" (World War III having been the Cold War) to the endeavor.
Woolsey contends that Western-style democracy ought to be substituted for most of the governments in the region, whether they be socialist dictatorships, military governments, traditional monarchies, or Islamic regimes. Regrettably, Woolsey’s knowledge of the Middle East is quite limited and his analysis flawed. He does not understand that most Middle Eastern societies value Islamic tradition and Sharia law far higher than what they see as foreign notions of liberal democracy. The Iraqi experience with democracy since 2003 has done nothing to alter that view.
As part of his argument for radical and violent change, Woolsey asserts that the hostility of many Arab and Muslim societies to the West and Western ideas is rooted in the nature of their autocratic, Islam-influenced governments. But in making this assertion he conveniently overlooks the long history of unwanted and destructive Western interference in the Middle East, a few of the more egregious examples being the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the establishment of Israel and the marginalization of the Palestinians, the installation of the shah in Iran against the wishes of the Iranian people, and the invasion of Iraq.
In view of the disaster the U.S. has created in Iraq, both for ourselves and for the Iraqis, one would like to think that Woolsey has rethought his views about violent change. But no: in the summer of 2006, while Israel was bombing Lebanon with U.S.-supplied munitions once again, another activity unlikely to engender love for the U.S. in the Arab world, Woolsey advocated that the U.S. widen the war by bombing targets in Syria.
Woolsey apparently thinks Syria is ripe for regime change, and he consistently denounces its government as a "fascist" dictatorship, although Syria’s agglomeration of disparate ethnic and religious groups Druze, Alawite, Sunni, Shia, Armenian, Chaldean, and Eastern Orthodox hardly fits the German or Italy model of a nation united by culture and blood anxious to invade surrounding states. And before Woolsey continues his propaganda war against Syria, he needs to explain why a million and a half Iraqis prefer to live as refugees in Syria under a "fascist" dictator rather than in the liberal democracy his advocacy has helped create in Iraq.
James Woolsey did get one thing right: "As we move toward a new Middle East we will make a lot of people very nervous." But the folks who are the most nervous today are not in the Middle East; they’re elected and appointed GOP officeholders who are going to find themselves unemployed this time next year.
Read more by John Taylor"Into thebelow where Gapers Reside...""To the dwellingwhere Libraries with Tomes reside...""To the darkestwhere a faded Polaroid rests...""To thewhere you have to kill your past...""To theand slay your innermost apocalypse...""Toto make a deal with devil...""To theto slay your fate..."This is...-----After (Almost) a weeks work of procrastination and searching....Its finally here...Aftersona'dand like it says...Onto who's who and who they belong to...-----NagisaIsa16-----SatoshiNaveAuran(And His PM)NepsashiSteveKate-----McClaireNeppiMilaMuthix-----SophieJulie & MarieLi'l RosyCeliaMioClara-----MeptuneJaneKuletXCoreFloridaKiara-----SFMAquaGearCindyRebeccaTracyRachelAliceT-SeaSamanthaLucySnow-----JaylaRythmeKuroMillyKishuriZephyr-----Credits:Nagisa Belongs to Isa16 Belongs to Satoshi Represents Nave Belongs to Auran (And their Playermodel) Belongs to AuranNepsashi Belongs to Steve Belongs to Stevekiller47Muthix Belongs to McClaire Belongs to Neppi Belongs to Mila, Clara, and Jayla Belong to Sophie, Julie & Marie Belong to Li'l Rosy Belongs to Kiara Belongs to Celia Belongs to Mio Belongs to Meptune Belongs to Jane Belongs to KuletXCore Belongs to Florida, Cindy, Rebecca, Tracy, Rachel, Alice, T-Sea, Samantha, Lucy, and Snow Belong to SFMAquaGear Belongs to Rythme Belongs to Kuro Belongs to Milly Belongs to Kishuri Belongs to Zephyr Belongs to (Sorry I wanted to make Risa)That is all and Good Night (Morning... its 6-7 AM at the time of making this)Near the end of what may "very likely" be the hottest year on record, a bright spot in the battle to address climate change has emerged more than 4,000 miles from the U.S. West Coast.
The island of Ta'u, located in American Samoa, will now be able to ditch its diesel reliance and run almost entirely on renewable energy thanks to "a large solar panel array, microgrid, and batteries installed by SolarCity and Tesla," as UPI reported.
SolarCity was acquired this month by Elon Musk's Tesla.
Up to now, as the Guardian reports Monday,
Ta'u has depended on over 100,000 gallons of diesel shipped in from the main island of Tutuila to survive, using it to power homes, government buildings, and—crucially—water pumps.
When bad weather or rough seas prevented the ferry docking, which was often, the island came to a virtual stand-still, leaving Ta’u's 600 residents unable to work efficiently, go to school, or leave their usually idyllic paradise.
But with the new system, which boasts over 5,000 solar panels and Tesla Powerpacks capable of 6 megawatt-hours of energy storage in place, the island will be able to replace 109,500 gallons of diesel per year—and forgo the risks that posed.
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"Ta'u is not a postcard from the future, it's a snapshot of what is possible right now," Peter Rive, SolarCity’s co-founder and chief technology officer, wrote last week.
For local resident Keith Ahsoon, "This is part of making history. This project will help lessen the carbon footprint of the world. Living on an island, you experience global warming firsthand. Beach erosions and other noticeable changes are a part of life here. It's a serious problem, and this project will hopefully set a good example for everyone else to follow."
Indeed, it speaks to the kind of action a group of countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change called for earlier this month.
The Climate Vulnerable Form (CVF)—which includes Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Costa Rica, the Marshall Islands, and Yemen—outlined at the end of the United Nations climate change conference known as COP22 a vision that includes achieving 100 percent renewable energy by no later than 2050.
Edgar Gutiérrez, environment and energy minister of Costa Rica, said, "We don't know what countries are still waiting for to move towards net carbon neutrality and 100 percent renewable energy. All parties should start the transition; otherwise we will all suffer."
Their initiative drew praise from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said it marked "the type of bold leadership by example the world needs right now on climate change. If countries that have done the least to cause climate change can take such strong steps, so can others. We need action by all, on behalf of all."
Click below to see a short video from SolarCity and Tesla on the Ta'u microgrid:Washington and Lee University has settled with a former student who filed a lawsuit alleging gender bias as the motivation for his expulsion over a sexual assault accusation.
The student, identified as John Doe in the lawsuit he filed in late 2014, was expelled after an investigation in which he was not allowed legal representation or cross examination, and which was conducted by an administrator who allegedly told his accuser that "regret equals rape."
John and the university have "compromised and settled all matters in controversy," according to new documents filed in the case. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Typically, accused students win very little in settlements; they might get their record cleared and a small amount of money that doesn't even cover their legal fees.
John's case was one of the few to survive a motion to dismiss on the grounds that he could not prove gender bias. Judge Norman K. Moon allowed the case to go forward, writing that because the person who conducted the investigation had allegedly told a group of women that regret over a sexual encounter was sufficient grounds to accuse someone of rape, it was conceivable that John was shown bias from the start.
John had slept with a girl referred to as Jane Doe in his lawsuit. John said Jane told him, "I usually don't have sex with someone I meet on the first night, but you are a really interesting guy." The next morning the two exchanged phone numbers and a few days later became Facebook friends and exchanged friendly messages.
But that summer, Jane worked at a women's clinic that handled sexual assault issues. Over the summer she came to reclassify her encounter with John as nonconsensual. Eventually — eight months after the encounter and only after seeing John on the list of those accepted to a study-abroad program she was entering — she reported the incident as a rape to the school's administration.
John was given six hours notice to come in an explain himself, but wasn't told why. When he met with the school's Title IX officer, Lauren Kozak (of "regret equals rape" fame), he wasn't shown Jane's actual complaint.
He was also denied legal representation, and when he asked for time to postpone his meeting with Kozak to gather more evidence or seek advice, she told him she would continue the investigation without his side of the story, forcing him to respond right then.
Kozak only interviewed two of John's four witnesses because, she allegedly told him later, she had enough facts to expel him already. John's witnesses stated they had seen him and Jane after the encounter and everything seemed to be normal.
Even two of Jane's witnesses contradicted her claims by saying she gave no indication of any trauma until after she worked at the women's clinic. Jane also appeared to have visited two therapists who convinced her she was sexually assaulted.
John was allowed to submit questions to be asked during his hearing, but many were rejected, paraphrased incorrectly or asked out of order.
Jane contradicted herself during the hearing. She told investigators she was not intoxicated the night of the encounter and didn't recall a conversation with John on a porch. At the hearing, she claimed she was "considerably intoxicated" and could recall the conversation on the porch. She also contradicted herself during the hearing, at one point saying John was disrespectful and yet later describing him as sweet.
Despite these inconsistencies, John was expelled. Naturally, he sued. In a statement issued Friday, Washington and Lee denied charges of gender bias and said evidence discovered during the lawsuit determined Kozak couldn't have given the "regret equals rape" seminar on the date specified in John's claim. The school said the matter was settled "to the mutual satisfaction of both parties."
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.Features August 2010 Issue
Competitive Canine Weight Pull
Competitive weight pulling isnt just for big dogs (though they excel).
[Updated February 8, 2019]
CANINE WEIGHT PULL OVERVIEW
What is this sport? In weight pulling, a dog‘s strength and stamina are tested by his ability to pull weights.
Prior training required? Moderate.
Physical demands? On the dog: Moderate to high. On the handler: Minimal.
Best-suited structure? Dogs of all sizes and shapes can compete, although the bully breeds do best.
Best-suited temperament? Dogs who enjoy working with their owners.
Cost? Minimal.
Training complexity? Minimal.
Mental stimulation? Moderate.
Physical stimulation? High.
Recreational opportunities? Low.
Competition opportunities and venues? Moderate.
Work it! Work it! Work it! Leaning into the padded harness, muscles bulging with effort, eyes dark with determination, inch-by-inch, the American Staffordshire Terrier pulls the cart loaded with 60-pound pieces of railroad track toward her owner. This is Duvall’s Sureshot Kamakazi, “Banzai,” a striking 43-pound, 17-inch brindle girl. Her owner, Karyn Dawes, smiles wide as she realizes that Banzai is going to record a new “personal best.” It’s official: 3,900 pounds and 90.7 times her body weight. What a gal! Banzai wiggles in delight at Karyn’s hug and effusive praise for a job well done.
In 2003 when Dawes discovered the sport of weight pulling, she had no idea she and her dogs would enjoy it so much. She was an experienced dog sport aficionado, having competed in obedience, Schutzhund, flyball, agility, and carting. It was only at the insistence of a good friend that she capitulated and gave pulling a try. Like many neophytes to a sport, she made a lot of mistakes at the beginning, and then went on to put titles on 11 dogs.
“My first time was cold turkey,” Dawes recalls. “No training, no practice. I borrowed a harness just for fun to see what the dog would do. You’d think by now I would know better! My dog pulled a qualifying pull the first day. The second day she ‘told’ me that if I want to do this sport, she would like me to invest some time in training and conditioning. In other words, I got the ‘paw.’”
Weight Pull History
Dogs have pulled sleds and carts for humans throughout history. In small towns around the world, owners proudly boasted of how strong their dogs were, how much they could pull and how far. “Yeah? You wanna bet? My dog can pull more than your dog!” That’s probably how the sport of weight pulling started. Now there are several organizations that have established rules and regulations for formal competition.
Although any breed can enjoy this sport, it is one that commonly attracts more “bully” breeds (such as American Staffordshire Terriers, Bulldogs, Mastiffs, Boxers, etc.) than any other breed. Some of the sanctioning organizations limit their competitions to purebred dogs while others are open to all dogs.
The United Kennel Club (UKC) rules of competition reflect the goals of most weight pulling competitions, which is to demonstrate a dog’s stamina and strength. In brief, each dog is given 60 seconds to pull the most weight that he can in a 16-foot “chute.” Dogs are separated into “classes” based on their body weight. Dogs who pull a larger percentage of their body weight earn the most points.
The dog wears a padded harness, which is attached to a “trace,” which connects to a “weighted vehicle” that is loaded with sand bags or other easily weighed objects. There are three different types of vehicles.
Sleds are pulled on natural or artificial snow and must be able to carry a minimum of 3,000 pounds.
are pulled on natural or artificial snow and must be able to carry a minimum of 3,000 pounds. Double-axel wheeled carts are pulled on carpet and must be able to carry at least 5,000 pounds.
are pulled on carpet and must be able to carry at least 5,000 pounds. Rail carts are pulled along a rail system and must be able to carry at least 6,000 pounds (the dogs’ path is carpeted so they can achieve traction when pulling).
The chute that contains the pulling system is 35 feet long and between 10 and 20 feet wide.
Canine Weight Pull Titles
There are several titles available in the UKC system. These are just some of them:
United Weight Puller (UWP): Three qualifying pulls are required. These can be all using the same type of weight vehicle or a combination of the three different vehicles. Each of the different vehicles has a different weight requirement. For example, a dog pulling a sled must pull 3 times his body weight; a dog on rails must pull 10 times his body weight; and a dog pulling a cart must pull 8 times his body weight. You must have the UWP title before pursuing the various championship titles.
Three qualifying pulls are required. These can be all using the same type of weight vehicle or a combination of the three different vehicles. Each of the different vehicles has a different weight requirement. For example, a dog pulling a sled must pull 3 times his body weight; a dog on rails must pull 10 times his body weight; and a dog pulling a cart must pull 8 times his body weight. You must have the UWP title before pursuing the various championship titles. United Weight Pull Champion (UWPCH): Once this level of competition is reached, the competitor starts earning points toward the UWPCH title. 100 points are required for the UWPCH.
Once this level of competition is reached, the competitor starts earning points toward the UWPCH title. 100 points are required for the UWPCH. United Weight Pull Champion Excellent (UWPCHX): 250 points are required for this title.
250 points are required for this title. United Grand Weight Pull Champion (UGWPCH): The dog must have completed the UWPCHX title before earning the additional 200 points for this title.
The dog must have completed the UWPCHX title before earning the additional 200 points for this title. United Grand Weight Pull Champion 1 (UGWPC1): The dog must have completed the UGWPCH before earning the additional 200 points for this title.
The somewhat complicated point system is described in detail on the UKC website. Generally, points are earned for the higher levels of competition based on placements (first through fourth place) and the type of vehicle pulled. For example, dogs pulling on wheels earn 20 points for pulling 35 times their body weight, 15 points for 25 times their body weight, 10 points for 15 times their body weight, and 5 points for 10 times their body weight. There are also bonus points awarded for dogs who pull the most weight and the most weight per body weight at each competition. Additional titles require a dog to pull a combination of different vehicles.
There are annual “All Star” rankings based on points earned throughout the year. The rankings are broken into three classes: 1) American Pit Bull Terrier; 2) American Bulldog; and 3) Multi-breed (all other breeds). For dogs who show in conformation as well as weight pulling, there is also a Total Dog Award that can be earned at individual shows by qualifying in a performance sport and taking one of the “winners” awards in conformation on the same day.
Training
Basic pet manners training provides a good foundation for the sport of weight pulling. Your dog needs to be under control and to have been adequately socialized with people and other dogs in order to be comfortable in a competitive environment. That said, weight pulling does not require extensive training. What it does require is the human on the other end of the leash to very gradually physically condition her dog before asking him to pull larger and larger percentages of his body weight.
Dawes, who has trained and titled 11 dogs in the sport, starts by introducing the harness first. “I put the harness on and do short walks with plenty of treats and encouragement. I make sure to hold the spreader bar at the back of the harness so it does not bang the back of the dog’s legs. ‘Drag training’ starts with a plastic bottle filled with small rocks. This is not heavy. Its main purpose is to get the dog used to something noisy following behind. Next I introduce an empty sled. This weighs about 15 pounds. We do lots of praise and rewarding – not luring – but rewards for short distances.”
Experienced handlers know that luring or “baiting” a dog to pull might cause the dog to pull more than he is physically or mentally prepared for. Under the rules of most sanctioning organizations (there are exceptions), handlers are not allowed to use lures or bait during a competition. Although treats are used, they are used to reward the dog for short-distance pulls and gradually increasing weight loads.
“As the dog becomes familiar with the job, I increase the amount of weight and vary the training,” says Dawes. “For example, I might use a heavier weight for short distances and a lighter weight for longer distances. Most of the actual training is done with a sled as few people own their own wheel or rail systems. Occasionally, club members will get together to work their dogs on the actual competition pulling equipment.”
Many people join clubs and train and practice together. Dawes joined her friend’s club, Rip Curl Weight Pullers, and got a lot of help from other members over the years. She now helps newcomers and provides private instruction, as do some of the other club members. The club occasionally offers seminars, but members feel that the real benefits of the club are the camaraderie and support they get from one another.
“We are all enthusiastic about the sport and are always willing to answer questions and give people tips to help them start. When we hold pulls, we encourage people to come without their dog and observe. Once you understand the basics, it’s pretty much a matter of training and conditioning on your own. Just remember: be patient and never forget that the dog did not sign on for the job. You chose the sport; the dog did not. Dogs have good and bad days. Keep your training positive and respect your dog.”
To find a club in your area, go to the UKC website.
Canine Weight Pull Team Attributes
Many who are attracted to dog sports cite the strong relationship that results from the time training and playing together. Weight pulling is no different. “Like any of the dog sports when I ask ‘what’s in it for the dog,’ I have to first point to the quality and quantity of time we spend together,” says Dawes. “Training for anything builds a strong relationship. Some dogs really love the sport. Most work to please their owner. Unfortunately, there are a few people who still use aversive training methods (something that our group does not endorse). You can tell which dogs are trained this way as they walk onto the track.
“Weight pull is work! So, unlike agility or flyball, where the dog barks, jumps, and runs (all things most dogs inherently enjoy), the dog must want to work for the owner or rewards at the end of the pull. There are some dogs who really love pulling, but I would say that most pull to please their handlers.”
The sport attracts many of the “bully” breeds, but Dawes has seen, among others, Great Danes, Rat Terriers, Cattle Dogs, Black and Tan Coonhounds, Basenjis, Patterdale Terriers, Boston Terriers, Shelties, and even an Italian Greyhound. “This sport is mental as much as it is physical. If you capture the dog’s mind, their doggy body will follow. It’s a bit like ‘The Little Engine That Could’ – if they think they can, dogs can do some amazing things.”
People who love this sport come from all walks of life. In the Rip Curl Weight Pullers Club there is a veterinary technician, a groomer, a paramedic, retirees, a heavy equipment operator, and Dawes, who is currently a booking agent for a pet transport company. Prior to finding satisfaction making sure pets arrive safely, she was an advertising sales and layout designer for an aviation newspaper.
Club members may participate in a variety of dog sports although some concentrate all their efforts on this one. “There is the element I refer to as the ‘heavy hitters’ whose only sport is weight pull. These folks parallel the obedience folks who are after the 200 score or the agility people who are aiming for the World Team.”
Equipment and Expenses
Equipment costs are minimal for basic training and conditioning, but you’ll need to join a club unless you want to assume the cost of and find the space for a pulling system. As a member of a weight pulling club, this sport is pretty inexpensive. When you can find someone to instruct you on a private basis, expect to pay around $40 per session. A custom harness for your dog will cost around $75. Entry fees for competition cost about $25.
Get Started!
You might be surprised when you learn that your dog enjoys a sport that results in so much hard work for him. But, with the right animal magnetism, you just might convince him that you’re worth it.
Terry Long, CPDT-KA, is a writer, agility instructor, and behavior counselor in Long Beach, CA. She lives with four dogs and a cat and is addicted to agility and animal behavior.Amazon's Prime service began as a way to get your books and deodorant shipped to your door faster. Which was nice. Now, it's turned into a cornucopia of digital everything: movies, TV, books.
And as it's grown, it's turned into something else: the smartest digital ticket around.
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Amazon's decision to give out free loaner Kindle books solidifies something we've been mulling over: Prime is a killer deal. The killer deal. Of course, this isn't a sale or some font of generosity: Amazon is a business. It's out to get as much of your money as possible just like everyone else, and Prime is highly addictive crack for impulse shoppers. But now that Amazon has so many of us hooked, it's going after more than just our deliveries—Bezos & Co are hoping to knock out some competitors too: Apple. Netflix. The reigning champs. Luckily, we can welcome these pushers to our street corner. Their war is our gain. Let's take a second to reflect on what you get for 80 clams a year:
First, and most simply, Amazon Prime opens up the giant internet warehouse and pours it into your house. Pliers, socks, Blu-rays, speakers, lightbulbs, a new TV—Amazon is the internet's Wal-Mart. Minus, you know, a Wal-Mart. Pretty much everything you can imagine is offered, and Prime makes it reasonable to do a substantial amount of your shopping that way with unlimited free two-day shipping. Need it overnight? Pay just four bucks. Prime's shipping component is a very small revolution, obviating the need to leave your home for trivial buys. No more big box, no more pharmacy, no more Best Buy ripoffs—consolidated commodities, clicks away. Caveat: inflated carbon footprint guilt.
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But the shipping is the old news. Amazon's clearly up to a lot more, turning Prime into a diverse media membership. With the same service, you get access to instantly streaming seasons of shows like 24, Arrested Development, and Lost, plus movies you'll actually want to watch, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Tons of PBS action too, so you can roll your eyes at people and say "Um, I think I'd know, I stream PBS."
All this video is baked into a ton of TV models, plus the excellent Roku line. And your computer, of course. That said, Netflix still has its library whipped. Amazon's free-with-Prime Instant Video offerings just don't have as much good stuff to watch, period. It's competes, but barely. Still, Amazon is constantly expanding its catalog, injecting itself with big names like Fox and PBS. It's not enough to snatch the crown, but it's momentum.
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And then there are the books. Remember those? Of course you do, because you have a Kindle and books are suddenly exciting again. And now that Amazon will lend you books for free, you don't have to worry about buyer's remorse hampering your curiosity about your chances of bedding Chelsea Handler. Yep, every month you'll get a gratis Kindle loaner from a selection of over 5,000 titles. Keep it for as long as you want. Just don't expect the best and the brightest—none of the six major publishing houses are getting in on the loaner book program. Yet. Amazon can be miiiighty persuasive.
Still—free fast shipping, unlimited streaming, and free books is a lot of stuff for $80 a year ($40 if you're a student). Is it enough? Think of it this way: Netflix—streaming-only—is $8 a month. Let's say the cost of a new book every month is $7. How about buying with expedited shipping? That's usually around $8. Add that up, and you're spending $276 per year on the low end. Prime's got you covered for a lot less.
And this is about a lot more than just buying shit. All signs point to Amazon using Prime as its warm media spigot in perpetuity, feeding hungry devices like the Kindle Fire, and wrapping you into—as much as I fucking hate this word—its own ecosystem. It might be premature now, but Apple has its iTunes, and Amazon will have its Prime. And Amazon wants to lock you in just as badly as Apple does.
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So weigh your options. By volume, Amazon's the winner—you simply can't get as much stuff, whether physical or megabyte, anywhere else with one subscription. Prime is lacking, yes. In some places, pretty glaringly. But Prime isn't Amazon's bonus side project—it's the future of the company, its ramrod. It's going to get better, because it has to. Prime's a great deal now, but given time, it could be the way you happily eat up everything online.
You can keep up with Sam Biddle, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.Nine people were killed and seven wounded after a gunman opened fire inside Umpqua Community College. The community in Roseberg, Oregon has banded together and braced themselves as names of the victims were released in the wake of the tragic events. All of the nine victims have now been named.
Lucero Alcaraz
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.
Lucero was a 19-year-old nursing student who was killed inside the college. Her sister Maria wrote on Facebook that she hasn’t been able to sleep since her passing.
“Lucero, I miss you I wish you were here. I can't sleep. I never got the chance to tell you how proud of you I was. You would have been a great pediatric nurse. I was so proud of you for getting you college completely paid through scholarships and you made it into college honors. You were going to do great things love. I ache so much right now… I need you…”
Lawrence Levine
Larry Levine, 67, was a creative writing teacher at UCC and killed by the gunman on Thursday.
Friends of Dr Levine told Reuters that he was teaching in his classroom when the shooting occurred. Friends and family gathered at his home on Friday to mourn his death.
Kim Saltmarsh Dietz
The 59-year-old leaves behind her husband Eric Dietz, as he announced her death on Facebook.
"It is with deep grief in my heart that I must announce that Kim was one of the people killed yesterday at UCC," he wrote.
Quinn Glen Cooper
Quinn, 18, just graduated high school in June. The day of the shooting was his fourth day of college.
"I don't know how we're going to move forward without him, our lives are shattered beyond repair," a family member said during a news conference.
Rebecka Carnes
Rebecka,18, was studying to become a dental hygienist. Her cousin Bethany Johson wrote a tribute for Rebecka on Facebook.
"Speachless! Your cousins are your first bestfriends I got the pleasure of having this Amazing young lady as mine. She had the biggest heart an amazing soul. The world clearly couldnt handle that much good. But now your flying high with the beautiful angels and you get to be with grandma. I love you so much and am going to miss you! Rest in peace, Rebecka Ann."
Lucas Eibel
Lucas, 18, was a quadruplet. He had tow brothers and one sister. The quadruplets graduated from Roseburg High School this year.
Jason Dale Johnson
Jason Johnson, 33, recently completed a six-month drug rehab program with the Salvation Army in Portland. His mother Tonja Johnson Engel told NBC News that it was her son's first week at the community college.
“He started Monday and he was so proud of what he had accomplished, and rightly so,” she told the news agency. “The other day he looked at me and hugged me and said, 'Mom, how long have you been waiting for one of your kids to go to college?' And I said, 'Oh, about 20 years.'”
Sarena Dawn Moore
Ms Moore, 44, was a graduate of a high school in Reno, Nevada. Oregon Live reported that her brother said it was too early to speak on his sister's death.
“It's not an easy subject... one thing I will say is I'm glad the officers, when they did get there, took care of business.”
She reportedly attended Seventh-Day Adventist Church, who posted a tribute to Ms Moore on their Facebook page.
“It's been reported that one of Sarena's last posts on Facebook was an affirmation of her desire to stand up for Jesus and Christianity. We urge all Northwest members to pray specifically for the Grants Pass Church and Sarena's extended family as well as our Roseburg area churches.”
Trevon Taylor
Trevon was 20-years-old.
"Trevon was larger than life and brought the best out of those around him," a family member said during a press conference.
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 nowSyrian President Bashar Al Assad accused Turkey of intentionally ignoring terrorists of the self-proclaimed Islamic State as they attempt to cross the border between the two countries into Syria.
During an interview with a US TV channel, Assad warned that the self-proclaimed Islamic State is expanding its reach in Syria, and that is in no small part due to Erdogan. Labeling the Turkish Prime Minister as a "Muslim Brotherhood fanatic," Assad accused him of not only failing to prevent the flow of would-be Islamic State terrorists from Turkey to Syria, but of actively supporting the terrorist group.
© AP Photo / Raqqa Media Center of the Islamic State Number of ISIL Militants Rising Amid Coalition Airstrikes, Assad Says
When asked if he believed Erdogan could stop the infiltration of terrorists into Syria, Assad responded, "Yeah, of course. Definitely. He doesn’t only ignore the terrorists from coming to Syria. He supports them, logistically and militarily. Directly. On a daily basis."
Assad additionally referred to Erdogan as "somebody who’s suffering from political megalomania," explaining that his Turkish counterpart "thinks that he is becoming the sultan of the new era of the 21st century."
Turkey has been the subject of serious international scrutiny for its failure in preventing would-be terrorists – many from Europe and the US – from travelling into Syria and joining the ranks of the Islamic State, and several other terrorist groups operating in the war-torn country. A Human Rights Watch report released in October 2013 accused Turkish authorities of allowing foreigners to enter the country to join the fight against Assad.
While Turkish officials have repeatedly said that they are doing all they can to secure the 500-mile-long border, the rising number of foreigners crossing into Syria seems to indicate that the the country has become the preferred transit route for would-be terrorists. In January, the head of Europol, Europe’s police organization, said that as many as 5,000 Europeans have joined the fighting in Syria.
For their part, Turkish officials have rejected accusations of allowing fighters into Syria, and instead, redirected the blame to their European counterparts for not doing enough to prevent their citizens from travelling to the war-zone.
Last month, it was also revealed that the country was treating an Islamic State commander in a hospital near the border. A statement was released by Denizli province Governor’s office, confirming that the commander, who was a Turkish citizen, had full rights to health benefits in his country and that "Judicial procedures regarding his injury were carried out when he crossed into Turkey from Syria." Last September, Turkish daily Aydinlik reported the government has opened a 75-bed capacity to treat jihadists injured while fighting in Syria.
Assad discussed several other issues in the interview, including the role of other parties such as Russia, the US, and Saudi Arabia in the conflict |
officers were on patrol for the post-season game, Dunn said.
The male relative was not injured, but the victim is hospitalized in critical condition. His name hasn't been released. A report early Monday erroneously identified the victim as an officer for the Los Angeles Police Department.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.A roadside bomb hit Sgt. Jerrald Jensen's Humvee in Iraq, punching through heavy armor and shooting a chunk of hot metal into his head at several times the speed of sound, shattering his face and putting him in a coma. "I wasn't supposed to live," the veteran lisped with half a tongue through numb lips. "No one knows why I did. It's shocking." Even more shocking is what Jensen did next. After 16 surgeries, the sergeant volunteered to go back to combat in one of the most savage corners of Afghanistan, where he was injured again. Perhaps most shocking, though, is what happened when he got home.
Above: Sgt. Jerrald Jensen guards the Kunar River Valley at outpost Bari Alai in 2009. He deployed to Afghanistan 21 months after a bomb blast in Iraq in 2007 shattered the lower half of his face and Army doctors rebuilt his jaw. Courtesy Jerrald Jensen
Jensen returned to recover in a battalion at Fort Carson designed to care for wounded soldiers called the Warrior Transition Unit. In the WTU, the soldier with a heroic record said he encountered a hostile environment where commanders, some of whom had never deployed, harassed and punished the wounded for the slightest misstep while making them wait many weeks for critical medical care and sometimes canceling care altogether.
In 2011, a year after joining the WTU, just days after coming out of a surgery, Jensen tested positive for the drug amphetamine. The then-41-year-old asked to be retested, suggesting his many Army prescriptions might be to blame. His commander refused and instead gave Jensen the maximum punishment, cutting his rank to private, docking his pay and canceling surgery to fix his face so he could spend weeks mopping floors, picking weeds and scrubbing toilets.
Then, Jensen said, WTU leaders said he should be discharged for misconduct — the equivalent of getting fired — with an other-than-honorable rating that could bar him from medical benefits for life.
Jerrald Jensen drives to Walmart to get chicken and rice for dinner. Because of his injury he can eat only soft foods. Michael Ciaglo / The Gazette
"To call guys who sacrificed so much dishonorable and kick them out with nothing?" said Jensen, who is now out of the Army, living in a small apartment with blankets covering the windows because his injuries make him sensitive to light. "Christ sake, man, it is a disgrace."
With troops going back and forth between duty stateside and in war zones during multiple deployments, disciplinary regulations designed for more conventional wars of the past increasingly are snaring troops. A Gazette investigation shows that after a decade of war, the Army is discharging more soldiers for misconduct every year. The number kicked out Army-wide annually has increased 60 percent since 2006.
Sunday, The Gazette detailed how some of the discharged have invisible wounds of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder but are kicked out anyway. The factors driving the surge in discharges include a lack of objective tests for those invisible injuries; the need to shrink the force by at least 80,000 by 2017; and Army systems that make combat units wait months or years for replacements for the wounded, turning injured soldiers into a burden and giving low-level leaders incentive to get rid of them.
"At a policy level the Army is saying it takes care of these guys but at a command level it is not happening," said Lenore Warger, a counselor who has worked with discharged soldiers for 12 years at the veterans rights organization The Quaker House near Fort Bragg in North Carolina. "Oftentimes guys with PTSD or TBI are shunned. Instead of being cared for they are marginalized."
More than 13,000 soldiers were discharged for misconduct from the Army in 2012, records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show. Army leaders contend that caring for soldiers is a top priority and no one is unduly punished. But the Army does not track how many of the discharged were also injured.
A struggle for justice
Jerrald Jensen holds a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at his outpost in Afghanistan in 2009. He deployed to Afghanistan after being Injured in Iraq. Courtesy Jerrald Jensen
Jensen's saga shows that in the recent surge of misconduct discharges, wounded soldiers are targeted even when injuries are obvious, conduct is heroic, alleged misconduct is relatively minor, and the unit punishing them is designed to help troops heal.
"If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody," Jensen said.
The Army refused multiple requests to comment on Jensen's case.
Army regulations allow soldiers to be discharged for any number of infractions, from drug use to disrespect to showing up late too often. Ultimately, the commanding general of each post decides who is punished and who is spared.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Army considers soldiers' entire records, as well as their physical and mental conditions, in a discharge. "In short, each case is considered individually and judged on its merits," he said in an email.
At Fort Carson, discharge data obtained by The Gazette shows few of the wounded are spared. Of the 41 Fort Carson soldiers designated as wounded (those in the medical discharge process) who were targeted for a misconduct discharge in 2012, 80 percent were cut loose.
In the WTU, where soldiers by definition have complex medical issues, the rate of discharge was just as high. Of the five soldiers up for punishment, all but one were kicked out.
In 2011, it was even more harsh. Of four WTU soldiers targeted for misconduct, all were kicked out.
The Fort Carson figures do not account for the unknown number of soldiers with PTSD or TBI who are not in the medical discharge process or the WTU. The Army said it does not track the number of wounded soldiers kicked out for misconduct.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Anderson, who commanded Fort Carson from November 2011 until mid-March and is slated to become commander of Fort Bragg this summer, said discipline must be strictly enforced, even when soldiers are hurt.
Jerrald Jensen Wounded soldiers not being cared for Michael Ciaglo / The Gazette
"You are still a soldier until you take the uniform off," he said. "So you cut your hair, you don't smoke pot, you take care of yourself, you don't tell people to F off, you don't get DUIs, you don't go smoke spice."
Jensen agreed but said when some soldiers struggle from injuries sustained while serving, the country should not abandon them.
"We are not asking for much. The Army owes us what we owe the Army. Fulfill the contract. Simple as that," he said. "We went over there. We served honorably. We were hurt in the line of duty. We should be taken care of."
Honor and service
Jensen was raised in part by his grandfather, Walter Hinkle. Walt, as Jensen called him, was a Marine captured by the Japanese in World War II who survived the Bataan Death March and three years in a prison camp then stayed in the Marines another 25 years, through the Korean War and part of the Vietnam War.
"He taught me everything I know about honor and service. Everything. I wanted to be just like him," Jensen said.
Jerrald Jensen gets "Cold Blood" tattooed on his neck in tribute to the cavalry company he served with on a mountaintop in Afghanistan. Jensen has a tattoo of a Purple Heart on the other side of his neck.
Summit Tattoo artist Martin Bee shaves Jerrald Jensen's neck in preparation for a tattoo. Michael Ciaglo / The Gazette
When the twin towers came down in 2001, Jensen, a wiry, 5-foot-6 31-year-old working in construction, called his mother and told her he had spoken to his grandfather. Walt had said, "Put your life in order; it is time to serve your country."
"I said, 'Honey, Walt has been dead for some time,' " recalled his mother, Annie Rees. "He said, 'I know, but I spoke to him, and he said it was time to go.' "
Jensen joined the Army in 2004. He was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson in late 2005 and soon deployed to the most dangerous part of Iraq during one of the most dangerous times of the war.
It was Baghdad, late 2006. At the start of the war, the Pentagon assured the public that troops would be greeted as liberators. By the time Jensen arrived, Muslim factions were battling for control using market bombings and murder squads, and troop deaths were on their way to an all-time high.
Just as the outlook had changed since the invasion, so had the trucks. At the start of the war, soldiers drove lightweight, doorless Humvees. Insurgents kept hitting them with roadside bombs, so the Army covered the trucks in armor. Insurgents responded with bigger bombs, so the Army added more armor.
By the time Jensen was driving the streets of Baghdad, his Humvee was encased in steel and blast-proof glass. The enemy responded with a vicious little device called an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP.
An EFP is a piece of steel pipe, no bigger than a paint can, packed with explosives and capped with a bowl-shaped copper disk. When the explosives fire, the copper instantly warps into a molten dart flying at five times the speed of sound. It can slice through armor like a knife through butter.
No place safe
In the first few months Jensen was in Iraq, EFP attacks more than doubled.
Insurgents set the explosives where traffic had to slow, aiming the copper spears at the front windows where senior leaders often rode.
Soldiers tried to look out for them, but there was little they could do.
"We lost a lot of guys that way," Jensen said. "There was no neighborhood that was really safe."
Sgt. Jerrald Jensen sits in the Humvee in Iraq in 2007 where a few weeks later he was nearly killed. Courtesy Jerrald Jensen
Jensen was the driver for the No. 2 commander in his battalion, a hard-working major named Keith Brace. Their mission was to drive the most dangerous neighborhoods every day, trying to forge alliances with local leaders.
Over the months, the major and Jensen grew close. "Jensen was a great guy," said Brace, now retired. "Very talkative, active, high energy.... I always got the feeling he was taking good care of me."
In August 2007, the Army received intelligence that insurgents were targeting the top commanders in his battalion, Jensen said. He figured the insurgents probably knew the major always rode in the front passenger seat, and one well-aimed EFP would cut him in half.
On their next rest day, Jensen had Army welders move the major's seat back 6 inches. Jensen figured that if an EFP hit, the blast might still rip off the major's legs, but at least he might live.
Three days later, on Aug. 22, 2007, it happened. They were rolling in a convoy of six Humvees through a rough neighborhood on the edge of Sadr City. Jensen drove while a gunner on top of the Humvee scanned the rooftops and the major talked on the radio in his pushed-back seat.
The convoy slowed to go through a gate. On one side, sun-bleached buildings lined the road. On the other, a dusty soccer field rippled in the heat.
"It was a good day," Brace said. "Everything was normal. Kids were playing soccer. You don't see people out if a bomb is about to go off."
Jensen watched the trucks in front of him creep through the gate, unaware that three EFPs were cached on a concrete barrier on the roadside.
Then, boom.This study examined the neurocognitive and electrophysiological effects of a citicoline-caffeine-based beverage in 60 healthy adult participants enrolled in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Measures of electrical brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) and neuropsychological measures examining attention, concentration and reaction time were administered. Compared to placebo, participants receiving the citicoline-caffeine beverage exhibited significantly faster maze learning times and reaction times on a continuous performance test, fewer errors in a go/no-go task and better accuracy on a measure of information processing speed. EEG results examining P450 event-related potentials revealed that participants receiving the citicoline-caffeine beverage exhibited higher P450 amplitudes than controls, suggesting an increase in sustained attention. Overall, these findings suggest that the beverage significantly improved sustained attention, cognitive effort and reaction times in healthy adults. Evidence of improved P450 amplitude indicates a general improvement in the ability to accommodate new and relevant information within working memory and overall enhanced brain activation.According to storyboards, the first scene with the T. Rex played out like this: the kids were in the Explorer, with a character called Regis who showed Tim the goggles. Grant had glasses and a beard (like in the novel) and had Gennaro as a passenger. Lex was kicking her legs over the front seat and Tim stopped her when he heard the T. Rex, and he still had the goggles on. Gennaro had more hair. Lex looks at the roof before the leg lands on it, with the chain still attached. A shot of the Explorer from the T. Rex's side of the fence. Tim sees the T. Rex touching the fence through the goggles. The danger sign also lands on the roof. When the T. Rex first steps out onto the road, its foot hits the ground. A POV shot of Tim watching the T. Rex circle the other Explorer. The T. Rex eyeing Grant and Gennaro through the Explorer, and Grant using a radio to warn the kids not to move. Tim and Lex looking up at the T. Rex through the roof as it looks in at them. A wider shot of the T. Rex attacking the roof. Tim and Lex crawling through the mud. The T. Rex watching Grant wave the flare from her POV. Gennaro runs from the Explorer, but doesn't wave a flare like Malcolm. The T. Rex gives chase, knocking Grant out of the way. Tim is unconscious in the Explorer, and then tries to get free. The T. Rex looks in at Tim with a mouth full of mud, et cetera.The mysterious Tree of Life
On the top of a sand dune, in the middle of the desert in South Bahrain, a solitary tree stands tall. No flora can be seen for miles around as there’s not a drop of water to be found. And yet, the wide-branched tree has survived for some 4 centuries. The Bahrainis believe that the Tree of Life is a natural wonder, and the 10-metre high tree now attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year.
It is said that long ago Adam and Eve once walked these lands. Legend has it that the tree was planted in 1583 to mark the spot where the Garden of Eden was located in Biblical times. The wildest stories are told about the Tree of Life: according to some, the roots extend so far that they can absorb moisture from a fresh water spring reservoir hundreds of metres deep, located many kilometres away. But probably imagination is better than reality.THE WOODLANDS, Texas - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock.
Last week, the rover's science team announced that analysis of powder from a drilled mudstone rock on Mars indicates past environmental conditions that were favorable for microbial life. Additional findings presented today (March 18) at a news briefing at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, suggest those conditions extended beyond the site of the drilling.
Using infrared-imaging capability of a camera on the rover and an instrument that shoots neutrons into the ground to probe for hydrogen, researchers have found more hydration of minerals near the clay-bearing rock than at locations Curiosity visited earlier.
The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) can also serve as a mineral-detecting and hydration-detecting tool, reported Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe. "Some iron-bearing rocks and minerals can be detected and mapped using the Mastcam's near-infrared filters."
Ratios of brightness in different Mastcam near-infrared wavelengths can indicate the presence of some hydrated minerals. The technique was used to check rocks in the "Yellowknife Bay" area where Curiosity's drill last month collected the first powder from the interior of a rock on Mars. Some rocks in Yellowknife Bay are crisscrossed with bright veins.
"With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area," said Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix."
The Russian-made Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on Curiosity detects hydrogen beneath the rover. At the rover's very dry study area on Mars, the detected hydrogen is mainly in water molecules bound into minerals. "We definitely see signal variation along the traverse from the landing point to Yellowknife Bay," said DAN Deputy Principal Investigator Maxim Litvak of the Space Research Institute, Moscow. "More water is detected at Yellowknife Bay than earlier on the route. Even within Yellowknife Bay, we see significant variation."
Findings presented today from the Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on Curiosity's arm indicate that the wet environmental processes that produced clay at Yellowknife Bay did so without much change in the overall mix of chemical elements present. The elemental composition of the outcrop Curiosity drilled into matches the composition of basalt. For example, it has basalt-like proportions of silicon, aluminum, magnesium and iron. Basalt is the most common rock type on Mars. It is igneous, but it is also thought to be the parent material for sedimentary rocks Curiosity has examined.
"The elemental composition of rocks in Yellowknife Bay wasn't changed much by mineral alteration," said Curiosity science team member Mariek Schmidt of Brock University, Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
A dust coating on rocks had made the composition detected by APXS not quite a match for basalt until Curiosity used a brush to sweep the dust away. After that, APXS saw less sulfur.
"By removing the dust, we've got a better reading that pushes the classification toward basaltic composition," Schmidt said. The sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay likely formed when original basaltic rocks were broken into fragments, transported, re-deposited as sedimentary particles, and mineralogically altered by exposure to water.
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life. Curiosity, carrying 10 science instruments, landed seven months ago to begin its two-year prime mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more about the mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl and http://www.nasa.gov/msl.
You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.
News Media Contact
Guy Webster 818-354-6278Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.guy.webster@jpl.nasa.govDwayne Brown 202-358-1726NASA Headquarters, Washingtondwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov2013-099Bold Trade #2
Chicago Bears trade Jay Cutler, Martellus Bennett and Antrel Rolle to the Houston Texans in exchange for draft picks.
The Houston Texans were destroyed in the playoffs by Kansas City. Brian Hoyer looked awful and proved he is not a worthy starting quarterback in the league. This team won a weak AFC South division and has the opportunity to do so again if they make a few adjustments. They are a few pieces away from being a contender in the AFC. The Bears are looking to find a way to gain draft picks and reboot to start fresh for John Fox and the coaching staff. This trade could bring both of those wishes to reality.
Starting with the Texans, a team on the brink of being a very good team. Their defense looked solid this past season and coach Bill O’Brien did a great job with a makeshift offense, especially at quarterback. They need at least an above-average quarterback to lead this offense. O’Brien could make Jay Cutler into something in Houston.
Former Bears offensive coordinator Adam Gase did a great job with Cutler this past season and O’Brien could have taken notice. He knows he has a defense now that can keep him in games and just needs an offense that can put up some points. They do not have a solid tight end and Martellus Bennett could bring that to the offense to help DeAndre Hopkins in the passing game. Speaking of Hopkins, he is just a better version of Alshon Jeffery in Chicago where Jay Cutler thrived. Antrel Rolle brings veteran leadership and a starting strong safety for next season.
The Bears are desperately looking to move on from Jay Cutler. Fox and team management know this team needs a fresh face at quarterback to create momentum for the franchise. The Bears’ coaching staff and management are looking to create their own roster and put their own fingerprint on this franchise and get rid of the predecessor’s team. This trade allows this to happen and creates an optimism for the future. They are heading into this offseason with $56.4 million in cap space and can really form this roster to their preference with free agent signings and more draft picks.
Let’s get to the details of this deal on why this works for both teams. The Texans enter the offseason with $29.5 million in cap space. If they cut Arian Foster, that saves them $6.6 million. Cutting Brian Hoyer also saves the Texans $4.8 million for next season. You add those two with the $29.5 million starting point and it totals up to $40.9 million. This opens up the Texans to take on the salaries of Jay Cutler, Martellus Bennett and Antrel Rolle. Those three players’ salaries add up to a $26 million cap hit. This leaves $14.9 million left to handle free agency and rookie salaries. This is even before they make more adjustments to the roster after accepting this trade which will open up more cap space.
The Texans would give a second-round, fourth-round and sixth-round pick to the Bears, but not all in the same year. Even if they give them the second and fourth round in the 2016 draft, it still works out well for the Texans. Their two biggest needs after this trade heading into 2016 would be a developmental quarterback and running back. They can easily handle that with their first- and third-round picks (Ezekiel Elliott in the first, Christian Hackenburg in the third?).
The Bears win by adding more picks to develop and re-building the roster to re-energize the franchise. They can take their future quarterback with the No. 11 overall pick, or use these picks they gain in this trade to go get one earlier in the draft. Bears’ fans rejoice as they get rid of Jay Cutler and truly get to start over and the Texans go for it all in a weak AFC South division.The scandal has exposed the stark differences between laws governing corporate behavior in Europe and the United States.
With a few exceptions, like Britain, most European countries do not provide for class-action suits, forcing owners to challenge corporations alone. Emissions regulations in the European Union are also full of loopholes, and it is harder to prove wrongdoing. There is no single agency in the bloc with the enforcement powers of the Environmental Protection Agency or Federal Trade Commission.
Volkswagen, for its part, has good reason to take a hard line in Europe.
In the United States, criminal and civil fines, settlements with owners and other costs have come to more than $22 billion for fewer than 600,000 vehicles. If it had to pay as much per car in Europe, where there are 8.5 million diesel Volkswagens with the emissions software, the cost would be more than $300 billion — enough to destroy the company.
Even in a worst-case scenario, Volkswagen is unlikely to have to pay more than a few thousand euros per car in Europe. Still, any additional financial burden would divert yet more funds that Matthias Müller, the company’s chief executive, would rather spend to develop new models and stay on the cutting edge of a shift to electric and self-driving vehicles.
Whatever the outcome in the European lawsuits, they will be a long-running headache for Volkswagen. While the American court proceedings were costly for the company, they were at least efficient.
The class-action lawsuits by owners were bundled into one case and settled in less than a year. In Europe, Volkswagen is facing thousands of legal pinpricks — lawsuits by owners brave enough to take on one of the Continent’s biggest corporations.
A nurse named Eithne Higgins, for example, has filed a lawsuit in a district court in Castlebar, in northwest Ireland. She argues that her diesel vehicle, made by a Volkswagen unit, has plunged in value because it is equipped with the software designed to fool emissions tests.(A) mRNA expression of thermogenic genes in inguinal WAT of mice under 30°C in the fed state. n= 10 mice/group.
(B) Body weight of mice before and after EODF treatment at 30°C. n= 10 mice/group.
(C) Fat mass of mice before and after EODF treatment at 30°C. n= 10 mice/group.
(D) Representative H&E staining of inguinal WAT sections from EODF (at 30°C) mice (right) and AL mice (left). Scale bar: 100 μm.
(E) Representative UCP1 immunohistochemical staining of inguinal WAT sections from EODF (at 30°C) mice (right) and AL mice (left). Scale bar: 100 μm.
(F–G) Liver Fgf21 mRNA expression (F) and serum FGF21 levels (G) of Ppara wild-type (Ppara+/+) and Pparα null (Ppara−/−) mice with or without EODF treatment in the fed state. n = 5 mice/group.
(H) mRNA expression of Ucp1 in inguinal WAT of Ppara+/+ and Ppara−/− mice with or without EODF treatment in the fed state. n = 5 mice/group.
(I) Serum acetate and lactate levels of mice at 30°C. n= 10 mice/group.
(J) mRNA expression of Mct1 in inguinal WAT of Ppara+/+ and Ppara−/− mice with or without EODF treatment in the fed state. n = 5 mice/group
(K) Serum acetate and lactate levels of Ppara+/+ and Ppara−/− mice with or without EODF treatment. n = 5 mice/group.
Data are presented as mean ± SEM. Different lowercase letters indicate statistical significance by two-tailed unpaired t-test, a, p < 0.05; c, p < 0.005; and d, p < 0.001. Black letters show the effects of EODF (EODF versus AL within the same strain), red letters the effects of Ppara knockout (Pparα−/− versus Ppara+/+ mice within the same treatment). SCFAs, short chain fatty acids.A co-worker found Duggan’s torn hat, 50 yards away, on the roof of the plant.
Investigators later determined the violent reaction in the drum was caused by the mixture of two common industrial chemicals: Hydrochloric acid and sodium hypochlorite, undiluted industrial bleach.
Workers told investigators that they had been worried about chemical reactions and had warned supervisors that, “someone is going to get his head blown off,” according to the Milwaukee County medical examiner’s death report.
Plant managers, including Scott Swosinski, denied knowing about any potential for drums to explode.
Swosinski told investigators from the medical examiner’s office that labels on drums weren’t always accurate and that customers trying to dispose of hazardous waste would commonly leave small amounts of chemicals in the bottom of the barrels. It was standard practice at the plant to commingle the chemicals, the report said.
Swosinski remained part of Mid-America Steel Drum’s management team until mid-2016. He could not be reached for comment.
Chojnacki escaped with dime-sized acid burns from the chemical spray. Emotionally, he was shaken.
“I was off work for maybe a month or so, and then I came back for a while,” he said. “Then I just quit and got another job. I was tired of the whole ordeal.”
Mid-America wasn’t the only company at fault for putting workers in danger, Chojnacki said. The companies that shipped the containers with leftover chemicals shared the blame. They shouldn’t have sent hazardous material to a drum reconditioning plant in the first place, he said.
“If they are using that chemical, they should have a way of disposing it (safely) there,” he said.
Duggan’s mother, Patricia Duggan, received a $40,000 settlement from Milport Chemical, the company that shipped one of the volatile chemicals. The agreement included a clause prohibiting her from discussing details of her son’s death.
More than 30 years later, Patricia Duggan said even if she hadn’t agreed to keep quiet, she wouldn’t want to talk about it. It remains too painful.
But she did say she hoped nobody else would be harmed in the same way.
“If they’re still doing the same thing, I do hope you’ll pursue the story,” she said.
Documents and interviews show that Mid-America Steel Drum and others in the chemical container recycling industry have been operating the same way for decades, despite the dangers.
In August 2010, a month after Greif’s CLCM group acquired Indianapolis Drum Service, a supervisor in the facility narrowly escaped injury after chemicals were commingled in a capped barrel.
Robert Scheer/The Star A three-alarm fire heavily damaged the IndyDrum plant in Indianapolis in May 2014. The fire was blamed on spontaneous combustion of chemicals.
Workers described the container as looking “like it was pregnant” before the lid shot off, landing 6 to 7 feet from the supervisor, Jerry Spegal. As with the drum that killed Duggan, this one spewed chemicals several feet in the air and drenched Spegal.
Spegal failed to mention the incident to OSHA inspectors who had been investigating the plant for several months following worker complaints about coughing and breathing problems from chemical exposure.
OSHA inspectors cited the company for 23 violations, the majority classified as serious. The company negotiated the fine from a proposed $308,000 down to $110,000.
Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas law school professor who has consulted for OSHA, said the agency’s ability to hold employers accountable has been “woefully inadequate” for decades.
McGarity co-authored a study last year entitled, “When OSHA Gives Discounts on Danger, Workers Are Put At Risk.”
The report noted that the agency inspects only 1% of workplaces each year, and often agrees to substantially reduced fines in exchange for a company’s promise to fix the hazard promptly.
Employers often treat the fines as a cost of doing business, McGarity said.
More about Greif Greif Inc., a manufacturer of industrial packaging and containers based in Ohio, began as a barrel-maker in 1877. In fiscal year 2016, Greif had $3.3 billion in sales and more than 13,000 employees worldwide. Greif and the reconditioning business In 2010, Greif entered the business of recycling and reconditioning steel drums and other containers, launching a joint venture LLC called Container Life Cycle Management. The venture has six facilities, three in Milwaukee County.
Company seeks safety audits Greif hired a consulting firm to assess the CLCM facilities. In 2016, one of the consultants became a whistle-blower, reporting safety concerns at all the CLCM plants. The plants in Milwaukee are also known as Mid-America Steel Drum Co.
Investigation finds problems
More about Greif Greif Inc., a manufacturer of industrial packaging and containers based in Ohio, began as a barrel-maker in 1877. In fiscal year 2016, Greif had $3.3 billion in sales and more than 13,000 employees worldwide. Greif and the reconditioning business In 2010, Greif entered the business of recycling and reconditioning steel drums and other containers, launching a joint venture LLC called Container Life Cycle Management. The venture has six facilities, three in Milwaukee County.
Company seeks safety audits Greif hired a consulting firm to assess the CLCM facilities. In 2016, one of the consultants became a whistle-blower, reporting safety concerns at all the CLCM plants. The plants in Milwaukee are also known as Mid-America Steel Drum Co.
Investigation finds problems 2300 W. Cornell St.,
Milwaukee
Employees have complained about chemical burns and breathing noxious fumes from processing containers with leftover chemicals. 2015 Safety audit score: 32%. Employees have complained about chemical burns and breathing noxious fumes from processing containers with leftover chemicals. 2015 Safety audit score: 3950 S. Pennsylvania Ave.,
St. Francis
Serious clean water violations, including repeated mercury discharges. Violations noted by regulators past three years. 2015 Safety audit score: 39%. Serious clean water violations, including repeated mercury discharges. Violations noted by regulators past three years. 2015 Safety audit score: 8570 S. Chicago Road,
Oak Creek
Worker Charles Duggan was killed in February 1984, while capping a 55-gallon steel drum filled with waste chemicals. 2015 Safety audit score: 35%. Worker Charles Duggan was killed in February 1984, while capping a 55-gallon steel drum filled with waste chemicals. 2015 Safety audit score:
Indianapolis
Indy Drum, located across the street from a day care center, was heavily damaged by fire in May 2014 caused by spontneous combustion. In 2010, employees told an inspector they mix “every type of chemical known to man” and often see reactions. 2015 Safety audit score: 65%. Indy Drum, located across the street from a day care center, was heavily damaged by fire in May 2014 caused by spontneous combustion. In 2010, employees told an inspector they mix “every type of chemical known to man” and often see reactions. 2015 Safety audit score: Memphis, Tenn.,
Drumco of Tennessee Was in “significant noncompliance” for continuous wastewater discharge issues, according to a 2014 state report. 2015 Safety audit score: 56%. Drumco of Tennessee Was in “significant noncompliance” for continuous wastewater discharge issues, according to a 2014 state report. 2015 Safety audit score: Arkadelphia, Ark.,
Drumco of Arkansas. Employees complain of burns and injuries while processing steel drums in furnace. 2015 Safety audit score: 57%. Drumco of Arkansas. Employees complain of burns and injuries while processing steel drums in furnace. 2015 Safety audit score:
In 2013, before Kramer joined Safety Management Services, the Iowa-based consulting firm conducted safety audits at CLCM plants in Indianapolis, Memphis and Arkadelphia.
The consultants rated each operation on compliance with corporate policies and procedures as well as government regulations. The facilities performance scores ranged from 48% to 61%.
One worker told the consultants that “no one follows any safety rules.” Another pleaded: “Just continue to have prayer.”
Consultants encouraged Greif to hire industrial hygienists to come in and evaluate worker exposure to chemical fumes.
In 2014, OSHA inspectors cited the Oak Creek plant with a “serious” violation for not having proper protections in place for “release of hazardous energy,” known in industrial terms as “lockout/tagout.” It includes such practices as ensuring equipment is disabled during maintenance.
The agency fined CLCM, $7,000. The company negotiated it down to $4,900.
One of the Arkadelphia employees, Billy Joe Patrick, said he heard talk over the years from managers about making his workplace safer. But not much was actually done.
“They would say ‘We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, we’re gonna do this,’” he said in an interview. “Well, I didn’t see anything happening regarding bettering it.”
Patrick worked on a burner at the Arkadelphia plant in 2013, pouring chemical residue into a furnace and then pushing the drums through for cleaning.
He said barrels came in with all sorts of unknown chemicals.
“As soon as you dumped it, if it was real flammable, it was going to let you know real quick,” he said.
Flames would shoot out of the furnace, he said, and it didn’t matter whether you had on a face shield. The fire would flare up under it. There was not much Patrick could do but lean back as far as he could while holding onto the barrel. If he let go, fire would engulf the whole area.
“You can only step back so far. It shoots out that little opening, you don’t have nowhere to go,” he said. “There’s fire all around you but you can’t let go.”
Patrick held on. His hair, mustache and beard were singed.
Greif told the Journal Sentinel the company is “examining investments in automation to increase safety” in its burner operations.
An incident in March 2013 prompted Patrick, 52 at the time, to quit.
He had just dumped something in the burner.
Right at that moment, he happened to be taking a deep breath.
“I went to my knees,” he said. “It felt like it just burnt my lungs.... I started sweating golf balls.”
He went to see a doctor the next morning.
“They said, ‘Mr. Patrick, do you know you have COPD?’”
Patrick said he had never had breathing problems, or suspected he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an incurable condition, until breathing in those fumes.
“They told me if I wanted to live, I better move to a different department or quit the job.”
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108-year drought for Chicago, when he slapped a 10th inning double down the left field line to score the go-ahead run, the run that held up, the run that killed the curse, if there ever was such a thing.
The rain had just cleared, and Bryan Shaw had come back out onto the mound after a 17-minute delay. After locking down the ninth inning, Shaw was tasked with the toughest part of the Cubs order in the 10th: Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Rizzo, and then Zobrist. Schwarber got ahead 0-1 and laced a cutter spotted down-and-in to right field, off the bat at 105 miles per hour. Albert Almora pinch-ran for Schwarber, and the move immediately paid dividends when Bryant flew out to the warning track in the next at-bat. Cleveland passed on facing Rizzo, opting instead to face Zobrist with two men on and one out. It was the highest leverage at-bat of a game with plenty of them, and yet another big moment just happening to find Zobrist, as they had throughout the postseason.
With Shaw, the approach is obvious. He’s going to throw cutters, and he’s going to throw them really hard. Shaw’s cutter was one of the nastiest pitches in this World Series, and in Game Seven’s outing, he threw 21 cutters in 22 pitches, which isn’t atypical. With Zobrist, the approach is obvious. He’s going to be pitched on the outer-half of the plate, where is weakness is, particularly up-and-away:
The Indians had seen Zobrist beat McAllister in Game Two on an inner-third pitch he laced down the right field line. They’d seen him beat Romo on the Giants on an inner-third pitch he laced down the right field line. They weren’t going to give Zobrist the pitch he likes to hit again. They were going to make him beat them without his strength. And to Cleveland’s credit, they did. To Zobrist’s credit, so did he.
The first pitch of the at-bat sailed high, and Zobrist got ahead, 1-0:
But Shaw got back into it with a cutter up and over the plate that Zobrist took for strike one, the most hittable pitch he’d see in the at-bat:
They got tougher from there. Shaw got ahead with his next offering, this time a cutter at 94, beautifully backdoored to catch the lower-third quadrant of the zone, and taken by Zobrist for strike two:
Now down to his final strike, Zobrist chokes up:
Shaw and Yan Gomes actually try and come in on the hands with this cutter, but Shaw misses away, and it actually winds up being a perfect pitch right in Zobrist’s coldest zone. He spoils it down the left field line, unknowingly foreshadowing the theatrics that would come on the next pitch:
Zobrist finally had his moment:
The pitch Shaw threw was a two-strike, 98 mph cutter located exactly where the heatmaps say to locate against Zobrist:
According to PITCHf/x, it was the second-hardest cutter Shaw had thrown all season. Going through his pitch data, I located the 20 cutters closest in location to the one Zobrist doubled down the left field line. Of the 20 closest pitches to that one, zero of them went for hits. Two of them went for swinging strikes, three went in play for outs, five went for foul balls, and the other 10 went for called strikes. Shaw located a pitch that had worked for him all year, a pitch that was right in line with their gameplan against Zobrist, a pitch harder than almost any he’s ever thrown, and Zobrist did what fantastic hitters do, what World Series MVPs do.
At 41 career WAR, Zobrist is still a serious longshot to end his career in Cooperstown. He simply got going too late. But the fact that it’s even a consideration at all — and it is — is remarkable, considering how he was a Quad-A player at age 27 with the Rays just eight years ago. Since then, he’s racked up more WAR than all but six position players, all of whom will have Hall of Fame cases of their own, with a five-year peak as impressive as anything Hall of Famers like Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and Reggie Jackson ever did.
Joe Maddon was there in Tampa Bay when Ben Zobrist turned himself from a nobody into a superstar who never was, into baseball’s most underrated player for half a decade. And last night, Joe Maddon was there when Ben Zobrist finally had his signature moment, the one that ensures his career will be remembered the way it should be."Finally!" I hear you say. And you are right. Because of time-constraints and my wish to include much more than is essential for this tool I delayed and delayed and delayed the public release of wiipresent.
But now I convinced myself to be happy about it :-) At least my TODO list is nicely formatted and complete. And in itself the tool already works very nice. The fact that ct magazine already mentioned wiipresent in their April edition was another motivation to release what works already.
So let me introduce to you: wiipresent v0.7.2, an off-the-shelf tool to use your wiimote for giving presentations on Linux (or control your Linux remotely).
Currently wiipresent can do the following things:
only requires a bluetooth receiver for communication
rumbles to indicate how much time you have left for your presentation
leds indicate how much time has passed/is left for your presentation
has keymaps for tens of presentation applications (evince, xpdf, openoffice, acrobat reader,...)
also has keymaps for many other applications (multimedia, terminal, browser,...)
can be used to control your mouse pointer (to start an application, copy files, shutdown,...)
easy to use buttons for common operations like: switching workspace, switching applications,...
There are quite a few compelling reasons for using a Wiimote for giving presentations:
the same features as most of the advanced presentation devices
is much cheaper (40 EUR) than those advanced presentation devices (>80 EUR)
has an open and documented interface where some advanced devices do not work in Linux
uses bluetooth which is common on laptops nowadays, but small USB bluetooth receivers are quite cheap (10 EUR)
works very reliably even in a big exhibition hall (LinuxTag 2008) with thousands of people and booths with as many bluetooth devices. We even left the exhbition room and we were still able to control our laptop at the CentOS booth (witness references on request :-))
fancy silicon covers exist in various colors matching your outfit are available from Ebay
at least one person attributes finding a girlfriend by using the wiimote in a public area (name witheld because of privacy concerns)
they come with a wrist-cord (and anti-slip coating) for vivid, animated presenters using lots of gestures
So get it from:
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/wiipresent/
or look at the wiimote presentation Geerd-Dietger and I did at FrOSCon
Enjoy!The Pittsburgh Steelers were extremely careful with their first round draft pick when he suffered a chest injury on Saturday against the Kansas City Chiefs. After all tests came back negative, he is now expected to be ready for the season opener against the Tennessee Titans.
All of Jarvis Jones' scans are normal and he should be ready for Tennessee season opener, source says. — Gerry Dulac (@gerrydulac) August 25, 2013
Dulac, writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, does not expound upon rumors of 'deep bruising' as reported earlier by ProFootballTalk.com, citing no specifics about the injury.
The Steelers will play the Carolina Panthers in their fourth and final game of the preseason on Thursday night, and then enjoy a ten day break before kicking off the regular season with the Titans. The team will welcome the extended break to rest up a number of starters and quality reserves dealing with nagging injuries resulting from a physical training camp and preseason.
Thanks everyone for the support!! I'm doing fine🙏🙏 — Jarvis Jones (@SacManJones_29) August 25, 2013
More from Behind the Steel Curtain:Into the ‘Transit Zone’
Given how powerful the transit method has proven for detecting exoplanets, we can assume great things are ahead. It won’t be that many years before we’re actually analyzing the atmospheric constituents of worlds much smaller than the gas giants for which we perform such studies now. That would make it possible for us to discover possible biosignatures. As I’ve speculated in these pages before, it may well be that we discover life on a planet around a distant star before we manage to discover it — if it exists — elsewhere in our Solar System.
We’re looking at worlds around other suns with something of the same spirit that Carl Sagan and the Voyager team looked back from the outer reaches and saw the Earth as a ‘pale blue dot.’ It’s a comparison that René Heller and Ralph E. Pudritz draw in their recent paper on SETI strategy. Except here we’re talking about extraterrestrial observers looking at our planet, the assumption being that if we can make these studies using our current technologies, so can another species, and certainly one with tools that may be much improved over our own.
Image: Astrophysicist René Heller. Credit: Nick Kozak, for Science et Vie (2015).
A Thin Strip of Sky
Thus we get what the researchers are calling the Earth’s Transit Zone, or ETZ. It’s that region from which another civilization would be able to detect the Earth as a transiting planet in front of the Sun. Heller (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen) and Pudritz (McMaster University, Ontario) analyze this thin region, a strip around the ecliptic projected out onto the galaxy. The entire ETZ amounts to about two thousandths of the entire sky, which is precisely why the authors like it. Says Heller:
“The key point of this strategy is that it confines the search area to a very small part of the sky. As a consequence, it might take us less than a human life span to find out whether or not there are extraterrestrial astronomers who have found the Earth. They may have detected Earth’s biogenic atmosphere and started to contact whoever is home.”
What the researchers provide is an extension of ideas that go back at least into the 1980s, and were discussed in a 1990 paper by the Russian astronomer L. N. Filippova, who presented a list of nearby stars near the ecliptic that would be good targets for SETI. A 2008 poster at the American Astronomical Society produced by Richard Conn Henry, Steve Kilston and Seth Shostak addressed the matter as well, making this case in its abstract:
…the best hope for success in SETI is exploration of the possibility that there are a few extremely ancient but non-colonizing civilizations; civilizations that, aeons ago, detected the existence of Earth (oxygen, and hence life) and of its Moon (stabilizing Earth’s rotation) via observations of transits of the Sun (hence, ecliptic, which is stable over millions of years…, and have been beaming voluminous information in our direction ever since, in their faint hope (now realized) that a technological “receiving” species would appear. To maintain such a targeted broadcast would be extremely cheap for an advanced civilization. A search of a swath centered on our ecliptic plane should easily find such civilizations, if they exist.
Image: Narrow band: This image illustrates the transit zone, in which distant observers could see the Earth pass in front of the Sun. Credit and copyright: Axel Quetz (MPIA) / Axel Mellinger, Central Michigan University.
But Heller and Pudritz don’t limit themselves to intentional communications of this sort. Whether it’s leakage radiation or directed signals, their intent is to present a rigorous geometric description of the Earth Transit Zone for SETI use, one that contains almost 100,000 stars, with a small sub-group of 82 nearby stars that can serve as an early target list. The authors point out that the PLATO mission, to be launched by the European Space Agency in 2024, will use the transit method to find small planets around many bright stars like those on the list.
“PLATO might even detect the transits of exoplanets, whose possible inhabitants would be able to see the Earth transiting the Sun,” Heller adds. “Such a crazy setup would offer both them and us the possibility of studying each other’s planets with the transit method.”
As to the size of the ETZ, the paper notes that the galactic disk has a width of some 600 parsecs at the Sun’s location. Bear in mind that the Solar System is tilted against the galactic plane by about 63,° which gives us an Earth Transit Zone whose path through the disk is about 1 kiloparsec long (3261 light years). Heller and Pudritz do not consider M-dwarfs, but place their focus on K and G-class stars. The paper describes the selection of the 82 priority stars:
By rejecting all F, A, and B stellar types we make sure that we only take into account stars with lifetimes long enough to actually host habitable planets for billions of years. A more sophisticated approach would make use of the stellar ages (if known) for the remaining K and G stars, as done by Turnbull and Tarter (2003a), as some of these targets might still be very young with little time for the emergence of an intelligent species. Nevertheless, most of these stars should be of similar age as the Sun since they are in the solar neighborhood of the Milky Way. The rejection of giants and subgiants finally leaves us with 45 K and 37 G dwarfs.
What we see in the Earth Transit Zone is a way of confining our SETI search to a high-priority region that runs as a 0.528° ribbon along the ecliptic, defining that place where extraterrestrial astronomers would be able to see non-grazing transits of the Earth in front of the Sun. Heller and Pudritz estimate the total number of K and G dwarfs within 1 kiloparsec inside the ETZ is about 100,000, with estimates for habitable zone terrestrial planets from among this number reaching as high as 10,000. SETI thus gets a highly confined search area within which to focus its attention as we look for signs that planets we can discover may have discovered us.
The paper is Heller, “The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Earth’s Solar Transit Zone,” Astrobiology Vol. 16, No. 4 (2016). Preprint available. See also this news release from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. If you’re interested in digging into the early history of the ecliptic and ETZ concept, check the Filippova paper mentioned above, which is “A List of Near Ecliptical Sun like Stars for the Zodiac SETI Program,“ Astronomicheskii
Tsirkulyar 1544:37 (1990). See also Filippova’s 1998 paper with V. S. Strelnitskij, “Ecliptic as an Attractor for SETI,” Astronomicheskii Tsirkulyar 1531:31.Image copyright Reuters
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders clashed over support for the president in their first debate since the New Hampshire primary.
Mrs Clinton sought to cast herself as the protector of Barack Obama's legacy, sharply attacking Mr Sanders for criticising the president.
"The kind of criticism I hear from Senator Sanders, I expect from Republicans," Mrs Clinton said.
Nevada and South Carolina, states with large minority populations, vote next.
Mrs Clinton and Mr Sanders are competing to be the Democratic party candidate in November's presidential election.
At the PBS NewsHour televised debate, Mrs Clinton repeatedly emphasised her ties to Mr Obama who is extremely popular among minority voters.
Meanwhile, Mr Sanders took pains to tailor to his message of economic fairness to address disparities in black communities.
Mrs Clinton also stressed her pragmatism, questioning Mr Sanders' pledges to provide universal healthcare and free higher education.
"We have a special obligation to make clear what we stand for which is why we can't make promises we can't keep," Mrs Clinton said.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Protesters with the Black Lives Matters movement gathered outside the debate hall
Immigration reform was also a major topic of discussion. Both candidates supported creating a path to citizenship for the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US and they decried a recent uptick in deportations by the Obama administration.
Criticising the anti-immigrant positions of Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Mr Sanders said immigrants should not be scapegoats for economic uncertainty.
"We have got to stand up to the Trumps of the world, who are trying to divide us," Mr Sanders said.
Debate highlights:
Borrowing language from her opponent, Mrs Clinton said the economy was "rigged" in favour of the rich.
Mr Sanders took aim at mass incarceration, promising if elected the US would no longer have the largest prison population in the world.
Mrs Clinton contended that Mr Sanders' sweeping proposals would increase the size of the government by 40%.
Mr Sanders spoke more authoritatively on foreign policy, a weakness in earlier debates.
Asked to name a foreign leader they admired, Mr Sanders pointed to Winston Churchill while Mrs Clinton selected Nelson Mandela.
Mrs Clinton is trying to rebuild her campaign after Mr Sanders decisively won the New Hampshire primary.
She received a much-needed endorsement from an influential bloc of black Democrats in Congress on Thursday.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The issues of minority voters were front and centre at the Democratic debate
The Vermont senator won the New Hampshire primary by 22 percentage points and lost the Iowa caucuses narrowly, but both states have nearly all-white populations.
He now faces the challenge of finding votes among the sizable Latino and black electorates in Nevada and South Carolina.
But the former secretary of state has strong support among Latinos and African-Americans and is expected to do well in the two states.
A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll in South Carolina gave Mrs Clinton a lead of 74 over Mr Sanders' 17 percent among black voters.
Image copyright AP Image caption Mrs Clinton was given a resounding endorsement from the Congressional Black Caucus ahead of Thursday's debate
On Thursday, the political action committee of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) publicly endorsed Mrs Clinton as their Democratic presidential candidate, giving an added boost to her campaign.
"We must have a president that understands the racial divide, not someone who just acquired the knowledge recently but someone...who has lived it and worked through it down through the years," CBC Chairman G K Butterfield told reporters on Thursday.
Recognising the need to do more to court the black vote, Mr Sanders met civil rights leader the Reverend Al Sharpton in New York on Wednesday.
However, Mr Sharpton declined to say which candidate he would back after the meeting.
It is still unclear who the winner of the Democratic contest will face in the Republican race, with Donald Trump, John Kasich and Ted Cruz finishing first, second and third in the New Hampshire primary.
Both Republican and Democratic parties will formally name their presidential candidates at conventions in July.
Americans will finally go to the polls to choose the new occupant of the White House in November.
Key dates to come
20 February - South Carolina primary (Republican); Nevada caucus (Democrat)
23 February - Nevada caucus (R)
27 February - South Carolina primary (D)
1 March - 'Super Tuesday' - 15 states or territories decide
18-21 July - Republican convention, nominee picked
25-28 July - Democratic convention, nominee picked
8 November - US presidential elections
In depth: Primary calendarBERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors filed terrorism charges Thursday against a suspected representative of the Islamic State group in Germany and four fellow suspects who are accused of running a recruitment network.
The suspected ringleader — a 33-year-old Iraqi citizen identified as Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., who goes by the alias Abu Walaa — was indicted on charges of membership in a terrorist organization, terror financing and public incitement to commit crimes, federal prosecutors said.
The five, who were arrested in November, are suspected of recruiting young Muslims in Germany and raising funds to send them to Syria and Iraq to join IS.
Abu Walaa was the imam at a radical mosque in the northern city of Hildesheim and also organized “Islam seminars” at mosques elsewhere in Germany.
The other four suspects were indicted on charges of supporting IS in different ways.
The 51-year-old Turkish citizen Hasan C. and 37-year-old German-Serbian citizen Boban S., were allegedly in charge of teaching Arabic and “radical Islamic content” to recruits.
A 28-year-old German citizen, Mahmoud O., and a 27-year-old from Cameroon, identified as Ahmed F.Y., were allegedly in charge of helping to organize the recruits’ departure to Syria.
Prosecutors listed the names of eight men who they say left Germany with the support of Abu Walaa to join IS in Syria.
Among those listed are Mark and Kevin K. who killed dozens of government soldiers in two separate suicide bombings in 2015. Another one, identified as Martin L., was given 2,000 euros ($2,324) from Abu Walaa to pay for his travels to Syria in November 2014. He is allegedly in charge of guarding new IS fighters coming from Germany.
Much of the information for the investigation comes from an unnamed confidant. Abu Walaa has called that person a traitor and asked on social media for the source to be killed after German authorities first raided the group’s premises in August. Prosecutors say their source has been promised confidentiality and has been given protection.Etymology Edit
Further information: Etymology of cannabis The etymology is uncertain but there appears to be no common Proto-Indo-European source for the various forms of the word; the Greek term kánnabis is the oldest attested form, which may have been borrowed from an earlier Scythian or Thracian word.[9][10] Then it appears to have been borrowed into Latin, and separately into Slavic and from there into Baltic, Finnish, and Germanic languages.[11] Following Grimm's law, the "k" would have changed to "h" with the first Germanic sound shift,[9][12] after which it may have been adapted into the Old English form, hænep. However, this theory assumes that hemp was not widely spread among different societies until after it was already being used as a psychoactive drug, which Adams and Mallory (1997) believe to be unlikely based on archaeological evidence.[9] Barber (1991) however, argued that the spread of the name "kannabis" was due to its historically more recent drug use, starting from the south, around Iran, whereas non-THC varieties of hemp are older and prehistoric.[11] Another possible source of origin is Assyrian qunnabu, which was the name for a source of oil, fiber, and medicine in the 1st millennium BC.[11] Cognates of hemp in other Germanic languages include Dutch hennep, Danish and Norwegian hamp, German Hanf, and Swedish hampa.[9]
Uses Edit
Processing Edit
Separation of hurd and bast fiber is known as decortication. Traditionally, hemp stalks would be water-retted first before the fibers were beaten off the inner hurd by hand, a process known as scutching. As mechanical technology evolved, separating the fiber from the core was accomplished by crushing rollers and brush rollers, or by hammer-milling, wherein a mechanical hammer mechanism beats the hemp against a screen until hurd, smaller bast fibers, and dust fall through the screen. After the Marijuana Tax Act was implemented in 1938, the technology for separating the fibers from the core remained "frozen in time". Recently, new high-speed kinematic decortication has come about, capable of separating hemp into three streams; bast fiber, hurd, and green microfiber. Only in 1997, did Ireland, parts of the Commonwealth and other countries begin to legally grow industrial hemp again. Iterations of the 1930s decorticator have been met with limited success, along with steam explosion and chemical processing known as thermomechanical pulping.[citation needed]
Cultivation Edit
Producers Edit
History Edit
See also EditThe S&P 500 closed the day up 0.60% to close at a new interim high. The index is 85.4% above the March 9 2009 closing low, which puts it 19.8% below the nominal all-time high of October 2007. This is a new milestone for the index. It's now above the traditional 20% bear decline from the 2007 high.
For a better sense of how these declines figure into a larger historical context, here's a long-term view of secular bull and bear markets in the S&P Composite since 1871.
For a bit of international flavor, here's a chart series that includes an overlay of the S&P 500, the Dow Crash of 1929 and Great Depression, and the so-called L-shaped "recovery" of the Nikkei 225. I update these weekly. These charts are not intended as a forecast but rather as a way to study the current market in relation to historic market cycles.
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This post previously appeared at DShort.com >Introduction
Prospecter is an open source implementation of “prospective search” (also called standing search or query subscription). This is basically regular search inverted. Instead of taking a user query and running it against a collection of pre-indexed documents, queries are collected and run against documents as they arrive.
Classic examples include Google Alerts and real estate websites offering saved searches, that will inform you if new real estate listings matching your search are posted. Implementing a system like that in a web or mobile project usually results in systems that do not scale well and are hard to maintain.
For regular search very few people implement the search algorithms themselves but instead use Lucene, Elasticsearch, solr or similar software packages. So why should you do it for prospective search?
Why Prospecter
Currently there aren’t that many open source implementations for this kind of search. The most widely used implementation is probably Elasticsearch with it’s percolator feature. The percolator feature “suffers” from the fact that it does not scale as well as the regular search feature. It is also a little awkward to use, probably because it was added as an afterthought.
Google AppEngine offers a prospective search feature which is closed source and still marked experimental.
So after thinking about how to do prospective search properly and reading several papers on the topic, I decided it was a good idea to implement a software dedicated to prospective search. My goal is to have a lightweight server that is easy to configure and speaks JSON. Similar to Elasticsearch it should be “batteries included”.
And obviously it has to be extremely fast.
Implementation Status
At the moment all crucial features are implemented and work. Prospecter can run as a server exposing a simple JSON REST interface. Available operations are: index query, delete query, match document.
An index can contain fields of the following types:
Text: For fulltext search
String: Exact match string
Integer: Exact match and “greater than” and “less than” searches
Long: Exact match and “greater than” and “less than” searches
DateTime: Exact match and “greater than” and “less than” searches
Double: Exact match and “greater than” and “less than” searches
Geo: Match documents that lie within a bounding box of a latitude, longitude and radius
The HTTP server is very lightweight and it is very easy to build custom applications that deal with the index directly skipping all networking. This can be useful for very high throughput or indexing a lot of queries at once.
Performance
Performance is looking very good already. The diagram shows the average matching time in ms for the same document with increasing indexed queries. In this case, matching was done on a single text field.
The measurements were done on a MacBook Pro 13 with an i5 2.6 GHz and 8GB RAM. Only the matching time was measured, not including any networking overhead. The indexed queries were from the AOL search query logs and the document was a news article containing 909 words. After every 10.000 indexed queries the test document was matched 10 times and the average matching time calculated. Memory consumption increased steadily up to 300 MB with 1.650.000 queries indexed.
Other index types have mostly been tested with random data which does not say a lot about real world use cases. The geo index filled with 1.000.000 random bounding box searches spread over Germany takes about 500ms to complete, resulting in 14k matches on average. The geo index has probably huge potential for tuning, as there are several data structures known that specialize in indexing spatial data.
LimitationsMobile games have come a long way since the original Snake on your old Nokia, but don't tell creator Taneli Armanto that: he's working on a brand new version of the game slated to launch later this month. Armanto has partnered with Finnish game studio Rumilus Design to create an updated version of the classic, called Snake Rewind, that adds in new graphics and gameplay features. There are high-score leaderboards and new power-ups, as well as the ability to rewind if you crash your snake.
Meanwhile, the game will span ten different levels, each with its own music and visual design — including one that looks like you're playing on a classic phone. It also adds in another modern twist, as Snake Rewind will be free to play, with in-app purchases. While there have been plenty of Snake clones over the years, this will be the first from Armanto, a former engineer at Nokia. Snake Rewind is launching on May 14th on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.By Ryan Burton
BoxingScene.com has been advised by Thomas Dulorme's (21-1) adviser Rudy Vargas that the junior welterweight contender has inked a managerial contract with Cameron Dunkin.
The 24-year-old Carolina, Puerto Rico resident last fought in March when he defeated Karim Mayfield in an HBO televised fight. He has won 5 fights in a row since losing to Luis Carlos Abregu on October 27, 2012 which is his only career defeat.
Vargas feels that Dulorme now has the perfect team in place to make a run to a world title.
"We are looking to fight for a title within two fights. This is the next step in Thomas Dulorme's career. With Robert (Garcia) and Cameron we believe big money fights and a world championship are near," Vargas told Boxingscene.com.
Dulorme, who is promoted by Gary Shaw, is the latest fighter to sign with the powerful yet low profile Dunkin. Junior middleweight contender Willie Nelson recently signed with Dunkin whose deep stable of fighters also includes Mikey Garcia, Nonito Donaire, Terence Crawford, Brandon Rios, Randy Caballero, Matt Korobov, and several others.
Send questions or comments to [email protected]. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ringsidewriterPFF midseason superlatives
By Sam Monson • Nov 1, 2016
We’re just about to the midway point of the 2016 season, so it’s time to take a look at some of the unique data PFF has and how this season’s crop of players stack up in regard to those numbers.
We’re not going to be focusing on the raw passing, rushing, or receiving totals that you can get anywhere, but rather take a deeper dive into some of the more advanced and interesting numbers from our database.
Here is a list of players that have a shot of breaking PFF-era (since the 2006 season) records in some of our unique stats:
Most deep-passing yards
Most deep-passing yards (throws traveling 20+ yards in air): Matt Ryan, Atlanta Falcons, 721 yards
Single-season record: Eli Manning, New York Giants, 1,419 yards (2011)
The 721 yards on deep (20+ air yards) bombs that Matt Ryan has racked up so far this season isn’t the best mark anybody has managed at this point in the season (Drew Brees had over 900 at the same point in the 2008 season), but it does put him on pace for the record over an entire year, and at his current rate, he would narrowly eclipse the mark set by Eli Manning in 2011. Ryan has had a far better connection with Julio Jones this season than in previous years, and has thrown some perfect deep shots to his No. 1 target. Those deep passes are a big reason why the Falcons have had the league’s most-destructive offense through the first half of the season.
Most missed tackles
Most missed tackles: Derrick Johnson, LB, Kansas City Chiefs, 14
Single-season record: Antwon Blake, CB, Pittsburgh Steelers, 28 (2015)
Last season, Antwon Blake did special things when it came to missing tackles. 28 of them for a cornerback is a staggering figure, a mark which only one corner in the last decade has come within eight of. It narrowly beat the 27 that Kwon Alexander had in the same season, which would otherwise have been the record. Chiefs LB Derrick Johnson is on pace to tie those 28 missed tackles for the most over a single-season in the PFF era, and Alexander is just one miss behind him with 13 so far this year. Whether either makes it to 28 or not, they will likely have a better rate than Blake did, missing 28 of 108 tackle attempts (25.9 percent).
Most-accurate quarterback
Best adjusted completion percentage: Tom Brady, New England Patriots, 87.4 percent
Single-season record: Jeff Garcia, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 81.4 percent (2007)
Accuracy has only been going up across the league, thanks to the move to more spread-offense type concepts and passing systems, but the record for best completion percentage adjusted for drops, spikes, etc. belongs to Jeff Garcia from back in 2007. Drew Brees this season is within sight of it, sitting at 81.0 percent through the first eight weeks of the season, but Tom Brady is up at 87.4 percent since his return from suspension. Brady has had six passes dropped and thrown 11 away, but when he has targeted a receiver, he has hit them with an accuracy we haven’t seen from anybody over the past decade of QB play.
Best QB from a clean pocket
Best passer rating when kept clean: Matt Ryan, Atlanta Falcons, 128.4
Single-season record: Nick Foles, Philadelphia Eagles, 134.6 (2013)
Some of the best QB seasons of the past decade have seen much of their damage done from a clean pocket when their protection has held up. Matt Ryan this season has a passer rating of 128.4 when the Falcons keep him free from pressure and give him a clean pocket to work from. That’s not quite on pace for the record, with multiple QBs topping the 130.0 barrier, and Nick Foles’ unbelievable statistical season of 2013 leading the way at 134.6, but it is within sight of it if he goes on a good run or things swing his way for a stretch this season. It goes to underscore the kind of statistical dominance from Ryan this year, even if—like Foles—the performance hasn’t quite matched the gaudy numbers overall.
Most likely to defend the pass
Lowest passer rating allowed when thrown at: Aqib Talib, CB, Denver Broncos, 37.0
Single-season record: Asante Samuel, CB, Philadelphia Eagles, 31.7 (2010)
Aqib Talib has been pretty shutdown so far this season. He has yet to allow a touchdown catch when targeted, and is yielding a passer rating of 37.0 when QBs throw the ball into his coverage. To put that into perspective, that’s better than the passer rating QBs would have if they just threw the ball into the dirt every play. It isn’t quite the record over a single-season, however. Darrelle Revis’ mind-blowing 2009 season has it beat, but the record since 2006 is held by Asante Samuel from his 2010 season with the Eagles. That year, Samuel allowed just 19 catches and 141 yards, picking off seven passes from just 41 targets.
Most likely to haul it in
Lowest drop rate: Emmanuel Sanders, WR, Denver Broncos, 0.0 percent
Single-season record: Jason Witten, TE, Dallas Cowboys, 0.0 percent (2015)
Multiple receivers have yet to drop a pass this season, but Emmanuel Sanders has caught the most among that group by a clear five receptions. Jason Witten holds the record for the most receptions over a season without a dropped pass, with 77 catches in 2015 and no drops to his name. Todd Heap had 73 catches with the Ravens in 2006 without a drop, which is the second-best rate over a season. Sanders is currently on pace to eclipse the reception totals of the TE pairing, and would hit 88 receptions without a drop if he can maintain his perfect performance over the second half of the year. If he drops one, he would need to hit that 88-reception mark to hold the best drop rate among receivers with a single drop over a season, edging out Jeremy Maclin from a year ago, who dropped just one pass and caught 87.
Best pass-blocking unit
Highest pass-blocking efficiency (offensive line): Green Bay Packers, 88.1
Single-season record: Tennessee Titans, 88.2 (2008)
Green Bay’s pass protection this season is playing at a historically-great level. They are challenging to post the best single-season pass-blocking efficiency score of any offensive line over the past decade, and currently sit just 0.1 points behind the Tennessee Titans’ line from 2008. That line allowed just 73 total pressures all season, which is also a record in the PFF era, but they were pass-protecting a lot less often than the current Packers’ line. They were pass blocking for just 477 snaps in the 2008 season, while the Packers are on pace to do so for 704 snaps. Aaron Rodgers has the best pass-blocking situation in the entire NFL this season, so there is no excuse on that front for anything less than his best when it comes to passing the ball.
Best pass-blocker
Fewest total QB pressures allowed: Max Unger, New Orleans Saints, 1
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image quality because Dolby works with everyone involved in bringing you entertainment – content creators, streaming services, and device makers. Dolby Vision is already transforming the viewing experience in both cinemas and on TVs. The LG G6 brings that experience to smartphones.
Combined with the LG G6’s expansive 5.7-inch FullVision display, Dolby Vision offers more life-like images with brighter highlights, more detailed contrast, and colors never seen before on a mobile display. The LG G6 smartphone also comes with Dolby Audio that provides a richer sound experience.
“We are revolutionizing mobile entertainment for consumers so they can finally have a compelling and life-like visual entertainment experience on a mobile phone,” said Giles Baker, SVP, Consumer Entertainment Group, Dolby Laboratories. “Through our expanded collaboration with LG, Amazon and Netflix, consumers can watch exciting content on their smartphone that looks and sounds spectacular.”
“In partnership with Dolby Laboratories, we have incorporated the best HDR technologies in the business into a smartphone,” said Hong-joo Kim, Vice President and Head of product planning at LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “With the expansive display and the incredible image quality of the G6, users will forget that they are looking at a screen and will be fully immersed.”
"With the LG G6 and Dolby Vision, Netflix is now able to deliver a more stunning visual experience on a smartphone," said Scott Mirer, Vice President, Device Partner Ecosystem, Netflix. "Now Netflix members all over the world can have the rich, immersive quality of HDR in the palms of their hands."
“Amazon Prime Video supports Dolby Vision on TVs, and we look forward to extending our high quality viewing experience to mobile platforms,” said BA Winston, Global Head of Digital Video Playback and Delivery at Amazon. “We will continue to collaborate with Dolby and LG to deliver our customers exceptional entertainment and the power to choose what to watch and how to watch it.”
About LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company
LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company is a global leader and trend setter in the mobile and wearable industry with breakthrough technologies and innovative designs. By continually developing highly competitive core technologies in the areas of display, battery, camera optics and LTE technology, LG creates handsets and wearables that fit the lifestyles of a wide range of people all over the world. LG is seeking to provide a playful mobile experience that extends beyond the scope of traditional smartphones. For more information, please visit www.LG.com.
About Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Video is a premium on-demand entertainment service that offers customers the greatest choice in what to watch, and how to watch it. Amazon Video is the only service that provides Prime Video, Amazon Channels, rent or own options, instant access and premium features including 4K Ultra HD, High Dynamic Range (HDR) and mobile downloads for offline viewing of select content.
About Dolby Vision
Dolby Vision transforms your mobile viewing experience with dramatic imaging—incredible color, contrast, and brightness that brings entertainment to life wherever you go.
About Dolby Audio
Dolby Audio is a set of robust technologies that deliver rich, clear, powerful sound in the cinema, at home, and on the go. It makes entertainment more compelling by providing a vibrant audio experience for content that is broadcast, downloaded, streamed, played in cinemas, or enjoyed via disc.
About Dolby Laboratories
Dolby Laboratories (NYSE:DLB) creates audio, video, and voice technologies that transform entertainment and communications in mobile devices, at the cinema, at home, and at work. For more than 50 years, sight and sound experiences have become more vibrant, clear, and powerful in Dolby. For more information, please visit www.dolby.com.
Dolby, Dolby Atmos, and the double-D symbol are registered trademarks of Dolby Laboratories. Dolby Vision is a trademark of Dolby Laboratories. LG is a registered trademark of LG Electronics Levant. Ultra HD Blu-ray is a trademark of Blu-ray Disc Association. DLB-GLego Mindstorms is a series of programmable robotics toys manufactured by the well-known Lego Group in Denmark. Mindstorms come in a kit containing many pieces, including various sensors, cables and electric motors, and it’s an advanced toy for both kids and grown-ups interested in robotics. It can also be used to model plenty of real-life systems, such as elevator controllers and industrial robots.
In a press release with the entertaining headline “Do Androids Dream of Lego Mindstorms?”, Lego is announcing that the company has uploaded a free app for Android 2.x devices to the Market called MINDdroid. The application works as a real-time remote control for Mindstorms robots via Bluetooth. It sounds pretty cool to me. From the press release:
If you are the owner of a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set and have an Android smartphone and you want to have some quick and fun action with your robots, now you have the possibility to get some fun and easy play – for free! We are happy to announce the launch of the MINDdroid application for Android (2.1 or higher) phones, that will allow you to get instant access and control to your NXT robot, and give the ability to control by the flick of a wrist! The MINDdroid app is a remote-control application that allows you to create a wireless connection directly with your NXT, and once a connection is established, you can tilt and turn your phone to make the robot move forward, turn to the sides, and by pressing an action button on the phone’s screen, activate the Action motor. If you have a Shooterbot or other robot using two motors for motion and have a spare motor for actions, you are in for a lot of fun!
Via [Lego Mindstorms]In the six weeks BP's well has spewed oil into the ocean, Hayward has made a name for himself as the 'Bumbler from BP'
Barack Obama: BP chief would be fired if he was working for me
Barack Obama put the survival of BP's Tony Hayward in even deeper jeopardy yesterday, saying he would have sacked the chief executive for downplaying the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the six weeks BP's well has spewed oil into the ocean, Hayward has made a name for himself as the "Bumbler from BP" for clumsy comments, leading the US president to say that he would have sacked Hayward if he had been "working for me". Obama had been asked by NBC to respond to Hayward's claim, made in an interview with the Guardian last month, that "the amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume". BP's comment that the "Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean" was widely criticised in the US for underplaying the scale of the crisis.
The president was also challenged over Hayward's posting of a message on Facebook saying "I want my life back", a quip deemed offensive to those oil workers who lost their lives in the explosion. Obama responded: "He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements."
Obama strongly defended his role in dealing with the crisis, including his three visits to the region since the spill began.
"I was down there a month ago before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf," Obama said, adding he has talked to a variety of "experts" on the oil spill, as well as having listened to the local fishermen.
"I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick," the president said.
Hayward will move further into the spotlight after he was invited to appear before the House of Representatives' energy committee in Washington next Thursday for a hearing focused on BP's role in the spill.
The tough talk from Obama today appears part of a concerted strategy to deflect growing public anger at the ongoing catastrophe in the region, especially from the president's Democratic base.
However, Obama yesterday lifted restrictions on offshore oil and gas exploration in shallow waters, an unpopular move among his fellow Democrats.
He also pushed back against Republicans, announcing he would use his veto powers to overturn a vote in the Senate on Thursday that would strip his administration of powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.YOU activate his vital systems! Insert mission disks into his "brain!" He almost "comes alive!" At least, that is what Mattel wanted kids to think in 1976 when they released Pulsar, The Ultimate Man of Adventure. Standing a little taller than Kenner's Bionic Bigfoot at 13 1/2 inches, Pulsar is decked out in very 70's stretch pants and a velcro shirt. Peel away Pulsar's apparel and you'll discover that our hero has a transparent chest, revealing his most intimate internal organs. Inside you'll find a pretty reasonable facsimile of a human heart, lungs, and a circulatory system the size of the large intestines. See a close up. In Pulsar's back is a pump. Press on the pump and his heart beats, his lungs "breath" and the blood in his veins will flow. Unfortunately, whatever substance was used for the blood almost always is congealed and won't move a corpuscle. Of course, that doesn't stop it from still being pretty cool Pulsar's unusual anatomy doesn't stop there, though. Pop open his head and you'll discover one of two of Pulsar's holographic mission discs. Most loose Pulsar toys are missing one or both of the mission discs. While they are fun to have with the toy, they don't actually do anything and you can't see them unless you open up his head. There are actually two versions of Pulsar, but the difference is very small. Pulsar's chest is a single clear plastic piece that is screwed to the piece that makes his back. On the first, the entire front piece is clear, from his neck down to his groin, revealing the rubber used to hold his legs in place. The second variation has been painted on the inside to match Pulsar's flesh tone so that the clear section of Pulsar's chest stops at about his waist. Also, the second variation has a slightly more expressive and, well, friendlier, face. Although the variance is slight, the Pulsar with the painted in waist is actually a much more interesting toy to display. While you get to see the inner workings of Pulsar's organs, you don't really see the inner workings of Pulsar the toy. The bottom line is that the painted in waist tells of a higher quality product. Aside from that, Pulsar doesn't really do anything else. Mattel also sold a medical bay that you could strap Pulsar into. In many ways, it resembles the Bionic Transport and Repair Bay. Every hero needs an arch enemy, so Mattel also released Hypnos, the Yang to Pulsar's Ying. Appropriately enough, Hypnos doesn't have a circular system, he has a hypnotic spinning disk in his chest... pretty clever eh? When you push a lever in his side, a multi-colored disk in his chest spins, extruding hypnotic rays! Hypnos is a friction toy, so when you pull his lever, e-hem, sparks fly in his chest. Hypnos' torso and limbs are cast form the same molds as are Pulsar's, but his interior is dramatically different, as is his purple head. Hypnos has a very sinister cast to him, not unlike Sinestro, the rogue Green Lantern, but it is hard to be too evil when you're naked. Hypnos' only stitch of clothes is a black mask. Pulsar is a pretty easy toy to find either loose or boxed. A mint boxed Pulsar can usually be found for around $60. Loose with one of his mission discs, Pulsar might fetch $30 to $45. I've only ever seen one of his medical bays, however, and that toy, loose, sold for $250. Hypnos is only slightly less harder to find than the medical bay, and with the box sells anywhere from $50 to $100.This time we would like to make a complement for our T110E5 report. I had been asked several times, if players should angle their T110? At first, I could not give a straight answer, because I did not know. The american Tier10 heavy tank has a complex hull shape, but the main problem is the thin side armor, which can be vulnerable to high-angle shots from the front. So we finally went after that…
It’s possible, but only with serious limits and buts
Our goal was to find an immunity angle, where the side hull armor is still safe at high angled frontal shots, and I think we found one. It’s a modest value and a clear reminder, all T110 drivers should be aware of. Our main concern has to be the sides…They are 76mm thick and flat, just like by the old T29/34 series. (That one turned out to be not entirely true, correction in the comments)
All right, we have a “safe zone” for our little steel wall collector. But do we gain any extra protection for our front armor? I can say a clear YES for that!
After our previous tests, we had several armor zones on the upper front plate (UFP), 3 of them have changed its five/seven shot immunity value, upwards. The increased protection level is on the following picture.
The bad news is, the safe-angling for T110E5 does not help the lower front plate, or just at an insignificant level. In the future, we will continue our research for 30 and 45 degree angling, but be aware, that such hull positioning will always expose your thin sides.
Thoryne, SinenfutorepatolvajAbout
The Challenge: Students carry to and from school more books, notebooks, calendar and other items, than ever before. Not only that there is a potential harm to their body, they learn that books, information and studying is a matter of pain and physical effort.
The Solution: Customized tablet with special software and network connection that will contain all the information currently carried in paper by students from home to school and back.
The Opportunity: reduce dramatically the weight that students carry to school and from it, hence preventing harm to their body and enhancing their learning experience; join the pioneers of the digital school, a potentially trillion dollar market globally.
The Plan: Conducting a one year pilot with 7 grade class in Toronto in order to learn lessons and bring the project to commercialization stage.
Background
For few reasons (traditional education system, copyrights, complexity and more) the digital revolution seems to skip the school system, so far. This is most apparent in the lack of books and other support material digitization and as a consequence, the heavy weight that student carry everyday to school and from it.
This problem is escalating while the students’ progress in grades, as one TDSB 6 grade teacher shared her experience: ‘the back pack weight will just increase in following years’. Few random samples demonstrate that students are carrying back packs that are heavier than the recommend- ed weight for their age and weight.
The main reason for the over-weight - the need to carry text- books for homework. South Korea is leading the global experience in this realm. In the last few years the South Korean government is leading a $2B project to digitize textbooks in the education system. Similar initia- tive exist in Florida as well as a pilot by Samsung in BC, Canada. According to online press reports.
The current trend is led by the government and is less focused on the back pack weight, and more on the digital school potential for progress. Indicators imply that the Digital School is a rapidly emerging market that will be eventually implemented worldwide, including a demand for network infrastructure, software and hardware.
This is a rear and time sensitive opportunity to join this market in its inception and be posed at the forefront of the digital school as a dominant actor.
Nachshon Goltz - Researcher
Nachshon has conducted extensive research in the field of children and technology, published articles in peer reviewed journals and presented his scholarly work in conferences across the globe.
Nachshon is the founder and CEO of Global-Regulation, a research and information provider focusing on empirical case studies and serving, among others, Harvard University, NYU University, the University of Texas, York University, Ottawa University, Ryerson University and the University of Toronto.
As a senior associate in one of Israel's leading law firms, Nachshon consulted information tech- nology corporations and governmental organizations in a variety of technology issues. Among others, Nachshon consulted the Israeli judiciary in the Israeli Court System computerization project, a multi-million dollar project headed by Ness Technologies leading a team of 120 workers representing 10 subcontractors, including IBM, Taldor and Microsoft.
Nachshon is currently completing a PhD degree on children and technology, at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. Nachshon completed his LLB and his LLM in Law and Technol- ogy at Haifa University. He also holds a Bachelor in Psychology from Haifa University.
The Pilot Permission and cooperation will be needed from the Toronto District School Board, the sample school principle, the subject and control class, teachers, students and parents.
Research length: May 1, 2014 - April 31, 2015
Stages:
1) Planning and partners coordination (April-July 2014)
▪ Learning lessons from South Korea, Florida and BC, Canada.
▪ Planning the research, explaining the process to the Partners and permissions issuers.
▪ Establishing coordination procedures with the partners and permission issuers.
▪ Infrastructure, software and hardware planning. Starting with the infrastructure to make the subject class high speed WI-FI connected.
▪ Prototype of software-hardware hand held device should be ready by the end of the first stage.
2) Pilot - Phase 1 - Current situation review (August-October, 2014)
➢ Measuring the weight of the back pack of the subject class and parallel control class for one month. The measurement should be invisible, sophisticated and ac- curate. The students backpack will have a device that identify it to the hook on which the student will hang the back pack entering the class. The students will not be aware to the measurement and will be just told to hang the back pack when they arrive and take it with them when they go home.
➢ Measurement of academic and learning skills.
➢ Back pack content list.
3) Pilot - Phase 2 - Enotebook implementation (November-January, 2015)
o The subject class will be wired to high speed Wi Fi.
o students in the subject class will receive the hand held device and at least one week of orientation in a fun environment with their parents.
o The teacher will receive separate guidance and tutoring.
o The students will start using the hand held device to replace carrying textbooks and other paper items from and to school.
4) Pilot - Phase 3 - Comparison with control class (February-March, 2015)
❖ Measurement of satisfaction, achievement, academic and learning skills and back- pack weight between the groups.
5) Conclusions and commercialization (April 2015)
Full report of the findings, lessons and result of the pilot including recommendation for commercialization.A rising young executive found herself strategically ousted in an internal power play. Jill had all the chops to rise to the corner office: consistent top 10% performer, hardworking, intelligent, personable, driven, multilingual, an MBA from a top-tier school. Handwritten thank-you notes from the CEO proudly adorned her wall.
What happened?
When I met Jill (not her real name), she was struggling to make sense of her career setback.
“I was universally liked across the company, a team player who put in more hours than anyone else,” she said. “I was heads down on delivering results, shared my inner self and built trust…everything I was trained and even coached to do.”
With those words, I recognized what had happened immediately. Jill was one more victim of what I call the “Kumbaya” school of leadership, which says that being open, trusting, authentic, and positive — and working really hard — is the key to getting ahead. The Kumbaya school is doing the Jills of the world a great disservice, leading them to often act in ways that are detrimental to their careers.
What should Jill have done differently? Jill should have spent much more time managing up. She should have better managed decision makers, her boss, her image, and her own career.
Rather than being chained to her desk delivering great work, Jill should have been networking with the most influential executives, ensuring her contributions were noticed by those above her, and confirming that she was being perceived as executive-suite material. Managing a career in these ways is critical, but surprisingly few people do it.
The harsh reality is that organizations are hierarchies, and the social science bears out uncomfortable truths about politics and interpersonal relationships: We make initial snap judgments of people, often based on appearance, that can carry on over time; we favor those who are similar to us; we get promoted or gain valuable information by making our boss feel good and building relationships with influential people; we form perceptions based on a speaker’s appearance, body language, and voice more than the content of the argument; and we are more likely to be perceived as competent if we are judiciously critical or show anger (at least, men are). There is strong evidence that our work ratings, bonuses, and promotions are weakly correlated to actual performance — in fact, performance may even matter less to our success than our political skills and how we are perceived by those who make the decisions.
So why wasn’t Jill spending more time managing up, especially if it was in her own self-interest?
First, we want to believe the world is a fair place. As parents, we want to shield our kids from the stark reality of racism, sexism, popularity contests, and the schoolyard bully. And today, with the transparency of social media and the internet, it’s perhaps even more tempting to believe that the “truth” will set us free. “Everyone can see how hard I’m working,” we tell ourselves, or “Everyone knows how good my work is. All you have to do is look at the results.” Believing in a just world feels good. Jill said it herself: “I didn’t want to play office politics or be perceived as a brown-noser, self-promoter, or someone who rose because she was buddies with so-and-so. I was always told that the cream would naturally rise to the top.”
CEO biographies and leadership literature perpetuate this “just world” myth. Wanting to leave a positive legacy, CEOs rewrite their histories through rose-tinted lenses rather than telling how they politically outmaneuvered their peers to rise to the top. Using emotion, spin, or relationships to influence others feels unfair, even if there is convincing research that shows they can be effectively applied strategically and ethically.
We therefore self-handicap, shying away from using techniques that would otherwise expand the ways we can get ahead. We likewise dismiss “political people” as repulsive rather than stepping back and studying how they communicate, network, and strategically manage their careers. And we cherry-pick the research that supports feel-good leadership tactics. Positive psychology, for example, doesn’t argue that you should always be happy or praise indiscriminately, but that’s the message people take away — and misapply.
Young leaders need advice that’s more realistic, granular, and nuanced. I arrived at this conclusion long ago — regrettably later than I should have — during my corporate career. I could see that the smartest, most hard-working guys were not always the ones who got ahead. And over the last few years, building my executive coaching practice and teaching MBAs, I have been shocked by the lack of evidence backing up most career and leadership advice and the ease with which many coaches simply stick to unproven “feel good” aphorisms. Likewise, I’ve been surprised to see leadership coaches shy away from sound research with uncomfortable associations. For example, one student told me his professor did not want to teach a research-based persuasion technique after finding out that the CIA also used it. But the information itself was valid and worth studying.
I know I’m not alone in saying we need to pay more attention to interpersonal relationships and politics. Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion shows the tremendous benefits to understanding social psychology. The behavioral economists convincingly demonstrate how emotion, framing, and carrot-and-stick incentives can lead to “predictably irrational” behavior, as described in Dan Ariely’s book. Jeff Pfeffer has also written books on these uncomfortable truths: Power and Leadership BS (disclosure: I facilitate and coach in his Stanford “Paths to Power” course for executives, and I thank him for opening my mind on this topic). And Todd Kashdan, author of The Upside of Your Dark Side, provides hard evidence that brilliantly challenges prevailing advice in modern psychology.
But too often I see leaders and their coaches treating effective influence-building tactics as if they’re Machiavellian. I’m not arguing that we should be Machiavellian. We each choose if we want to rise in organizations, the path we take, and whether the ends justify the means. I am arguing, however, that if we want to avoid what happened to Jill, we need to spend much more time managing up and around — and employ techniques that may not feel intuitive. Herminia Ibarra, in her book Act Like Leader, Think Like a Leader, stresses how we need to try out different leadership styles and behaviors if we wish to grow — and that latching on to authenticity can be an excuse for sticking with what is comfortable. In fact, leadership may often feel uncomfortable.
As for Jill, three years later she is thriving at her current company. It took time to get up to speed in a new industry, but she’s doing great work and rising quickly now that she understands how to play the game. She also advises younger people starting their careers that doing good work is only part of the success equation. Jill says she has expanded her worldview and is much better off for it. And to that, she and I both sing Kumbaya.While we already know much of what there is to know regarding Intel’s Skylake lineup of processors, the company tonight has officially taken the wraps off of the CPUs. As expected, the Skylake lineup consists of four different series, including the Y-Series that will power the 12-inch MacBook and the U-Series that will power the MacBook Air.
Sylvania HomeKit Light Strip
The Y-Series, formally known as the Core M line, has seen the biggest changes this year. The chips have been redesigned to be even smaller and more dense than before. Intel is also splitting the Y-Series up into a whole family of processors, including the Core m3, Core m5, and Core m7. The biggest different between the Core m3, Core m5, and Core m7 come with the processor clocks and maximum graphics clocks for the Intel HD 515 GPU. Core m3, Core m5, and Core m7 have max graphics clocks of 850MHz, 900MHz, and 1GHz respectively. Intel further claims that the Y-Series processors offer up to ten hours of battery life and 40 percent greater performance than last year’s Core M.
Intel says that its U-Series chips will be 10 times faster than the previous generation Broadwell chips, with 34% faster graphics. The chips are also expected to offer up to 1.4 hours longer battery life than last year’s and use Intel 520 HD Graphics. There will be one i7, one i5, one i3, one Pentium, and two Celerons available, not including vPro chips. The chips are destined for MacBook Air models, with their strong combination of battery life and performance.
Intel says that its Xenon and Core platforms will offer new ports as part of the Skylake refresh. This means that more devices will feature Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type-C. The chips also all support powering 3 4K monitors simultaneously.
More specific details are available in the press release below and in this document. The processors will start to be available over the coming months.President Trump just released his budget plan for the next fiscal year, which proposes some big changes in government spending. Here's a look at what agencies are helped and hurt by the proposal. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Forget the impact the spectacular health-care debacle will have on the future of tax reform or plans for an infrastructure deal. You need to focus on two freight trains racing toward each other at high speed: the budget and the debt ceiling.
Leave aside the impending fight over the looming expiration of the continuing resolution (CR) on April 28. Even though it could lead to a government shutdown, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told a bunch of us columnists in her Capitol office on Tuesday, “This is probably one of their easier bills.”
When Jonathan Swan of Axios questioned the “easier” notion of a new CR, Pelosi, clearly relishing the view from her catbird seat, said, “What comes next with their budget? With their budget from hell? I’m just telling you how bad things are that come next.”
[Nancy Pelosi: Conservative is a legitimate position. Anti-governance is not.]
The “budget from hell” Pelosi is referring to is the “skinny budget” released by the White House earlier this month. A document so draconian that it likely will go the way of the American Health Care Act (read, nowhere). And, given the resurgence of the cantankerous caucus of the GOP, House Speaker Paul Ryan will need Pelosi and the votes she can deliver to get a budget passed by Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year. The price for Democratic votes? Sitting down with Ryan and the GOP caucus to craft the legislation together, Pelosi said. We all know that ain’t ever gonna happen.
But the more Herculean task will be raising the legal limit on federal borrowing. You know it as the debt ceiling. Contrary to conservative myth, raising the debt ceiling is not a blank check for the president. Instead, it allows the government to pay the bills for expenses already incurred by Congress. Under no circumstances can the United States NOT raise the debt ceiling. Failure to do so would destroy the full faith and credit of the United States, the bedrock of the global financial order.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, right, with President Trump. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
Much to my relief, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin believes the debt ceiling must be raised. He said so in written testimony to Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.).
14. The suspension in the debt ceiling enacted in 2015 is set to be reinstated on March 16 of this year. It is crucial that the Federal government be able to meet its legal, financial obligations in full and on time. However, one of your fellow nominees, Mick Mulvaney, who President Trump has nominated to be OMB Director, disagrees, arguing that breaching the debt ceiling is not much of a concern. Can you tell us, will President Trump call upon Congress to enact a clean increase in the debt ceiling at the appropriate time? The timely enactment of the debt ceiling limit in early 2017 is an important priority for the Administration. Delay on this matter should not be linked to budgetary and other considerations facing Congress, as the debt limit merely addresses funding the obligations that the United States has already incurred and does not address future budgetary commitments.
Such clarity and clear-headedness by Mnuchin has not been shared by Trump, who said during the presidential campaign that he would agree to a debt limit increase after getting “a very big pound of flesh” in return. Nor has Mnuchin’s good sense been shared by Mick Mulvaney, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget. Remember, the South Carolina Republican was part of the tea party wave elected to the House in 2010 and a founding member of the recalcitrant House Freedom Caucus. Those are the same folks who helped scuttle the repeal of Obamacare because the proposed bill to do so didn’t go far enough.
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) voted against Mulvaney’s confirmation, in part because the former congressman gave frightening answers on the debt ceiling.
I am equally concerned with Mr. Mulvaney’s casual attitude towards the prospect of the U.S. defaulting on its debts. During his tenure in the House, he voted against increasing the debt limit four different times, calling the potential for a U.S. default a “fabricated crisis.” This simply does not comport with reality. Perhaps his views will suddenly change when he transitions from Congress to the Executive branch, but when offered an opportunity to provide reassurance on this point, he again stated that he did not believe that “breaching the debt ceiling will automatically or inevitably” lead to “grave worldwide economic consequences.” This is nothing short of alarming.
Leahy’s alarm comes into sharper focus when you look at the calendar. The House and Senate must devise, debate and pass a new budget before the 2018 fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. Well, Oct. 2, since the previous day falls on a Sunday.
The U.S. Capitol building is seen in the rain. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
In the middle of all this will come the inevitable hostage situation: The one where Republicans like Mulvaney demand that raising the debt ceiling be accompanied by any number of budget concessions. They tried that in 2011 and earned the United States its first-ever credit downgrade in the process. Pelosi told me Tuesday that a clean bill to increase the nation’s debt limit was the only option. A letter to that effect will be delivered to Ryan soon.
[What the debt ceiling is — and isn’t]
The current legal limit on borrowing expired on March 15. Treasury chief Mnuchin has already informed Congress that he is using “extraordinary measures” to keep the nation from blowing through the current debt ceiling. But that can only last so long. A day certain will come when the government will run out of money to meet all of its financial obligations. The excellent folks at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) earlier this month projected this could happen sometime between October and November.
According to Shai Akabas of the BPC, a big, legally mandated, once-a-year payment into the military retirement trust fund is due at the start of the fiscal year. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised by then, the treasury might not have enough money to cover all of its obligations. And if that happens the United States would be in default for the first time in its history. The BPC calls this the “X date.”
(Courtesy of the Bipartisan Policy Center)
So, the 2018 budget is due by Oct. 2. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, the government could default on its financial obligations by Oct. 2 thanks to a big bill due that day. But the most important date might be April 18. Tax Day. If the treasury takes in less than expected, those two freight trains could slam into each other sooner than anticipated. And Congress is neither ready to avoid the collision nor prepared for the economic disaster that would follow.
Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj
Subscribe to Cape Up, Jonathan Capehart’s weekly podcastThe Republican Party today announced a comprehensive plan to address global warming. As the Party never believed global warming exists, it came as a surprise even to themselves.
“Unlike Democrat tax and regulate plans, this is simple, comprehensive, and handles the problem immediately, once and for all”, said House Speaker, John Boehner, a-glowing. “Instead of stopping global warming it reverses it. And, we know this is a good bill because it is only one-page long.”
The bill, authored by freshman Tea Party Member Ben Quayle—whose Vice-President father, Dan, was said to have promoted a manned-mission to the sun, proposing to avoid the extreme heat by going at night–is called the “Reverse [Non-Existent] Global Warming With a Stroke of the Pen” Act. It outlaws Fahrenheit, substituting Celsius for all temperature readings, reports and thermometers, and thereby instantaneously reduces all temperatures.
“Fahrenheit, like fluoridation of water before it, is a socialist plot. It is designed to make people believe the temperature is hotter than it is,” said Senator Jim Imhofe (R-OK). “They want you to believe, for example, that it is 68° in Tulsa, whereas we can now say it is only 20°. That is more than a 3-fold difference. In my part of the country we don’t even bother to call it a hoax, we call it a lie”.
Likely candidate for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, said: “I never used the ‘F’ word—even when I hunted varmints.” A likely Romney opponent, Michelle Bachman (R-MN), blamed Obamacare. “Under Obamacare, the normal adult temperature is 98.6°, whereas we know it is just 37°. With no one having high temperatures anymore, who would need medical care?”
“God created us with, I think it’s somewhere around 10 fingers and 10 toes,” growled Sara Palin, the 2008 Republican VP nominee. “Leave it to the lamestream media to invent some crazy system so you can’t count temperature by common sense conservative use of those fingers and toes to attack me and my family”.
Entertainer and enforcer Rush Limbaugh could hardly contain himself. Gushing, chortling, laughing, harrumphing, he told his radio listeners, “we told them there was this clean, simple solution where the government doesn’t have to regulate anything except a “C” for an “F”. What are they going to say now?” Glen Beck’s blackboard showed a circled “pha” in Caliphate, linked by a line to a circle around the “Fa” in Fahrenheit.
Speaker Boehner said they would now move swiftly to pass the bill, and remove any global warming jurisdiction from the EPA because it would no longer be necessary. “I’m feelin’ lucky, that is, time to light up a Lucky”.
Asked to comment on the Republican plan, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said: “the President welcomes all ideas on how we can combat global warming and hopes to work closely with Republicans to incorporate their suggestions.”
In other news, Libyan dictator Moammur Qaddafi/Qadhafi/Khaddafy/Gaddafy said he could not step down from power because, like global warming, he does not even exist. “If I existed, I would have a name, and everyone could spell it”, he said while writing the letters to v-o-l-u-p-t-u-o-u-s. “See, I know that exists”.Photo by Upupa4me via Flickr
Argh, so close! One woman in Pasadena had all six winning Powerball numbers but couldn't claim any of the $360 million jackpot.
Margit Arrobio purchased five Powerball tickets at a local Shell |
to shut down that line of contact, to ghettoize the dead and push them away—as I like to say, to truly kill the dead.
Since I am one of the few people who has spoken at all of the Death Salons held thus far, people will sometimes ask me what it’s about. On a personal level, based on the material I have presented, it’s simply about asking people if they might want to reconsider what they think they know about death and the role that of the dead within society. To me, Death Salon has no answers, but it has questions. These questions are fundamentally important as we move forward as a culture, since our attitudes towards death will continue to evolve, hopefully in as healthy a way as possible.
_____
Paul Koudounaris’s photographs are on view at the Luz de Jesus Gallery in Hollywood, April 3–26, 2015.
Paul discusses catacomb saints at Death Salon Getty Villa on April 26. Tickets are sold out, but we invite you to follow the day’s events on Twitter at #DeathSalonGV. Audio of all talks will be posted after the event.Russian soldiers are pictured next to the Reichstag building in Berlin in this undated photo from May 1945. (Georgiy Samsonov/MHM via Reuters)
The Greek debt crisis is often portrayed as a dispute between two actors with two very different economic visions: a German government that seeks austerity over anything else and a Greek government desperate to escape its debts without suffering the pain that austerity would bring.
That is not necessarily an inaccurate vision. It does, however, miss out on an important historical element: that Germany's own strong position was possible only because it has escaped its debts in the past.
This point was hammered home during an interview between Thomas Piketty, the rock star anti-inequality economist, and Die Zeit, a German newspaper, that went viral online over the past few days. “Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts," Piketty said. "It has no standing to lecture other nations.”
Piketty is talking specifically about the aftermath of World War II, when West Germany owed a number of creditors about $7 billion, or $62 billion in today's dollars. In 1953, these creditors agreed to reduce the debt by about half, hoping that an economically stable Germany would be good for the rest of Europe and acknowledging the role that reparation payments had in fermenting the Nazi movement.
This isn't a new theory. Albrecht Ritschl, an economic historian, has calculated that Germany had truly been exceptional when it came to escaping its debts. "Germany is king when it comes to debt," Ritschl told Der Spiegel in 2011. "Calculated based on the amount of losses compared to economic performance, Germany was the biggest debt transgressor of the 20th century." Notably, Ritschl's research at the London School of Economics has concluded that debt cancellation for the euro zone's troubled economies (including Greece but also Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) would be roughly equal to the debts canceled by the Allied powers after World War II.
1 of 70 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × What Greece looks like today View Photos The Greek Parliament backed down in its confrontation with the country’s creditors. Caption The Greek Parliament backed down in its confrontation with the country’s creditors. July 13, 2015 People stand in line to use a bank ATM as a person begs for alms in Athens. Thanassis Stavrakis/AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
You can go back even further into Germany's debt issues. As the Economist has pointed out, Germany defaulted on its debts during the 1930s, and the German states that predated a unified Germany defaulted at least three times in the 19th century. Modern-day Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe, is a product of all these defaults.
Perhaps it is not fair to compare the current situation in Greece to what Germany found itself in during the Weimar years and after the end of World War II: The economic and political context at work now is certainly very different. But it is hard to deny that the grand idea of the European Union — an idea that Germany is trying to protect — was created at least partly in response to such financial problems.
And in Greece — a country that was owed money by Germany in 1953 — history still matters. Under the leadership of the current Syriza government, Greece has pushed for Germany to pay reparations for its conduct during World War II, a sum that could be as high as $340 billion by some estimates and includes estimates of the structural damage that Axis occupation did to Greece.
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MAP: Greece isn’t the first nation to default on a sovereign debt
70 years after Nazi massacres, Greece threatens to seize German assetsThe Victorian taxi industry denies claims that there will be a taxi driver shortage this holiday period, as a new mandatory test is proving too difficult for most drivers to pass.
Since July 1, 140 candidates have taken the test but only one has passed.
Amrik Singh Saini drove a taxi in Sydney for over five years. After moving to Victoria he took the mandatory Taxi Services Commission knowledge test in the hopes of continuing his career but failed.
"I think being of a non-English speaking background is a disadvantage in this case. The test is so hard that even a person who's born in Australia would never pass," he said.
The test comes in three modules; a general assessment, driver behaviour and geographical knowledge. Each module of 55 questions must be finished in one hour. Some of the questions are multiple choice, with up to seven options, meaning it can take several minutes just to read through.
Applicants who fail the test twice are barred from reapplying for 12 months.
Mr Saini says he received a letter saying he did not pass the test, but when he asked how many questions he got wrong or what areas he needed more study in, he was given no feedback.
Jimmy Behal - who's been driving a cab in Melbourne for 14 years - says the test is the basics of what all taxi drivers in Victoria should know.
Mr Behal says preparation is required for the test, but it's not impossible.
"If you study through the Melways and put your time into the knowledge of Melbourne and put your time into basic skills it's not that hard, but if you think you just going to rock up and pass it, then yeah, some people think it's hard."
It's estimated that two out of every three taxi drivers are born overseas. A drop in the number of international students and migrants coming to Victoria - particularly from India - is creating challenges for the taxi industry.
The new testing regime has some questioning whether driver numbers will fall drastically in the state, right before a busy period. But Taxi Services Commission chief Graeme Samuel says that won't happen.
"There will be no difference in the number of drivers, because through that holiday period what we've done is that we've extended the accreditation of existing drivers right through the new year so there won't be an issue through the holiday period at all," he said.
"Bit of a scare campaign was put out there that we would lose 3000 to 4000 drivers off the road, now that's not the case."
A 2011 Victorian government inquiry into the taxi industry, found very low customer satisfaction and that there were too many poorly-skilled drivers with inadequate knowledge. Mr Samuel says the new tests will fix that.
"There's only been one person to have passed the test in all three modules. And that's someone who trains drivers. She says the test is passable but the drivers are poorly trained. And that's what it's all about."
But Amrik Singh Saini says it was his comprehension of the test let him down, not his driver skills. He says he's had to look for work elsewhere, and now is a casual security officer.
"It's very hard there's no other choice. When you go for work you at least make 100 bucks a day, even you spend a 12 hour shift you make 120-150, but if you make nothing and sit at home it's very hard to put food on the table for the kids."Top 10 Writing Tips from the Desk of Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf arose as one of the most notable representatives of modernism in European literature. Can you think of a better person to serve as an inspiration for your writing? You might label her work as ‘depressing', mainly because you associate it to her tragic death. However, this modernist writer also had a playful side. You won't need much effort to see that aspect in her work, especially if you read her personal letters and diaries.
Virginia Woolf was not as humorless and grim as most people think. When you see photographs of her youth, you'll see a face with a recognizable sensibility, but you will also get an impression that she knew how to have fun. Yes, she was tortured, perceptive and sensitive, but she managed to convey those emotions in masterful literature that serves as an example for future generations of writers.
What exactly can her writing teach us? That's exactly what this infographic is all about.
Writing Tips Derived from the Life and Work of Virginia Woolf
Woolf was constantly surrounded with intellectual friends. They sparked her imagination and ability to think things through. The discussions they had were a resourceful inspiration for her writings. When Woolf was writing her first novel, The Voyage Out, she asked her friends to take the role of ultimate supporters. They helped her surpass the doubts and get over the blockades. That's the first lesson a writer should learn: get over your ego and view all other writers as supporters instead of competition.
When your friends can't help you get out of a writer's block, maybe nature will. Taking regular walks is a nice habit that will get you inspired.
Contemplation is the key to a writer's progress. That's another lesson you can learn from Woolf. When she wasn't writing poetry or prose, she was writing in her diary. When you develop a habit of daily writing, you will use each day to take a step further.
Everyone has fears. Are you afraid to write about them? Don't be! The pen was Woolf's mightiest weapon to battle her fears. She didn't ignore her thoughts; she embraced them and turned the fears into memorable literature. Remember: you cannot allow yourself to be seduced by popularity. Literary wreckage is ruthless, so you need to keep your work away from publicity if it's too young to stand the strain.
You want to learn more from the work and life of this great writer? EssayMama.com writing service is always here to pamper you with some interesting and useful information. Here you go - 'Top 10 Writing Tips from the Desk of Virginia Woolf'!
Share this infographic with the world and get some points to your karma ;)
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.This feature appears in the new issue of Howler, an independent magazine about soccer produced in the United States. You can order a copy here.
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We'd been flying for at least an hour over unbroken wilderness, just trees and water, when Manaus appeared as if etched from the jungle. Where the city stopped, the forest began. Coiled around the southern half of Manaus was the Rio Negro, a vast anaconda of black liquid that fed into the Amazon a few miles away. The river glinted in the sun as we circled overhead. Tankers chugged slowly upstream. On a cemetery hill high above the water, tombstones were scattered like broken teeth.
I turned to my traveling companion, a journalist who'd lived in the Amazon for two years as a Mormon missionary. He hadn't shaved in days and with his dirty blond hair looked like a Hamburg sailor who'd stumbled up from the docks for an extra ration of grog. On his mission, the locals had called him Alemão. German. It didn't matter how much he protested that he was American. In Brazil, he was Alemão.
And Alemão knew better than anyone what might lie in store for us here. But he said nothing and stared at the seat in front of him. We'd heard dire things about Manaus before arriving in late June for the USA vs. Portugal match. We'd heard, for instance, about a fearsome creature called the candiru that lives in the Rio Negro. A bloodsucking catfish about the size of a toothpick, the candiru can swim up a man's penis and lodge its barbs in his urethra, at which point the tiny monster proceeds to rip and maul. So ravenous is the fish, according to jungle lore, that it can leap from the water like an evil salmon and ascend a stream of urine to get at its prey.
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"Many victims reportedly die from shock," the New York Daily News stated in a pre–World Cup candiru alert. "The only treatment is said to be potentially fatal surgery."
We'd had other warnings, too. In Natal, a cabdriver delivered a cryptic message: "In Natal, you can wear flip-flops. In Manaus, no." What he meant is that you needed proper footwear to flee or kick desperately at whatever cruel fate awaited you there. I'd heard about the heat, malaria, yellow fever. I knew about the shockingly high murder rate. The city of nearly two million people was said to be a crime-ridden industrial park, where multinationals made poor Indians stand on assembly lines and boil fat for soap. Nobody had anything kind to say about Manaus. It was the parasitic vampire fish lodged up the nation's prick. When I told a worldly Paulista about my plan to visit, he simply shook his head. "Why would you do that?" he said. "That's the worst place in Brazil."
Certainly, it was the worst place to build a World Cup stadium, according to every Brazilian I'd spoken to. Every media expert said the same. Comedian John Oliver likened Manaus's new stadium to the "world's most expensive bird toilet," and if you considered yourself an enlightened fan, you had little choice but to agree that the Arena da Amazônia, a 40,549-seat stadium that cost around $270 million and claimed the lives of three construction workers, was a very bad idea.
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Manaus had three or four "pro" teams that could use the stadium after the Cup, but they were minor-league outfits with few fans, and it wasn't like Bruce Springsteen was going to play the Amazon anytime soon. Some economist had apparently run the numbers and decided that the most rational post-Cup use for the building would be to blow it up like an old Vegas casino. My hope was that the locals would just let the jungle turn it into a vinecovered folly over which archaeologists might puzzle hundreds of years from now.
And so, to recap, the city was vile, the stadium was useless, don't pee in the Amazon. Before I arrived, my editor and I discussed Manaus's sordid reputation. Was it real? How much trouble might a visiting soccer fan come to here? My mission became clear: probe the dark soul of this jungle metropolis and, hopefully, gain some insight into why the World Cup was being staged here at all. I had 72 hours.
The best pound-for-pound fighter in the world is from Manaus. His name is José Aldo, and he has a long scar that runs down his left cheek, the result of getting pushed into a barbecue pit as a boy. Aldo wanted to be a professional soccer player when he was young, but he kept getting beaten down in the streets. So he turned to martial arts and decided to become a champion. He now holds the UFC featherweight belt. One dream replaced another. That tends to happen in Manaus. The city forces a recalibration of reference points. Even for Brazilians, coming here is like visiting a foreign country, and the Manauense know it.
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"We're so far from everything, isolated, and [the World Cup] is all brand-new to us, to the people there," Aldo told Vice as the tournament started. "Now we're in the spotlight, so it doesn't matter to them how much was spent on building the arena. People are pumped!"
Our cabbie from the airport was pumped. He gushed about how the stadium would be great for the city. The clerk at the Lider Hotel was pumped. People on the street were pumped. This was at odds with what I'd encountered in Rio and São Paulo, where Brazilians were either apathetic or despairing about the World Cup, which symbolized to many the corruption of the country's ruling class. My reference points began to dissolve.
The only person we encountered who wasn't pumped was an old man selling books on the street near our hotel. On a wall behind his wares he'd created a crude shrine to O Seleção, the Brazilian national side, by taping newspaper photos of teams from years past. I spotted Garrincha, Zito, and Mário Zagallo on the wall. One photo showed the 1970 World Cup champions, the best team in history, with Pelé, Gérson, Jairzinho, Rivellino, Tostão, and more attacking flair than any side before or since. Sócrates, Zico, Romário, Bebeto, Cafu, Dunga, Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, they were all here, a yellow-and-blue legacy of superstars that no country could ever hope to match. But the line narrowed as the photos grew more recent. By 2014, Neymar alone more or less carried the banner for Brazilian soccer. Next to him were political articles about corruption, including one with Brazil's current president, Dilma Rousseff, huddling with the former president Lula above whom the bookseller had scrawled "the face of a punk" in Portuguese.
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Alemão had taken to posing a leading question to locals: "Is Brazil going to win the World Cup?" For the most part, he received enthusiastic replies. A few people expressed concern about the team's lack of talent, its workmanlike style of play. But the bookseller looked Alemão dead in the eye and uttered a blasphemy I heard only this once on my trip:
"I hope we lose."
"Let's get out of here," I said to Alemão, "before we get teargassed again."
By the time we reached the historic city center that evening, the air was hot and thick, and we were a couple chopps in. ("Chopp" being the Brazilian term for a small draft pilsner.) Brazilian beer, by and large, is terrible. A company named Ambev makes most of the major brands here—Brahma, Antarctica, Bohemia, Skol—and uses corn as an adjunct to barley malt in the brewing process, which produces a sweet aftertaste. In São Paulo, I'd had a fine IPA from a craft brewery called Cervejaria Colorado, but that was hard to find, and here we were drinking for effect.
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Near the main square locals in tank tops and shorts were getting tuned up on street caipirinhas they could customize with flavors like passion fruit and mango. I sampled a few of these and wandered over to a man hawking cruises up the river.
"How much for a half-day trip for two people?" I asked. "Six hundred and fifty reais," he said. I shrugged and walked away. Almost U.S. $300. The man called after me: "That's the German price. I'll give you the special American price, 500 reais!"
I ignored him and ducked into the office of a different tour operator, where I approached a woman at the desk. "Some crook out there is trying to sell me a half-day trip for two people for 400 reais," I told her. "How about you?" She wearily opened a booklet with photos to show me what her tour included, the same Potemkin hooey as every tour: a swim with pink river dolphins, a stop at an Indian village, and fishing for piranha. The dolphins looked dumb with trauma after being rubbed down by so many sunscreen-slathered foreign hands, and who knew what treachery those Indians had been conscripted for in exchange for letting outsiders gawk at them. The same cast of charlatans was probably feeding kickbacks to 90 percent of the tour operators. They might even have a movable set, one you could break down fast and ferry to different locations to satisfy any number of swindlers.
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"This is my mother's village," the woman said, pointing to a photo of some huts.
"I don't care about any of that," I told her. "What I need is a fast boat with a powerful engine. I want to go upriver as far as possible in one day, really get into the jungle. Understand?"
"That's not possible here," she said.
"Fine. I'll just go down to the port. Know anyone who'd want the job?"
She paused, then scribbled a name and directions on a piece of paper, slipping it to me before the other customers could see. I stood to leave. "You should come with me," I said quietly.
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"Believe me," she said. "I wish I could."
In the square, a big-screen TV had been set up, and people sat in rows of plastic chairs watching the late game between Honduras and Ecuador. Few cities in Brazil could boast a colonial plaza like the Praça São Sebastião. In the late 1800s, Manaus was one of the wealthiest cities in the Americas, the "Paris of the Tropics," with grand architecture commissioned by rubber barons who enslaved and slaughtered the indigenous population to get rich off a natural resource that grew only in the Amazon. The barons made Donald Trump look like a conservative spender. One is said to have slaked the thirst of his horses with French champagne. But after an enterprising Englishman smuggled rubber tree seeds out of the country, the boom times came to a crashing halt, and Manaus decayed into what it is today—a rainforest curiosity and, to many Brazilians, few of whom have actually been here, a source of mythical apprehension.
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The jewel of the city remained the Teatro Amazonas, a pink neoclassical opera house that opened in 1896 and once attracted French, Italian, and Portuguese opera companies. Made from materials shipped across the Atlantic—Glasgow steel, Carrara marble, 36,000 vitrified ceramic tiles from Alsace that formed a dome in the colors of the Brazilian flag—the opera house was a beautiful vestige of Manaus's mercantile era and a monument to greed and death. After the crash, it sat in disrepair for 90 years until being restored. I could think of only one other building like it hereabouts: the Arena da Amazônia, built, in part, from 7,000 tons of steel shipped in from Portugal and fated for its own desuetude. Even the price tags were similar: in today's dollars, the Teatro had cost around $260 million to build.
Inside, we found a curious, atavistic scene. Drunk Americans in Clint Dempsey jerseys had packed into the elegant three-floor opera house, along with some betterdressed locals, for a free concert by Cuca Roseta, a fado singer from Portugal. Fado is lovely, dolorous music, dark and sad, the Portuguese blues, and Roseta, who changed between sets from a green dress to a red one to show her support for the Portuguese team that would soon face the United States here, transfixed the audience. If not for the soccer jerseys, the concert felt like it could have taken place a century ago.
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Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Alemão had dozed off in his seat. I'd warned him the World Cup would be a brutal slog, especially for those of us working the tournament. After two Cups, I'd built up some resistance. Even so, Brazil had been punishing. We'd been stuck in floods and traffic jams. The night before, in Natal, we'd watched a belligerent Brazilian and his friends terrorize a busload of bewildered Japanese with screams of "Sushi! Kamikaze! Edamame!" and any other Japanese words they could think of. In São Paulo, at a World Cup protest, riot police had shot tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades at us. In Natal, we'd had another run-in with the cops. Ugly stuff. Alemão had begun to falter.
After the concert, a crowd gathered in the square outside the Bar do Armando, which tourist literature claimed was a "bohemian hot spot" frequented by writers and artists. Not tonight. American fans were getting blitzed on corn beer and doing mad jigs to guitar tunes. I observed one American grinding on a young Brazilian girl in a tight dress who had braces on her teeth. Her mother was standing nearby and chided the American good-naturedly. This crowd could only have been better than the English, who'd been here when the tournament began. Several residents told me they were appalled at what they'd seen—Brits drinking to the point of hospitalization, puking in the streets, and fighting one another.
At some point, I lost Alemão in the mob. He texted me that he was going back to the hotel. I missed the text. Too much corn beer. Where was our hotel anyway? Start walking. Through the old quarter in the night, everything quiet, trust the instincts, shoes laced tight. A man in a doorway doing drugs. Do you know you can't rent a goddamn hammock in this town for under $100 a night? Do you know the best fighter in the world is from Manaus? Keep moving. Oh look, transgender hookers. So many, strutting in thigh-high leather stiletto boots, convincing but for the jawlines. Maybe they're transsexuals. Or transvestites. Is "transvestite" still a term? What if they're just cross-dressers? Does that mean they haven't had surgery? Do I still call them transgender? Fuck it. Any of you know the Lider Hotel? Kinda dingy place, a 1950s-era cigarette vending machine by the elevator, display case in the lobby for the hotel's first cell phone, size of a brick?
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Back in the room, Alemão was awake and full of remorse: "I shouldn't have left you. You don't know the language. You didn't know how to get back. Anything could have happened."
"Don't worry," I said, explaining that I'd gotten directions from a drug addict and men who looked like women and wanted to sell their bodies to me. "Very friendly people. I like this town."
When I woke up on Saturday, Alemão had gone to find a church. It was a Catholic church. I don't know why he'd gone. I didn't want to know. Instead, I went up to the roof and did push-ups in the sun until I felt like vomiting. I'd been taking chloroquine malaria pills for days and waiting for the hallucinations to come on. But I felt only creeping nausea.
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The wharf was a short walk from the Lider, and once Alemão returned, we headed down there to look for a boat. We passed men selling saws and bolts and engine parts. The instructions I'd received the previous night proved indecipherable by day. I'd hoped to commandeer a private launch, but we'd lost crucial hours and had to adjust. One captain wanted R300 for the same standard tour. Another brigand told us he was about to cast off with four passengers and had two seats left for R250, the "Brazilian price." We fished around in our pockets but could only come up with R200. "Okay, okay," he said, waving us aboard.
The moment we stepped onto his flat-bottomed wreck, I knew we'd made a terrible mistake. The Franciely's 40-horsepower motor barely worked, and as we puttered into the river, I saw that the wires connecting the throttle to the motor were exposed and jury-rigged together in a way that looked like it could short at any second. Every other boat on the river was flying past us. One of Manaus's principal attractions is the "meeting of the waters," where the Rio Negro, which has an inky color from vegetation that rots in the water, merges with the sandy-colored Rio Solimões (the name of the Amazon River this far west). Like oil and vinegar, the two waterways come together but refuse to mix for some distance, creating a colorful spectacle. The Franciely broke down before we could get there. We'd been on the water for 20 minutes.
As I watched a lone sandal sweep past us in the current, a fat woman from Fortaleza rumbled to life and began cursing the captain, who was fiddling with the engine wires. Under one meaty arm, she had pinioned a terrified Maltese dog, like a purse with a heartbeat. The more she yelled about the meeting of the waters, the tighter she squeezed the dog, which wore a pink bow and a look of permanent subjugation. The animal's spirit had broken long ago. Eventually, the captain got the motor working, and Manaus vanished behind us. We passed some shacks on stilts, half-submerged telephone poles, and a floating church, only to stop at a tourist-laden restaurant built on the water with a piranha fishing hole, around which a group of Americans were failing to catch piranha. This was exactly what I'd hoped to avoid. "We've been had," I said to Alemão. "I refuse to eat here." Alemão was already moving toward the buffet. "I knew it would be this way," he grunted. "Can you loan me some money?"
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After lunch, we motored down narrow tributaries deeper into the forest, where we saw exotic birds in the trees and jungle hens hopping on lily pads the size of life rafts. We put in at another small settlement, where Indian women sold jewelry made from açaí berries and kids swam in the river. I watched a mother load her two small children into a dugout canoe and disappear into the jungle.
I had been looking for the Beast, hoping to find it leering at me from the foliage. We gringos think of the jungle this way. Wander too far off the beaten path and you'll find a pig skull mounted on a spear or a curare-tipped arrow embedded in your neck. That, or a primordial madness might seize you and render you savage. In reality, this mind-set is more dangerous than anything in the jungle itself. For centuries, the Amazon and its inhabitants have been victimized by outsiders looking to "tame" them, and you had to feel for people whose ancestors lived under the real threat of having their genitals shot off for sport by rubber traders.
When we pulled into a small opening in the forest, several Indians in canoes, who had clearly been waiting for this opportunity, paddled up to the Franciely and began thrusting animals over the side. Coins for photos, that was the deal. Over one side came two baby caimans whose mouths were tied shut. They looked drugged and didn't move as they were passed around the boat. Over the other side, jammed in my face, came a tree sloth, also seemingly drugged. The sloth's eyes were like buttons on a doll. They didn't blink. They couldn't focus.
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Like the Maltese, the sloth had been permanently subdued, and I knew at once where it would wind up. I almost couldn't bear to look. The captain had put the boat in reverse to keep it stationary in the current, and the engine was belching thick clouds of smoke. When I turned around, the Fortaleza woman had cast down the Maltese and grabbed the sloth under its arms. As engine smoke enveloped them both, she raised the creature triumphantly, her own hairy Jules Rimet Trophy. Through the billowing smoke, the sloth's dead eyes stared out at me. The stench of burning fuel filled my lungs. There was no need to go into the jungle to find the Beast. The Beast was right here. We had brought it with us.
Manaus wasn't supposed to be host city for the World Cup. FIFA initially expected to have eight venues, and the "City of the Forest" wasn't among them. But then Ricardo Teixeira stepped in. He was the head of the Brazilian Football Confederation who had once sat on FIFA's executive committee and, along with his father-in-law, João Havelange, allegedly taken $41 million in bribes tied to World Cup marketing rights. Teixeira went to work on Sepp Blatter, and the number of host cities soon expanded to 12, with Manaus beating out Rio Branco and Belém for one of the slots.
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In no little way, then, Teixeira and FIFA were responsible for bringing me (and thousands of others) on a costly 3,400-mile dogleg. There was no other way I'd have come to Manaus. I guess it made sense in the broader scheme. The World Cup is a glossy, highly produced spectacle best suited for cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but the tournament, unlike the Olympics, has a tradition of frequenting farther-flung, less desirable destinations. Like Detroit.
It pained me to admit it, but I found FIFA's approach admirable. In South Africa, I'd been to Rustenburg, a dusty mining town I didn't even know existed before my trip. Ecstatic locals streamed down to the stadium to mingle with fans. (I'm still in touch with a guy I met there.) In 2006, I went to Dortmund, another bleak mining town, to watch Jurgen Klinsmann's Germany side beat Poland 1–0 on an Oliver Neuville goal in the 91st minute. The Germans still talk about that game, which led to a collective expression of national pride in a country that has tended to shy away from public displays of that kind. FIFA created those experiences, no matter what we might think about how the suits in Zurich conduct business.
I still wasn't sure, though, what my lasting impression of Manaus would be. The people here were exuberant, even joyous. Pumped! That enthusiasm was infectious. Hosting the World Cup was a matter of civic pride to them. But there was, too, an undeniable darkness that I couldn't put my finger on. After getting off the Franciely, I'd loitered by the docks watching men play a popular local card game called pif paf, a combination of rummy and poker. The men were drinking steadily. Others had fallen to the ground and lay belly up as pedestrians stepped around them. For all I knew, they were junkies, not gamblers, although it was hard to tell. Cutthroats tend to congregate by ports, and the locals had told me that all species of thief and scum prowled this area at night. I would have to return.
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I'd arranged to meet up with a Howler intern on Saturday night. He'd e-mailed me a week earlier to say that he was "really excited for the opportunity," which made me wonder what my editor had told him. All I knew was his name, Patterson, and that he'd been in Manaus for a few days. When I arrived, I'd sent him a message asking if he'd found any good spots in town. His tone had changed completely: "I'm try not to darken your thoughts haha [sic]." Then he recommended a place with "5 foot tall paper mache or plaster puppets." Sweet suffering Jesus. Had Manaus gotten to him?
I found Patterson in the square wearing hiking boots and sweating heavily. He was a big fellow, a rugby player at Georgetown, and he glistened like he'd come off a log flume. "You just sweat the beer right out," he panted. It was true. Manaus is so humid that tying your shoes can necessitate a change of shirt. The weather was the reason that, before the World Cup draw, England manager Roy Hodgson had called Manaus a "place to avoid." The mayor of Manaus retorted by saying that he hoped his city would "get a better team" out of the draw than England. Both would be disappointed. And it would be muggy all right. Patterson and his cousin had walked over from a hostel that slept 10 men to a room, and I could only imagine the intolerable funk building up in that hellhole. My plan was to take Patterson down to the port to gamble with junkies, then force him to swim out to the Maestra Mediterraneo, a big container ship anchored a couple hundred feet offshore. I'd scouted the ship on my cruise and it appeared to have no real security. If Patterson could get up the anchor chain, he could steal anything he wanted. The current was very strong, but I had a strange, unfounded confidence in him. What I learned next, however, took me aback: Patterson and I had, improbably, gone to the same small high school in Washington, D.C., one that graduates only about 75 students a year. We'd even had the same teachers. Goddamnit, I thought, what were the chances? There was no way I could let him come to harm now.
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So we went to the Bar do Armando for corn beer. The crowd was bigger than before. Americans were everywhere, and hundreds of Brazilians had turned out. They all wanted to talk to us. Patterson became ungovernable and ran off with a local girl. I saw him reeling through the mob later, laughing and sweating. I wondered if they'd wind up in a love hotel. Alemão and I had seen the love hotels everywhere. They had names like Magic Palace, L'Amour, and Sinless. They rented rooms by the hour, and we'd heard lurid stories about mantelpieces lined with dildos, room service menus filled with sex toys, and odd Brazilian copulation rituals. Apparently, the rooms have a sort of glory hole-type aperture that is accessed behind a sliding panel after a guest places a room service order. When the item is ready—say, a tube of lube—a gloved human hand will emerge from the hole with it. My grip on reality was slipping, and the last thing I needed on the brain was the possibility that holes like that existed in walls all over Brazil, through which hands wagged dildos and ball gags at people. Maybe the Chloroquine was finally getting to me. The pills had severe side effects like paranoia and psychosis and people on the |
before Christmas.
Their next debate falls on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Normally, this would be a dud of a time slot, since it's basically a Saturday. But DNC officials argue that the debate is right after an NFL playoff double header, which could carry over a large audience to the debate. It’s a legitimate argument — increased viewership in programs after big NFL games is a well-documented phenomenon, especially after the Super Bowl.
Saturday debates are rare — but not this election season
The GOP also has a Saturday debate in February, but the Republican National Committee has scheduled a total of 12 debates, compared with the six the Democrats put on the calendar.
Saturday debates are exceedingly rare, and we found out why this past weekend.
Next up for the Democrats: Another Saturday debate
The next Democratic debate is on December 19, a Saturday.
The one after is on January 17, a Sunday, which is actually a decent day for debate viewership.Desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and wild goats will bleat to each other; there the night creatures will also lie down and find for themselves places of rest.Desert animals will mingle there with hyenas, their howls filling the night. Wild goats will bleat at one another among the ruins, and night creatures will come there to rest.And wild animals shall meet with hyenas; the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; indeed, there the night bird settles and finds for herself a resting place.The desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and one wild goat will call to another. There the nocturnal creature will settle and find her place of repose.The desert creatures will meet with the wolves, The hairy goat also will cry to its kind; Yes, the night monster will settle there And will find herself a resting place.The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.The desert creatures will meet hyenas, and one wild goat will call to another. Indeed, the night birds will stay there and will find a resting place.Wildcats and hyenas will hunt together, demons will scream to demons, and creatures of the night will live among the ruins.Wild animals will roam there, and demons will call to each other. The night monster will come there looking for a place to rest.The desert creatures will meet hyenas, and one wild goat will call to another. Indeed, the screech owl will stay there and will find a resting place for herself.And desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and goat-demons will call out to each other. There also Liliths will settle, and find for themselves a resting place.Wild animals and wild dogs will congregate there; wild goats will bleat to one another. Yes, nocturnal animals will rest there and make for themselves a nest.And the wildcats will meet with the hyenas, and the wild goat will cry to his fellow. There too, nocturnal animals shall settle, and shall find themselves a place of rest.Hyenas will meet with jackals. Male goats will call to their mates. Screech owls will rest there and find a resting place for themselves.And the wild-cats shall meet with the jackals, And the satyr shall cry to his fellow; Yea, the night-monster shall repose there, And shall find her a place of rest.And the desert creatures shall meet with the wolves, The hairy goat also shall cry to its kind; Yes, the night monster shall settle there And shall find herself a resting place.The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl shall have his seat there and find for himself a place of rest.The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the hyenas, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; the night creature also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.And the wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there, and shall find her a place of rest.And devils shall meet with satyrs, and they shall cry one to the other: there shall satyrs rest, having found for themselvesrest.And demons and monsters shall meet, and the hairy ones shall cry out one to another, there hath the lamia lain down, and found rest for herself.And there shall the beasts of the desert meet with the jackals, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; the lilith also shall settle there, and find for herself a place of rest.And the wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there, and shall find her a place of rest.The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the isle, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.The wild animals of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his fellow. Yes, the night creature shall settle there, and shall find herself a place of rest.And met have Ziim with Aiim, And the goat for its companion calleth, Only there rested hath the night-owl, And hath found for herself a place of rest.Falling off a transport truck may be the best thing that could have happened to a piglet who was on his way to be slaughtered, but will now live the rest of his life in an animal sanctuary.
Last Wednesday evening, Quebec provincial police found the month-old piglet wandering along Highway 30 near Brossard.
It seems he had tumbled from a truck that was taking him to a farm, where he would be prepared for slaughter.
"The people who were following that trailer saw the piglet sneak through a hole and fall off the trailer," says Sûreté du Québec spokeswoman, Joyce Kemp.
Kemp says police called animal control officers, who came to pick up the piglet.
Through an online network of animal lovers, the piglet ended up getting a ride to the Wishing Well animal sanctuary north of Toronto.
Brenda Bronfman — who is originally from Westmount and opened the sanctuary two years ago — named him Yoda.
"He just loves to crawl into people's laps and be held. He's a little angel," says Bronfman.
Bronfman says Yoda has a few bumps and scrapes, but the vet gave him a clean bill of health last night.
She says Yoda is doing everything a little pig should be doing, and she's even bought him a little sweater to keep him warm.
The Wishing Well Sanctuary permanently adopts animals, meaning that Yoda never has to leave the farm.
"He's just going to live the rest of his, god willing, long life. And will be happy with the other pigs and all the attention. There is always somebody on the farm, and he will just be loved for the rest of his natural life," says Bronfman.Regions of Earth where water is frozen for at least a month each year are shrinking as a result of global warming. Some of the effects on ecosystems are now being revealed through research conducted at affected sites over decades. They include dislocations of the relationships between predators and their prey, as well as changes in the movement through ecosystems of carbon and nutrients. The changes interact in complex ways that are not currently well understood, but effects on human populations are becoming apparent.
Ecosystems are changing worldwide as a result of shrinking sea ice, snow, and glaciers, especially in high-latitude regions where water is frozen for at least a month each year -- the cryosphere. Scientists have already recorded how some larger animals, such as penguins and polar bears, are responding to loss of their habitat, but research is only now starting to uncover less-obvious effects of the shrinking cryosphere on organisms.
An article in the April issue of BioScience describes some impacts that are being identified through studies that track the ecology of affected sites over decades.
The article, by Andrew G. Fountain of Portland State University and five coauthors, is one of six in a special section in the issue on the Long Term Ecological Research Network. The article describes how decreasing snowfall in many areas threatens burrowing animals and makes plant roots more susceptible to injury, because snow acts as an insulator. And because microbes such as diatoms that live under sea ice are a principal source of food for krill, disappearing sea ice has led to declines in their abundance -- resulting in impacts on seabirds and mammals that feed on krill. Disappearing sea ice also seems, unexpectedly, to be decreasing the sea's uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
On land, snowpack changes can alter an area's suitability for particular plant species, and melting permafrost affects the amount of carbon dioxide that plants and microbes take out of the atmosphere -- though in ways that change over time. Shrinking glaciers add pollutants and increased quantities of nutrients to freshwater bodies, and melting river ice pushes more detritus downstream. Disappearing ice on land and the resulting sea-level rise will have far-reaching social, economic, and geopolitical impacts, Fountain and his coauthors note. Many of these changes are now becoming evident in the ski industry, in infrastructure and coastal planning, and in tourism. Significant effects on water supplies, and consequently on agriculture, can be predicted.
Fountain and his colleagues argue that place-based, long-term, interdisciplinary research efforts such as those supported by the Long Term Ecological Research Network will be essential if researchers are to gain an adequate understanding of the complex, cascading ecosystem responses to the changing cryosphere. Other articles in the special section on the Long Term Ecological Research Network detail further notable scientific and societal contributions of this network, which had its origins in 1980 and now includes 26 sites. The achievements include contributions to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, to ecological manipulation experiments, to bringing decisionmakers and researchers together, and to mechanistic understanding of long-term ecological changes.Available February 18, 2014
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About Upotte!
Kiss kiss, bang bang! The arms race takes on a startling new development when the arms come with heads, legs, and very feminine bodies attached! Yes, at Seishou Academy every girl is literally a lethal weapon, and they’re all gunning for the top shot at getting their own personal serviceman! Needless to say, it’s going to be difficult for newly recruited human instructor Genkoku to adjust to working with a living arsenal of high caliber cuties with tricky names like FNC (Funko), M 16A4 (Ichiroku), L85A1 (Eru), and SG 550 (Shigu). Especially since many have hair triggers and there’s no bulletproof vest that can stop a really determined co-ed!
Genkoku will have to rewrite the operator’s manual on student/teacher relationships, and pray that his job description won’t include having to field strip and reassemble one of his cadets in the dark. But unfortunately (for him) FNC’s already thinking about becoming his personal weapon, and she usually gets what she aims for! et ready for explosive situations, amour-piercing rounds, cheap shots galore and one very shell-shocked homeroom instructor!
Director
Leraldo Anzaldua
English Vocal Cast
Funco (FNC) Genevieve Simmons
Ichiroku (M16A4) Brittney Karbowski
Sig (SG550) Emily Neves
Elle (L85A1) Nancy Novotny
Ichihachi (AR18) Juliet Simmons
Sako (SAKO Rk95) Maggie Flecknoe
Galil (Galil AR) Beth Lazarou
Agu (AUG A1) Molly Searcy
Tei (T91) Tiffany Grant
Fara (FARA 83) Cynthia Martinez
Hachihachi (SR88A) Allison Sumrall
Saa (SAR21) Beth Lazarou
Faru (FAL L1A1) Shondra Marie
Jiisuri (G3A3) Chelsea Ryan McCurdy
Empi (MP5A2) Brittany Djie
Springfield Jovan Jackson
Ms. Fujiko (FG42) Shelley Calene-Black
Garand Andrew Love
Blu-ray/DVD Cover ArtDuring the last several decades, the image of the idealized male body in many countries has shifted toward a substantially higher level of muscularity. Bodybuilding competitors, male models, and even children’s action toys (eg, “G.I. Joe”) have become significantly more muscular than their predecessors of the 1960s. Nowadays, young men are constantly exposed to muscular male images on magazine covers, in advertisements, on television, and in movies.
Perhaps as a consequence of these trends, young men have become increasingly concerned with their muscularity, reflected by an increasing prevalence of “muscle dysmorphia,” a form of body image disorder characterized by an obsessive preoccupation with a muscular appearance.1,2 First described in the scientific literature less than 25 years ago, muscle dysmorphia has now become the subject of numerous reports and has been included as an official diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).2
Approximately 2.2% of US men have been reported to have body dysmorphic disorder, and among these men with body dysmorphic disorder, 9% to 25% have muscle dysmorphia, which would suggest the possibility that hundreds of thousands of US men may have this syndrome.2 Men with muscle dysmorphia describe dissatisfaction with their body size and shape and are preoccupied with the idea that their body is insufficiently muscular; these men show elevated rates of mood and anxiety disorders, obsessive and compulsive behaviors, substance abuse, and impairment of social and occupational functioning.1,3 Most men with muscle dysmorphia engage in weightlifting, many of them use dietary supplements, and in 2 studies, 10 of 23 men (44%)1 and 11 of 24 men (46%)3 with muscle dysmorphia reported lifetime use of anabolic-androgenic steroids (AASs)—the family of drugs that includes testosterone and its many synthetic derivatives.
A recent analysis estimated that 2.9 million to 4.0 million individuals in the United States, nearly all of whom are male, have used AASs at some time in their lives; this analysis estimated that about 1 million men in the United States have experienced AAS dependence, wherein they continued to use AASs at high doses for years.4 Prior to the 1980s, AAS use was largely restricted to elite athletes. With the publication of popular books on how to use these drugs, starting in the 1980s, AAS use began to spread from the athletic world to the general population. Today, most AAS users are not competitive athletes but rather nonathlete weightlifters who use AASs largely to look leaner and more muscular. Within this increasing new population of AAS users, even the oldest members—those who first initiated AAS use as youths in the 1980s—are only now entering middle age and beginning to experience the combined effects of long-term AAS abuse and aging.
In their attempts to gain muscle and lose body fat, AAS users often combine highly supraphysiologic doses of AASs with other appearance- and performance-enhancing substances, such as human growth hormone, thyroid hormones, insulin, clenbuterol, and other potentially toxic substances.4 Users of AASs often display additional high-risk behaviors such as the ingestion of drugs of abuse (such as cocaine and opioids), unsafe sexual behaviors, and unsafe injection practices.5,6 Furthermore, a large population of individuals do not intentionally use illicit AASs but do use substantial amounts of over-the-counter herbal or dietary supplements purported to enhance performance and appearance. The sale of such supplements is largely unregulated, and many products have been found to contain illegal AASs, other anabolic compounds (eg, selective androgen receptor modulators), and even toxic contaminants with no anabolic properties at all.7 These supplements may therefore pose potential health problems for individuals who use these products, including large numbers of men and women in the US Armed Forces, whose consumption of such supplements is increasing and who may be unknowingly exposed to AASs and other potent drugs.7
Emerging evidence has implicated several adverse health effects of AAS use, including increased risk of premature death, cardiovascular disorders, psychiatric effects, prolonged suppression of the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis, and possible long-term neurotoxic effects.4,8 Long-term exposure to supraphysiologic doses of AASs has been linked to myocardial dysfunction and stroke, clinically serious cardiomyopathy, and acceleration of atherosclerotic disease in young individuals known or believed to have used AASs.4,8,9 Also, during AAS exposure, users may develop manic or hypomanic symptoms, sometimes associated with aggression, violence, and even homicide.
Users of AASs may develop protracted hypogonadism following AAS withdrawal, which may sometimes persist for years.10 During AAS withdrawal, hypogonadism may cause some users to develop major depression, leading in some cases to suicidality. Few clinicians are familiar with treating AAS-induced hypogonadism, and clinicians often take an approach of simply advising users to stop these drugs. However, in an attempt to self-treat the highly distressing symptoms of AAS-withdrawal hypogonadism, users frequently resume AAS use, leading to a vicious cycle of dependence.
Supraphysiologic levels of AASs produce apoptotic effects on human neuronal cells, raising the possibility of early-onset dementia in individuals with prolonged high-dose AAS exposure. Additionally, AAS users experience an increased prevalence of nephrotoxic effects; musculoskeletal injuries, especially tendon ruptures; liver toxic effects; and needle-borne infections, such as human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis C. A recent Endocrine Society Scientific Statement provides references to the growing literature documenting these various effects.4
The long-term health consequences of AAS abuse, and knowledge of effective strategies to prevent or treat this disorder, remain limited. The lack of studies is partially attributable to the covert nature of AAS use and abuse, which has prevented this problem from receiving the attention of policy makers and funding agencies, who may view AASs simply as a problem of illegal use of these substances in sports. The topic has received little coverage in medical textbooks and, until recently, limited attention in the overall medical literature. Thus, many clinicians may be unaware of AAS abuse by nonathlete weightlifters and may be unprepared to treat patients presenting with AAS withdrawal or with other AAS-induced complications.
Several steps are needed to address the health problems associated with AAS use. Long-term observational studies are essential to determine the prevalence, patterns of abuse, and health risks associated with AAS use. Because clinical trials cannot ethically duplicate the large doses of AASs (often combined with other appearance- and performance-enhancing drugs) used by nonathlete weightlifters, prospective observational studies likely represent the only feasible approach for collecting outcome data on the health risks associated with these drugs. Additionally, randomized trials are needed to assess the effectiveness of integrated multipronged therapeutic interventions for treating the adverse effects of AASs and associated drugs, including interventions to address the vicious cycle of AAS-withdrawal hypogonadism, relapse, and dependence. It is important to raise awareness among the public, health care practitioners, and policy makers about the serious health consequences of AASs, the deleterious influence of body image disorders such as muscle dysmorphia, and the potential adverse influence of modern media images that falsely equate muscularity with masculinity.
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Corresponding Author: Shalender Bhasin, MB, BS, Research Program in Men’s Health: Aging and Metabolism, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 221 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (sbhasin@bwh.harvard.edu).
Published Online: December 8, 2016. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.17441
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Dr Pope reported receiving consulting fees from Pronutria; receiving research funding from Genentech, Shire, Sunovion, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse; and having testified twice as an expert witness regarding anabolic steroids within the last 3 years. Dr Bhasin reported receiving research grant support from Abbvie, Transition Therapeutics, Eli Lilly and Co, and Takeda; receiving nonfinancial support (drug supplies) from Transition Therapeutics; serving as a consultant to AbbVie, Regeneron, and Novartis; serving as chair of the expert panel that wrote a scientific statement on adverse health effects of performance-enhancing drugs; serving as chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Endocrinology Board; and having a financial interest in Function Promoting Therapies LLC, a company aiming to develop innovative solutions that enhance precision and accuracy in clinical decision making and facilitate personalized therapeutic choices in reproductive health. No other disclosures were reported.Abstract 732 Historical Perspective Poster Symposium, Saturday, 5/1
During the second century AD, the Greek physician Soranus described a scoring system for newborns that very much resembles the scoring system (Apgar) used in our days. Soranus was one of the most learned, critical and lucid authors of antiquity. Soranus, born in Ephesus, a city in Asia Minor, studied in Alexandria and eventually moved to Rome where he practiced Medicine in the early second century. He authored close to 20 works on a variety of topics ranging from internal medicine and surgery to treatises on embryology and the soul.
In his influential book 'Gynecology', preserved in the original Greek, Soranus devoted an entire section on the care of newborns. This chapter begins with instructions on "How to recognize the newborn that is worth rearing". Since there was no physician present during most normal births, a midwife would assess the following characteristics, indicative, according to Soranus, of a newborn that was worth rearing: "the fact that its mother has spent the period of pregnancy in good health.... the fact that it has been born at the due time, best at the end of nine months.... the fact that when put on the earth it immediately cries with proper vigor.... the fact that it is perfect in all its parts, members and senses.... the fact that its ducts, namely of the ears, nose, pharynx, urethra, anus are free from obstruction.... that the natural functions of every member are neither sluggish nor weak.... Finally, Soranus points out that the joints should bend and stretch, that the newborn should be of "due size and shape" and had to be "properly sensitive in every respect". Producing pain from stimulation (pricking or squeezing) tested the latter.
Both Soranus' and Apgar's assessment (published in 1958), recommend the routine evaluation of muscle tone, reflex irritability and respiratory effort. Soranus however, does not specifically mention heart rate or color of the newborn as prognostic factors. Furthermore, in our era, the Apgar score is used as a reflection of respiratory and neurologic depression at birth and the quality of the resuscitative efforts made. Soranus' assessment on the other hand was used to help determine whether the newborn should be accepted or rejected by the family, a decision made by the father or the oldest surviving male ascendant (pater familias). Acceptance was symbolized by the pater familias picking up the newborn from the ground. Rejection either resulted in the child's death or in adoption, both legally accepted actions in the Roman empire.
Rights and permissions To obtain permission to re-use content from this article visit RightsLink.In terms of meeting his medical school’s stated curricular objectives, Tyler’s medical education was leaving a lot to be desired. But as Osler would hasten to point out, this would not prevent Tyler from learning essential lessons about what it means to be a physician and how take good care of patients. Though in many cases he would lack important knowledge and skills necessary to provide his patients with the best medical care, he could become a physician by being a physician.
Sylvia Martin was a woman in her 60s, suffering from metastatic breast cancer. She had undergone resection of her tumor, and required multiple reconstructive surgeries. She had a long history of smoking and drinking, carried the hepatitis C virus, and was now suffering from a severe wound infection that had spread across her chest and down her arm. She was readmitted to the hospital on a Saturday, the same day Tyler first met her. When he first saw her he thought, “This is the sickest patient I have ever seen.” Her family warned him that she could not be relied on to comply with medical advice, and they feared that she was reaching the end. Tyler talked with them, performed a complete patient assessment, wrote his notes, and recommended that she be transferred to the intensive care unit.
Instead her attending physician talked with the family and entered into Mrs. Martin’s chart a Do Not Resuscitate order. This meant that if her heart stopped beating, the medical team would not use chest compressions and other aggressive methods to attempt to restore it. Her cancer had spread far, she was suffering from a severe infection, and she was already on a ventilator. It seemed pointless to press hard to prolong her life further. Instead the team would focus primarily on keeping her comfortable. Both the patient and family seemed at peace with this decision, and Tyler went home for the remainder of the weekend, having Sunday off. When he came in on Monday morning, the situation had changed dramatically.
The whole family was gathered in Mrs. Martin’s room. She was unconscious. When Tyler examined her, her severe swelling made her pulse difficult to feel, and her heart sounds were obscured by the ventilator. The family asked him whether she was already gone. Tyler said that he did not know for sure, but it looked as though she was dying. He said he would come back later.
When he got back from rounds, the family was at lunch. Mrs. Martin felt cold, and despite multiple attempts, he could not feel a pulse or hear heart sounds. He started to go out to get one of her nurses, but then came back to check for brainstem reflexes, such as reaction of the pupils to light. Nothing. Then he went to get the nurse. When she came into the room, she said, “Well, shoot,” and began unhooking everything.
Tyler knew the importance of noting time of death, so he glanced up at the clock. Then he paged the attending physician, who was in a meeting. As the nurses tended to their work, Tyler stepped out into the hall to make a note in the chart. Then he saw Mrs. Martin’s family walking toward him. As her daughter approached, she asked timidly, “Is she...?” Tyler nodded, then sat down with the family to answer their questions. He did not know all the answers, but he was able to listen to them patiently, to hold their hands, to remain with them even when they broke down in tears, and to provide them the time and compassion they needed. For the first time in his life, he felt like a real physician, experiencing the greatest sense of responsibility and trust he had ever known.People who go vegan for ethical reasons are more likely to stick to the diet than people who are vegan for health reasons, according to a new study.
Of the 246 vegans surveyed in a new study published by journal Appetite, those vegans who adopted the diet for health benefits were more likely to report eating more fruit and fewer sweets, while ethical vegans were more likely to follow the diet for a longer period of time. Ethical vegans reported following the diet for an average of about eight years, whereas health vegans kept to the diet for about five-and-a-half years. Ethical vegans were also more likely to consume soy and vitamin supplements.
The vegan diet has become increasingly popular in recent years, though only 2% of Americans identify as vegan, according to the most recent Gallup poll. To be vegan, dieters must not consume any animal products. The researchers in the new study wanted to assess whether the reasons people gave for going vegan affected their adherence to the diet and their health behaviors.
People who want to eat a vegan diet because they are interested in the health benefits may be eating healthier (it’s still possible to eat dessert while vegan, as well as processed food), but they may not be able to sustain it as long as people who have chosen to be vegan for ethical reasons.
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Contact us at editors@time.com."In the wake of our probe, the European Commission notified us there had been a poster competition, which was co-financed by the commission. EC officials promised us it would be taken down," Arūnas Vinčiūnas, ambassador-at-large at Lithuania's permanent mission at the European Union (EU), told BNS on Monday.
In his words, the poster was hanging in the main offices of the EC, Berlaymont. A photograph published in the British media last week reveals that the hammer and sickle was palced next to Christian, Islamic, Judaic and other religious symbols, which formed a five-pointed star.
"I see one interesting thing. If the poster is hanging and it looks like a big five-pointed star from a distance, it raises no concern. And if one comes closer and starts looking into details, then some concern might arise. It's just very interesting psychologically and politically. The large five-pointed start itself seems to have not raised any concern," Lithuanian MEP and former head of state, Vytautas Landsbergis, told BNS on Monday.
His fellow MEP Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė told BNS the European Commission should have paid more attention, and the incident itself demonstrated that Europe still lacked knowledge of Eastern European history.
"Such posters with such symbols only add to the position that Communist crimes need to be evaluated, and Europe needs to learn more about what has been happening in that part of Europe for 50 years, and that not everyone entered a new stage in 1945 as others were occupied for long decades. The main problem is the lack of knowledge of history. I wouldn’t want to believe that it’s provocation or some evil things," the MEP said.
"The European Commission knows that the symbol – the hammer and sickle – is banned in some EU member states and should pay more attention," she added.
Another Lithuanian MEP, Leonidas Donskis, representing Lithuania's Liberal Movement, said the poster was unacceptable and insulting to Eastern Europe.
"In this case, we need patience and we need to tell them that it's improper and unacceptable. Other signs [in the poster] are real almost thousand-year-old religious symbols. The hammer and sickle is a modern sign. Secondly, it is related to a violence-based ideology and not atheistic belief. Thirdly, it symbolizes pain of Central and Eastern Europe. To do such things means to ignore a tragic experience of a large part of Europe," Donskis told BNS. "We need to say very patiently that it's improper, that should not happen and that such things do not improve Europe's image. It’s something between ignorance, total ignorance, stupidity, and a willful gesture," he said.
Meanwhile Lithuania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to comment.
EC officials promise to look into the details of appearance of the poster.
"The European Commission has condemned crimes of totalitarian regimes. The European Commission's Europe for Citizens Programme funds projects of commemoration of victims of Nazism and Stalinism. The European Commission did not publish the poster," Giedrius Sudikas of the European Commission Representation in Lithuania told BNS.
Meanwhile British MEP Daniel Hannan published a photo of the poster in his blog on the Daily Telegraph website on Friday, showing the hammer and sickle alongside symbols of Christianity, Judaism, and other religions. They form a five-pointed start above slogan "We can all share the same start. EUROPE4ALL."
“For three generations, the badge of the Soviet revolution meant poverty, slavery, torture and death,” he wrote in the Telegraph.
“It adorned the caps of the chekas who came in the night. It opened and closed the propaganda films which hid the famines. It advertised the people’s courts where victims of purges and show-trials were condemned. It fluttered over the re-education camps and the gulags. For hundreds of millions of Europeans, it was a symbol of foreign occupation,” Hannan continued.
The Lithuanian Penal Code stipulates a prison term of up to two years for the denial or gross minimization or public approval of crimes committed by the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. A Lithuanian law prohibits distribution and demonstration of Nazi and Soviet symbols. Offenders face a fine of LTL 500-1,000 (EUR 145-289).
Those denying Nazi and Communist crimes also face punishment in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.
The European Commission said in December 2010 it saw no pre-conditions for initiating a document introducing a pan-European ban on denial or gross minimization of Soviet and Nazi crimes.Perhaps as a sign of how comical exclusiveness in the supercar scene has become, a famous collector is suing Ferrari’s [NYSE:RACE] North American division for defamation after being denied a build slot for the upcoming LaFerrari convertible.
As Autoweek discovered in a Verified Complaint for Damages filed with the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Division, the collector in question is 85-year-old Preston Henn, who owns the famous Swap Shop flea market in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
ALSO SEE: Bugatti Chiron launch car and Vision Gran Turismo concept sold to Saudi fan
The Swap Shop is where Henn displays his 1964 Ferrari 275 GTB/C Speciale bearing chassis number 6885, believed by many to be the most valuable car in the world. He also owns a LaFerrari coupe and has been buying Ferraris since the 1960s.
The full document is well worth the read as it gives details on Henn’s history with Ferrari and his attempts to secure the LaFerrari convertible (referred to as a Ferrari Spider though the name is yet to be confirmed) including even sending Ferrari Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne a $1 million check as a deposit.
1964 Ferrari 275 GTB/C Speciale
The document states that the denial of a build slot was “demeaning,” but Henn’s real ire is that Ferrari allegedly revealed to other parties that he was not “qualified” to purchase the car. According to the document, the claim is “an untrue statement which harms Henn’s reputation and holds him up to ridicule, disrespect and disrepute in his profession, trade, occupation, avocation, and among his friends and business and social associates.”
CHECK OUT: Why Ford is making a huge mistake with its new GT
The document says Henn is seeking a figure in excess of $75,000 for damages, along with a trial by jury.
The LaFerrari convertible has already been revealed and is due to make its world debut in late September at the 2016 Paris auto show. It’s identical to the coupe but features a removable roof panel and a more limited production run, tipped to be just 150 units.
Stay tuned for an update.Israel has demanded an explanation from American media following slanted reporting of the deadly stabbing attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
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The Government Press Office (GPO) sent an official letter of complaint to CNN and CBS after the two TV networks failed to make a distinction between the victims and attacks, simply reporting on four killed in the attack.
Instead of reporting on two victims and two terrorists who were killed, a newscaster at CNN simply reported: "In Jerusalem, four people are dead in the wake of a stabbing attack in a very popular tourist area. It happened at the Jaffa Gate to the Old City."
CNN report of the attack in Jerusalem
X
In a letter sent to CNN, GPO director Nitzan Chen wrote: "As this is neither the first nor the second such incident, I have no choice but to contact you regarding this latest example.
"We believe that combining the two murderers with the two victims into 'four dead' - is not only dishonest and unethical journalism, but also borders on incitement since the viewer can easily misinterpret it."
The letter sent to CNN
Chen determines that "Reporting 'four dead' only leads us to conclude that the person who wrote this headline had a clear political agenda. We strongly condemn such journalism."
CNN has yet to comment on the matter.
CBS, meanwhile, went with the headline "2 Palestinians killed after stabbing attack in Jerusalem."
In a separate letter to CBS, Chen wrote: "We cannot think of a worse example of anti-Israel bias than the unfortunate headline that appeared on your website yesterday, even if it was only for a short time."
The letter sent to CBS
The headline was later changed to "2 Israelis dead after stabbing attack in Jerusalem; 2 Palestinian assailants killed."
"The first headline is clearly turning the murderers into victims in the most inflammatory way possible," Chen wrote. "There can be no justification for this. Beyond the immediate risk it poses to Israelis from possible Arab revenge attacks, it is simply dishonest and unethical journalism."
The New York Times, meanwhile, reported on the attack with the headline "2 Palestinian Attackers Killed, 2 Israelis Die in Jerusalem."
An organization called SSI (Students Supporting Israel) posted the headline on its Facebook page, adding "Terrorists are killed, but innocent Israelis DIE?"
Criticism of the New York Times headline
"Time after time we are shocked and saddened by the choice of western media to cover terror acts against Israelis in a different way than acts against other people around the world," SSI wrote on its Facebook page.
Eight hours after the story went online, the headline was changed to "Palestinian Stabbers Kill Israeli, Assailants Shot Dead."
On Thursday morning, Shaare Zedek Medical Center reported that there has been an improvement in the situation of an Israeli wounded in the attack at the Jaffa Gate, saying he is in stable condition.
Tuesday marked |
Carter. When listeners buy merchandise online, of course, sellers know a lot more about them. “When you’re selling merch at a concert, there’s no way of knowing exactly who bought that piece of merch. Even going to a concert, you don’t know who bought that ticket.” Spotify’s creator services team is already fielding requests for more metrics. Regional listening data charts make it easy to sketch out locations for tour routes, but a savvy artist may also want to overlay a map of how much money they made in each of those markets on their last tour, for example, or tie listening data to social media analytics to learn more about new fans.
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How Spotify’s Quiet, Hit-Making Playlists Work Spotify’s popular playlists don’t just help guide you through an endless sea of music to music you might like and keep you listening longer: They’ve also become a prized tool in Spotify’s arsenal for promoting upcoming artists. Being included on a high-follower playlist can result in a massive spike in streams for an artist, with or without a label. Famously, Lorde’s 2013 breakthrough hit “Royals” was propelled to popularity by its inclusion on a popular Spotify playlist. As Spotify has grown, this effect has been dramatically amplified. In some cases, flashes of streaming success can nudge budding careers toward major milestones like recording contracts. Australian singer-songwriter Starley signed with Epic Records after making the Spotify playlist rounds and skyrocketing to over 2 million daily streams. The power of playlists—governed by both humans and algorithms—has also become a source of competitive tension. Pandora pretty much invented personalized internet radio, fueled by algorithms built on top of human knowledge about music. Since then, music services like Google Play, Deezer, and iHeartRadio have all taken a crack at discovery using some blend of human and machine smarts. Apple, Spotify’s fiercest competition, sets itself apart by betting on the wisdom of real people: it combines its army of skilled playlist curators and the more traditional, FM radio-style approach of Beats 1. Indeed, if there’s one thing that makes Apple Music compelling, it’s music curation. Spotify was well-armed to weather the threat posed by Apple’s mid-2015 launch. The previous year, the company made a fortunately timed acquisition when it snatched up the Echo Nest, a music intelligence data platform used to power the Pandora-style “radio” feature on a number of different music apps. This gave Spotify a team of high-caliber engineers at the forefront of fields like machine listening and data science, and the technology required to power a new generation of algorithmic music recommendation features. At the same time, the company was busy hiring its own team of in-house music editors. The company’s team of over 50 music programmers spend their days hand-crafting and maintaining playlists based on genre, mood, activity, decade, and other themes. These in-house playlists–which are different from user-created playlists or the ones operated by record labels–are maintained by editors and genre specialists who populate them through a combination of external pitches from labels and managers and their own gut intuition. “It’s a global team contributing to breaking down borders and finding music from every corner,” says Doug Ford, the company’s director of playlists and editorial for North America. “We’re like the elected officials of Spotify.”
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Often, songs come from real-world experiences, like when curators see a new artist perform live or hear something good blasting from a passing car. Spotify touts its system as a purely democratic operation, having explicitly banned “playola”–the practice of paying for placement on playlists–in 2015 after press reports suggested a pay-for-play culture was developing around the streaming business’s playlists. “The idea was to build these networks and prove that we can move songs along the path of discovery and break artists and break songs,” Ford explains. “Every step of the process is very intentional.” Spotify’s in-house playlists have a multi-tier hierarchy broken down primarily by genre. Top-tier playlists—its “mega channels,” Ford calls them—like Today’s Top Hits (14 million followers) and Rap Caviar (6 million) are run by genre-specialized curators, typically with backgrounds in radio or music television. These sit atop a network of smaller playlists, like more niche genre collections, regional lists of songs and incubator playlists that let curators take early bets on potential hits and see how listeners respond. In total, 4,500 company-curated playlists collectively generate over 1 billion streams every week, the company says. Lauv, an unsigned musician and then-student at New York University, had his song “The Other” picked up by a Spotify playlist editor in late 2016. The track quickly rose up the curation ranks and went from 20,000 daily streams to over 730,000 daily streams. To date, Lauv has amassed 45 million streams, all without major label support. Related: Five Steps To Becoming a Successful Artist on Spotify
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These company playlists operate side by side with its more data-driven, personalized ones. Most notably, the company’s Discover Weekly feature—a list of 30 auto-selected songs based on a combined analysis of one’s musical taste and patterns in the playlisting habits of Spotify power users—exploded to 40 million listeners in its first 10 months. According to Spotify, more than 8,000 artists saw at least half of their listens come from Discover Weekly during its first year alone. “For artists, it’s moving the needle in a really fundamental way,” says Matt Ogle, the product director at Spotify who oversaw Discover Weekly before leaving in May to work at Instagram. “Artists are seeing this net lift of new listeners that they weren’t getting through any other channel before.” The Cincinnati garage-rock band Heartless Bastards, for instance, recently saw its overall streams increase by 24% over the course of one month, thanks to Discover Weekly. The playlist also drove a 17% boost in streams for singer-songwriter Moxie Raia, and a 16% boost in listeners for the synth pop band Panama Wedding. After the success of Discover Weekly, Spotify’s product team wove similar logic into other areas of the app. Release Radar is a personalized list of recently released songs and Your Daily Mix effectively supercharges the shuffle button, focusing on favorite tracks and injecting Discover Weekly-style recommendations into the mix. Fresh Finds, another weekly-updated playlist, derives its songs from algorithms that crawl music blogs and other web sources to sniff out the rising tide of buzz surrounding new songs and artists. This allows artists to get a shot at streaming stardom organically by simply creating music and promoting it online. “We’ve routinely seen artists go from 400 listeners to 40,000 listeners through Fresh Finds in the space of a couple weeks,” says Ogle.
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What often winds up happening, Ford explains, is that a listening spike from Discover Weekly or Fresh Finds tips off the company’s editorial team to new music and they’ll include it on one of the in-house playlists. These three flavors of curation combine to create a few different funnels–either by being hand-picked by a flesh-and-blood editor or scooped up organically from the Fresh Finds web crawler–for artists to enter and rise through the ranks. “I envision it as this beautiful cycle, working together,” says Ford. “Data informing curation, informing data, informing curation. And data informing what’s working and not working for the listeners as a whole.” From Playlist To Tour Last year, a dance-friendly electronic pop duo called Frenship saw their single “Capsize” unexpectedly picked up by one of Spotify’s pop playlists. The song performed well, quickly breaking 1 million streams, and started climbing up the hierarchy to other lists, eventually landing on the New Music Friday and Weekly Buzz playlists and competing with artists like Drake in the performance metrics. “It was insane,” says Brandon Ginsberg, who manages the band. “It could take years to get to a million streams for a lot of artists. We were like, ‘Who’s behind this? What’s going on?'” Somewhere just shy of 180 million streams, record labels started calling. Having already proven their viability with viral success on Spotify, Frenship and their management were well-positioned to choose the best path forward, be it a record label, label services company, or forgoing a contract all together. In May 2016, the band signed to Columbia Records and started booking a 50-date North American tour. “It’s actually creating this sort of conveyor belt that basically onboards new artists,” says Ogle of the combination of automated and human-curated playlists. “And then at each step if their stuff is good and fans respond to it we amplify that and it just keeps spreading and spreading.”
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Spotify has also experimented with booking its own concerts, using its trove of data to pick artists and invite fans. Last year, it turned the basement of its Boston office into a venue and hosted an intimate Fresh Finds showcase featuring bands who had recently landed on the playlist. Then it mined local listening metrics to find local people who binged on these new acts and invited them to the show. Using data as a bridge between digital and physical spaces, Spotify was able to provide an experience for both the artists and their fans that likely would not have happened otherwise. “A corporate concert, it always feels a little bit like you have to get on the mic and be like, ‘Yeah Spotify!’ or whatever,” Ogle says. “But there was none of that. They were just so happy to be there and to connect with their fans that had come to the show.” The showcase was a small-scale, one-off experiment, but Ogle doesn’t rule out the possibility of Spotify getting more into data-driven show booking in the future. “It was really gratifying to see it genuinely making a difference in these artists’ lives, especially when you hear all the stories about the new music economy being a horror show,” he says. Like Fans First and its other artist-empowering initiatives, Spotify’s early efforts are neither perfect nor comprehensive. But amid Spotify’s fight against deep-pocketed competitors like Apple and its race to its stock market debut later this year—along with ongoing royalty negotiations with the record industry—the project reflects a larger paradigm shift around the music business: With fewer royalties, artists will be “paid” in increasing mountains of our listening data. It’s a tectonic transition that leaves musicians, perhaps first among many, guessing about the future. “It is hard,” says Ogle of the music industry’s transformation. “It’s still being built and rebuilt. And there’s a lot of bumps on the road. But it was nice to see computer programs making a difference in art.”OITNB S2 E5 "Low Self-Esteem City" is about:
* The backstory of how Gloria Mendoza (Selenis Leyva) ended up incarcerated at Litchfield (Food Stamp Scam).
* The continuing battle between Big Boo (Lea DeLaria) and Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) over who can hook-up with the most people.
* Vee's continuing sly manipulation of the Litchfield population as she maneuvers to take control of the prison.
* Red's attempt to reconstitute a power base around the greenhouse and the Golden Girls and her continuing singular understanding of what Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) is up to.
* More context on how to understand Healy (Michael Harney) from his wife's loathing to his co-worker's disdain for him.
* The continuing battle between Caputo (Joe Sandow) and Fig (Alysia Reyner) over budgets and the upkeep of the facility (and the introduction of Caputo's bar-band "side-boob").
5. "Caca"
Look, I have already mentioned how ridiculous I find the whole Fig "embezzlement" subplot but this is getting way out of hand.
Prisoners, believe it or not, have a quasi-legal grievance process which, when exhausted, actually allows them to take a case against a prison (or it's officials) to court. Most likely, after being forced to shower with sewage backup and then told they can only shower for 30 seconds at a time, there would be 100s of grievances filed.
As I mentioned before, there is no way Fig could cover embezzling enough money to finance her extravagant lifestyle (or her husband's campaign) but even if she could pull that off, the fallout would leave a paper trail of grievances.
And before you dismiss this, a mass of complaints at once screams to the powers that be that something big is about to hit them in the face (and Fig is not the grievance officer and grievances would move through the federal system in an orderly process as they escalate). In addition, every prisoner would talk to their people on the phone about the problem (because prisoners are extreme germaphobes) and those people would start making calls.
By the way, there would also be all kinds of motions and complaints filed as well. Every prison has a law library and a few jailhouse lawyers (many of whom are surprisingly effective).
This is just an absurd storyline.
I am not saying that prisons are well-maintained or that prisoners organize quickly or naturally but I am saying they would never stay quiet about showers that flood with human waste. People take cleanliness very seriously in prison.
4. "You Don't Have Any Friends Sam"
I have a lot of empathy for Sam Healy's problems. He has been emasculated at home and his wife literally loathes him. He is clearly one of those guys who nobody liked in high school and was probably bullied for most of his life (heck, I was one of those guys too until my Senior year).
But, I have no empathy for how Sam processes his frustration, anger, and rage by replacing his lack of control in the rest of his life with the god-like power he can wield over the ladies of Litchfield.
Healy probably wouldn't bother me so much if he weren't a fictional stand-in for so many correctional officers that I met when I was incarcerated.
Don't get me wrong, there are a TON of great and professional Correctional Officers (If you could ask my good CO's they would tell you that I thanked all of the professional ones personally whenever I left any facility). On the other hand, there are a ton of CO's just like Healy or worse.
At every jail where I was incarcerated there was a brute squad made up of CO's who got into correctional work just so that they could legally beat inmates up. I remember my first day in jail a guy tried to escape and made it to the intake garage before, despite offering zero resistance, he was beaten down by the goon squad.
When I was transferred for a few days to a different jail (I had charges in two counties) I saw the goon squad beat someone down after an inmate fight that there was enough blood on the ground that it was flowing into my cell.
When I was in prison I saw CO's go out of their way to make inmates time harder, who went out of their way to humiliate and shame them every chance they got, and, of course, there were a ton of racist CO"s too.
You could almost always tell which CO's were trouble because they often looked roided out or always angry (kind of like some inmates who had anger management issues). Another good tell was if they always were wearing or displaying black gloves (always ready to put them on so they could beat someone down).
Officer Bennett (Matt McGorry) gives an example of how an officer can react with excessive force during "Low Self-Esteem). So often, the maximum amount of force is used (often on purpose) in situations when it is entirely unnecessary.
I am sure many of you assume that you can just avoid the Mendez (Pablo Schreiber) and Healy types and to some extent that is true. However, there are three shifts a day of officers in your unit, and some of those will have control of you at least for a few hours every day and it is unlikely you will only have the good CO's.
In addition, if you happen to get on the wrong side of a CO, they often will go out of their way to find you.
Of course, the even more dangerous ones, in many ways, are like Healy. These are the officers who won't ever try to physically hurt you but who love to use the power that they have over your life to destroy inmates (usually, like Healy, trying to compensate for the lack of power in the rest of their lives).
I can say with little hesitation, some of the worst things I saw happened as guards either looked the other way (like Healy during the fight between Piper and Doggett), instigated by CO's, or came directly at the hands of CO's.
When you give someone with violent or fascist tendencies the ability to treat a captive group as sub-human they will often commit worse atrocities than the prisoners they are controlling.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
3. Stop the "Welfare Queen" BS
So, Mendoza ended up in prison because someone snitched about her Food Stamp scam. Of course, the larger part of her backstory was that she is a single mother who was being physically abused by her boyfriend (who then burns up in a voodoo-induced fire).
But, I would like to focus on the Food Stamp part for a few minutes because it has become an issue that is very personal to me.
In the case of Gloria Mendoza, she is running a convenience store where she gives customers a cash payment for their EBT SNAP or Bridge cards and then turns the receipt over to the state in order to get paid back the larger EBT value in cash.
Yes, it is fraud but, like many of the "scammers" in the real world, she is doing it for good reasons (to create more security for her kids).
Unfortunately, in the real-world food stamp debate, we talk way too much about the scammers and way too little about the people who need and use assistance properly. In other words, we punish the vast majority of food stamp users for a small percentage who misuse food stamps.
And, even worse, many times, these "food stamp gourmands" are totally made up by the marketing arm of Fox News and the Ayn Randian Congressional Caucuses.
And, let's assume these serial haters of the poor are 100% right and poor people use their benefits to buy expensive foods. It doesn't make me mad at all that every once in a great while a poor person buys a lobster with food stamps and has a really amazing meal.
Why in the world do we base policy around the cheaters and not around the real needs of people in our communities? And don't even get me started on all of the new paternalistic "work requirements for food stamps.
In addition, I am very troubled by the entire misleading (and often racist) "welfare queen" narrative. Where do we as a society get off demonizing the poor from middle-class or rich ivory towers?What does the market slump of the past couple of days show?
When the market prices in favourable government intervention (endless free cash), and the government doesn’t meet expectations the easy-credit junkies slouch into a stupor, suffering harsh withdrawal symptoms.
From BusinessWeek:
Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chairman Jim O’Neill said the global financial system risks repeating the crisis of 2008 if Europe’s debt crisis escalates and spreads to the U.S. banking industry. “This is where the parallels with 2008 are relevant, even though I think they are being over exaggerated,” O’Neill said in an interview on CNBC today. “It was when the financial system really imploded that financial firms stopped extending credit to anybody that the corporate world had to destock and we know what happened after that. We are not far off the same sort of thing.” More than $3.4 trillion has been erased from equity values this week, driving global stocks into a bear market, as the Federal Reserve’s new stimulus and a pledge by Group of 20 nations fails to ease concern the global economy is on the brink of another recession. O’Neill said the Fed’s plan to shift $400 billion of short-term debt into longer term Treasuries hasn’t convinced investors it will strengthen growth. “The fear that it’s all dependent on the Fed, together with this mess in Europe, is really getting people more and more worried as this week comes to an end,” O’Neill said. “The markets have taken the latest FOMC move rather badly, which adds a whole new angle to it. It’s the first time since the global rally started in early 2009 that the markets have rejected a Fed easing.” “As the problem in Europe spreads from Greece to more and more other countries and in particular Italy, the exposure that so many people bank-wise have to Italian debt means the systems can’t cope easily with that and it would spread way beyond Europe’s borders,” O’Neill said. “This is why the policy makers need to stop being so sleepy and get on and lead.”
Yes — of course — what the market junkies need is another hit, another tsunami of easy liquidity, money printing and endless “bold action”. Otherwise, the junkies would be left shivering in a corner, cold turkey.
John Maynard Keynes’ view was that government needed to act quickly and decisively to stabilise markets, because although markets would in the long run naturally resolve their problems, in the long run we are all dead.
But governments acted swiftly and decisively in 2008, and throughout 2009 and 2010 channelling trillions of dollars into markets. And even that hasn’t been enough to sustain the junkies. So asset prices are tanking.
This is because — as I have noted ever since I started writing this blog — pumping the markets up with cheap easy credit is actually preventing the underlying problems from being resolved. These include excessive public and private debt, Western reliance on Arab oil and Chinese goods, zombification of the banking system, excessive military spending, stagnation of the labour market, etc.
As I wrote last month:
Those troubles are non-monetary — they are systemic and infrastructural: military overspending, political corruption, public indebtedness, withering infrastructure, oil dependence, deindustrialisation, the withered remains of multiple bubbles, bailout culture, the derivatives-industrial complex, food and fuel inflation and so forth. The real question is when will America tire of the slings and arrows of fortune? When will America take arms against her sea of troubles? And how long will she last on this mortal coil? To die? To sleep? For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…
Until we address the underlying problems, the market — in the long run — will keep crashing. And in the long run, we’re all dead. So that’s twice as bad. Junkiefication leads to junkification.In Seattle, home prices grew 10.3 percent in September to a new median of $630,000, mirroring a similar trend for the suburbs in King County.
After a punishing year for anyone looking to buy a home in and around Seattle, the fall price cool-down that many buyers have been waiting for hasn’t arrived with much force.
The good news for buyers is that Seattle isn’t setting any more home-price records like it did this spring. And the rate of home-price increases has slowed to about half of what it was earlier in the year.
But the bad news is that home costs are still growing much faster than normal, and exceed recent pay hikes. The market remains one of the hottest in the country, even though the region is finally starting to see more houses come on the market.
Real-estate agents are mixed on the new data released Wednesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Some say it’s a blip on the radar — prices have slowed before, only to rocket back up soon after — while others say it’s a sign of a return to normalcy after four years of price growth.
“There’s still high demand, but instead of 10 offers, we’re seeing two or three,” for lower-priced houses, said Edward Krigsman, a Seattle broker with Windermere. “I don’t think it’s merely seasonal. I feel like we’re in a bit of a structural correction.”
September marked the third straight month in which King County single-family home prices declined from their all-time peak reached at the end of the spring. Prices are typically lower this time of year.
Buyers pummeled by the red-hot market seen earlier in the year might take what they can get at this point.
In Seattle, the annual increase in home prices has begun to level off and now represents half the explosive growth rate seen at the beginning of the year. The typical Seattle house now costs $630,000, up 10.3 percent from a year ago.
A similar trend of relatively slower growth is reaching suburbs around King County, as well: Prices on the Eastside also grew 10.3 percent from a year ago, hitting $750,000, down from the record prices and higher growth rates seen earlier in the year.
Although this month’s data presented a muddled picture on prices, the change in inventory was clearly positive. For the first time in the last few years, additional homes in significant number are finally starting to come back on the market for sale.
The number of houses for sale in the county is now at its highest point in two years, although it still has a long way to go to get back to “normal” inventory levels. That could help contain the recent bidding wars and price spikes triggered by the historically low supply of homes for sale.
But it doesn’t seem to be helping much yet.
“I have definitely noticed that my buyers have more to choose from, but what it feels like to me is that the buyer pool has been so large, and ever growing, that the increase in inventory has not eased the demand issue,” said Redfin agent Kyle Moss.
Still, he said, buyers may have the chance to be choosier. That would be a welcome change to home seekers who keep reporting that it’s taken several months, and multiple failed bids, to get a home.
Alyson Andrews and her longtime boyfriend, Gerard, visited about 100 homes over 10 months after deciding to move out of their Green Lake rental. First, they realized the market was “too crazy” to buy in Seattle. Then, after settling on Shoreline, they lost four houses in bidding wars, even after agreeing to go $100,000 above the asking price.
“It was just mind-blowing,” said Andrews, 28, who eventually got a house in Shoreline for about $520,000.
“You go there and there are 15 other people touring it,” she said. “I had no idea it was this crazy of a market, and this competitive, and that half a million dollars can’t get you a decent” house.
Renters aren’t seeing any relief, either.
Rents continue to rise at a similar pace as home costs, and are now up 9.3 percent across the Greater Seattle area compared to a year ago, according to a new Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors report. That’s similar to the increase reported in each of the last two years, and puts Seattle among the fastest-growing rental markets in the country.
The typical two-bedroom, two-bath unit across King County costs about $1,870 a month — $570 more than five years ago. The current average rent varies wildly from about $1,160 in Enumclaw to $3,110 in downtown Seattle.
Rents are still climbing despite about 10,000 new apartments opening in each of the last two years across King, Snohomish and Pierce counties — the most since 1990, Dupre + Scott said. But the firm forecasts an even greater number of apartments to open next year, which might help slow down the rising rents.
September marked the second full month since British Columbia announced a closely watched 15 percent tax on foreign homebuyers in the Vancouver metro area. Since then, there’s been a huge increase in interest from Chinese buyers looking toward the Seattle area.
It’s impossible to know how exactly that’s affected prices here. But the area most popular with Chinese buyers — in and around West Bellevue — saw a record median price of $2.19 million in August just after the Vancouver tax was announced, before dropping a bit in September.
“I’m feeling the pressure of what feels like increased foreign investment, more so than in the past,” Moss said, adding he’s seen more buyers from out-of-state, as well.
Overall, the median King County house now costs $538,000, up 9.7 percent from a year ago but down 6 percent from the record prices seen a few months ago.
The Queen Anne/Magnolia neighborhood led the way with an annual price hike of 33 percent, followed by 28 percent in the southeast Seattle/Seward Park area and 25 percent in both the Sodo/Beacon Hill region and the Benson Hill part of Renton. But the rest of Renton saw prices drop slightly.
Condos, in particular, are seeing prices surge unabated as buyers look for cheaper options. The typical Seattle condo in September cost a record $475,000, up a whopping 31 percent in one year.
The biggest slowdown in the Puget Sound region was in Kitsap County, where prices rose 7.6 percent from the previous year. The current price of $285,000 is off 5 percent from this year’s peak.
Snohomish County led the way on the county level, with home prices in September climbing 11.1 percent vs. a year ago, to a median of $395,000, just shy of the county’s all-time high.
Pierce County saw home prices hit $279,000, up 10.5 percent from a year ago and similar to the high points seen earlier in the year.Microsoft is preparing to launch a big overhaul of its Xbox Live Avatars system. Originally released as an Xbox 360 feature in 2008, Xbox Live Avatars have been slowly tweaked to include more props and customizability ever since. Microsoft is now introducing a new avatar system that’s designed to make these Xbox avatars a lot more customizable, with a huge focus on diversity.
The new avatars will let you fully customize your online character with new body type options, clothing, and props. During the Xbox daily briefing at E3 yesterday, Microsoft demonstrated the new avatar system with a trailer (above) and some behind-the-scenes footage of how the company is building the new Xbox Live Avatars. Microsoft’s trailer shows an amputee, playful costumes, wheelchairs, skateboards, and even motorbikes to demonstrate the wide array of props and customization. There’s even a new pregnancy option, and the ability to control the colors of an avatar with a picker system.
The new avatars are built in Unity
“We built these from the ground-up, they’re being built in Unity which is a whole new engine,” explains Bryan Saftler, a lead product manager at Xbox. “Avatars are meant for whatever you want your digital self to represent. We don’t want to put you in a box, there are no more checkboxes, no matter what you think you look like or what you want to present online.”
Microsoft’s focus on diversity also means that if you want to wear a dress on your avatar you can thanks to gender-neutral clothing and props. “If you can see it in the store you can wear it, we’re not holding you to any type of checkboxes,” says Kathryn Storm, interaction designer at Xbox.
It looks like Microsoft has done a really good job with these new avatars. The software maker is now planning to release what it calls its “Avatar 2.0” system to Windows 10 users first later this year, with the Xbox family of devices to follow.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress moved swiftly on Thursday to undo Obama-era rules on the environment, corruption, labor and guns, with the Senate wiping from the books a rule aimed at reducing water pollution.
Yellow mine waste water is seen at the entrance to the Gold King Mine in San Juan County, Colorado, in this picture released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) taken August 5, 2015. REUTERS/EPA/Handout/File Photo
By a vote of 54-45, the Senate approved a resolution already passed in the House of Representatives to kill the rule aimed at keeping pollutants out of streams in areas near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites.
The resolution now goes to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it quickly. It was only the second time the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to stop newly minted regulations in their tracks, has been used successfully since it was passed in 2000.
The Senate then turned to an equally controversial rule requiring mining and energy companies such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron to disclose taxes and other payments they make to governments at home and abroad. Democrats, who cannot filibuster the resolution, attempted to slow the process by pushing debate late into the night, with a vote scheduled for shortly after 6:30 a.m. on Friday.
Republicans are using their control of Congress and the White House to attack regulations they believe hurt the economy. They cast the stream protection rule as harming industry and usurping state rights.
“The Obama Administration’s stream buffer rule was an attack against coal miners and their families,” said the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, adding it had threatened jobs in his home state of Kentucky.
Environmental activists and many Democrats said it would have made drinking water safer by monitoring for pollutants such as lead.
“Given that many of these toxins are known to cause birth defects, developmental delays, and other health and environmental impacts, this basic monitoring provision was essential,” said Jeni Collins, associate legislative representative for environmental group Earthjustice.
The coal industry hopes the repeal will lead Trump to overturn a moratorium by former President Barack Obama’s administration on some coal leases.
Senator Joe Manchin, who represents West Virginia, historically coal country, was one of the few Democrats who supported killing the rule. He told CNN more than 400 changes had been made to the regulation as it was drafted.
“There’s nobody in West Virginia that wants dirty water and dirty air, but you can’t throw 400 different regulations... on top of what we already have and expect anyone to survive,” he said.
GUNS, PAY DISCRIMINATION
Also on Thursday, the House on Thursday overturned Obama administration rules addressing pay discrimination at federal contractors and requiring expanded background checks for gun purchasers who receive Social Security benefits and have a history of mental illness. It plans on Friday to kill a measure addressing methane emissions on public lands. The Senate will then take all three up.
The Senate is also targeting rules enacted in the final months of Obama’s administration for extinction. Senator David Perdue, a Republican from Georgia, introduced on Wednesday a resolution for killing one intended to protect users of gift and prepaid cards.
Under the Congressional Review Act, lawmakers can vote to undo regulations with a simple majority. Agencies cannot revisit overturned regulations. Timing in the law means any regulation enacted since May is eligible for repeal.
Related Coverage U.S. coal miners applaud Republican axing of stream protections
The House already approved a resolution ending the rule that requires oil companies to publicly state taxes and payments, which is part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.
Republicans and some oil and mining companies say the rule is burdensome and costly and duplicates other long-standing regulations.
Supporters of the rule see it as vital for exposing bribery and questionable financial ties U.S. companies may have with foreign governments, as well as showing shareholders how their money is spent.Coming Soon
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
Drivers, managers and team owners live life in the fast lane -- both on and off the track -- during one cutthroat season of Formula 1 racing.
Followers
After an aspiring actress hits it big thanks to a candid Instagram, her life intersects with many other Tokyo women as they follow their dreams.
American Jesus
A 12-year-old boy learns he's returned as Jesus Christ in a final effort to save mankind and must step into his destiny. Based on Mark Millar's comic.
Walk. Ride. Rodeo.
In the wake of an accident that leaves her paralyzed, a champion rodeo rider vows to get back on her horse and compete again. Based on a true story.
Chopsticks
A gifted but insecure woman is in for a transformative experience when she enlists an enigmatic con to help recover her stolen car from a Mumbai thug.
Always Be My Maybe
Everyone assumed Sasha and Marcus would wind up together except for Sasha and Marcus. Reconnecting after 15 years, the two start to wonder... maybe?
15 August
Veteran Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit turns producer for this lighthearted snapshot of life in the chawls of Mumbai.
Team Kaylie
After one too many misdemeanors, selfie-obsessed teen socialite Kaylie Konners is legally tasked with leading an after-school wilderness club.After Emilio Vazquez pulled off a surprise victory in a Philadelphia special election, one opponent is demanding a new election. Cheri Honkala, the Green Party candidate, says she wants that new election, saying she plans to file a federal lawsuit.
Democratic write-in candidate Emilio Vazquez pulled off a surprise victory in a North Philadelphia special election to replace disgraced state Rep. Leslie Acosta, who gave up her seat following a corruption conviction.
His victory was announced Friday morning after the city Election Board hand tallied all 2,483 write-in votes.
Vazquez became an improbable winner in a race that saw the Democrat originally slated for the ballot knocked off following a residency challenge.
That left only Republican candidate Lucinda Little on the ballot for a district -- the 197th -- that is 85 percent Democrat and 5 percent Republican. Little received only 198 votes on Tuesday.
Special Election in North Philadelphia
NBC10’s Pamela Osborne reports from North Philadelphia where a special election is being held to become the state house representative for the 197th district. (Published Tuesday, March 21, 2017)
The write-in votes were tallied in about three hours by election workers for the Philadelphia City Commissioners.
Vazquez received 1,964 votes, followed by Cheri Honkola, who received 280 votes, Deputy Commissioner Tim Dowling said.
Another 120 or so votes were "scattered" among other people, Dowling said.
All of the ballots cast will be preserved for any potential legal challenges, which candidates Little and Honkola have voiced as a possibility.
Leaders of the Pennsylvania Republican Party even gathered to call into question the results. A day after the special election, a group of Republicans called for the state attorney general to investigate what they alleged were violations of the election code and irregularities during the voting.
Meanwhile, Latino leaders in the community expressed their own concern for a process that led to a special election without a Democrat on the ballot.
“It just continues to substantiate why voters in that district have earned the right to be cynical. The 197th has made national news as a symbol of the Democratic party’s weakness," Israel Colon, former director of the city’s multicultural office during Mayor Michael Nutter’s tenure, told NBC10 this week. "What is happening in this sector of the Latino community is nothing more than a microcosm of an |
of the wanted monks before. U Thu Sitta was part of a small group of nationalist hard-liners we found demonstrating outside a Yangon port in February. A Malaysian ship was about to arrive bringing food aid for the beleaguered Rohingya.
As the monks and their supporters stood chanting anti-Rohingya slogans I asked him how protesting about giving food to needy people fitted in with his Buddhist beliefs.
U Thu Sitta answered but he didn't like my questions much. As the interview progressed he complained several times about my posture, asking that I remove my hands from my hips, then my pockets.
Those gestures are considered offensive to monks and both times I apologised and stopped immediately.
But many of his fellow demonstrators filmed our discussion on their phones and that evening it went viral on social media.
The videos were viewed hundreds of thousands of times and the comments underneath were overwhelmingly hostile. Many called for me to be expelled from the country, my personal contact details were published and there were even a few death threats.
The posts were shared by several leading figures including prominent ministers from the old military-era government. As I discovered over the ensuing weeks, the interview became my most widely seen piece of "work" among Burmese audiences.
By calling for the arrest of U Thu Sitta and others the Burmese government of Aung San Suu Kyi is for the first time showing a willingness to take on the nationalist monks.
If my experience is anything to go by, the nationalists and the monks will have plenty of vocal support.
The predominantly Buddhist country has a long history of communal mistrust, which was allowed to simmer and was at times exploited, under decades of military rule.
In March, the United Nations human rights council said it would investigate alleged human rights abuses by Myanmar's army against the Rohingya.
Some 70,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar into Bangladesh in the last six months, and the UN has gathered accounts of gang rapes and mass killings.8 Mile Road bridge construction over US-23 to start Monday, May 2
Kari Arend, MDOT Office of Communications517-206-1609 Transportation
Fast facts:
- In early March, the 8 Mile Road bridge over northbound US-23 was demolished due to damage suffered from an earlier crash.
- Starting next week, the 8 Mile Road bridge will be repaired and reopened to traffic by the July 4th holiday.
- MDOT will seek reimbursement from the trucking company for 100 percent of the cost of the bridge repairs.
April 28, 2016 -- The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) has announced construction of the 8 Mile Road bridge over northbound US-23 is expected to start Monday, May 2. Construction on the bridge is expected to be complete, and the bridge reopened to traffic, by the July 4th holiday weekend.
"On behalf of the Board of Trustees, Northfield Township is pleased MDOT will be constructing a temporary replacement of the 8 Mile Road bridge," said Howard Fink, Northfield Township manager. "The temporary bridge is necessary to ensure quick emergency response times and is critical to the local economy."
During construction this spring, 8 Mile Road will remain closed and impacts on US-23 traffic will be kept to a minimum. There will be a shoulder closure on northbound US-23, with lane closures occurring at non-peak times, such as overnight and weekends.
The bridge project is the result of an earlier crash in March when the structure was hit by a tractor trailer hauling an oversized load that caused significant damage to the bridge beams. The section over northbound US-23 was removed in order for the highway to be safely reopened to traffic. MDOT will seek reimbursement from the trucking company for 100 percent of the cost of the bridge repairs.
"I'm pleased with the progress on this project," said state Sen. Joe Hune, R-Fowlerville. "This temporary bridge and the upcoming larger span will keep our community connected and allow for vital resources, such as public safety vehicles, to be able to get where they need in a timely manner."
"I cannot thank MDOT enough for their work and dedication to help ensure this project gets moving quickly," said state Rep. Lana Theis, R-Brighton. "The temporary overpass is a great solution for the community to ensure emergency services and the tourism industry are impacted as little as possible."
Crews will repair the existing 8 Mile Road span over northbound US-23 using an expedited contracting process. Then, in 2017, a larger road and bridge project will begin on US-23 in Washtenaw County that includes a new 8 Mile Road bridge and upgrades to the interchange. The new bridge will be built just to the north of the existing structure while traffic is maintained on the existing 8 Mile Road bridge. Once the new 8 Mile Road bridge is complete, the existing 8 Mile Road bridge will be removed.
"I am a new business owner in Whitmore Lake," said David Neil, owner of the DirtSquirt Auto Spa. "Since the 8 Mile Road bridge closure, our car wash sales are down over 40 percent. We have had to cut back on expenses and employee hours to compensate for the lost business. We are optimistic the new bridge and enhanced exits will make up for our recent losses."
Download MDOT's Mi Drive traffic information app: www.michigan.gov/driveRodger Bumpass, who voices the character Squidward Tentacles on the beloved animated children’s series Spongebob Squarepants, has been arrested for DUI.
The 64-year-old voiceover actor was arrested on Friday night (January 15) at around 11pm in Burbank, Calif.
Police noticed a car in the middle of the road and a man leaning against it, according to TMZ. Rodger was the man leaning against the car and he walked away as they approached him, but he nearly fell as he was so unsteady. He then confessed to the cops that he was driving just before they found him and he failed a field sobriety test. His blood alcohol limit was more than twice the legal limit, according to the site’s sources.
Rodger has been voicing the role of Squidward for more than 15 years and his IMDb page boasts more than 123 credits.* Prosecutors allege money-laundering
* Lukoil has denied charges, will fight asset seizure
* No trial date set yet (Adds details, background)
BUCHAREST, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Romanian prosecutors said on Monday they have indicted Russia’s Petrotel Lukoil refinery in Romania, its Russian director-general and three other officials for money-laundering in a 2 billion euro ($2.19 billion) criminal probe.
Prosecutors have already seized Lukoil assets worth 2 billion euros as part of their investigation into suspected money-laundering at the refinery, in the southern Romanian city of Ploiesti.
Russia’s second-largest oil producer, Lukoil has denied the accusations and said it would appeal against the asset seizure. It also called last month for the European Commission to help it fight the charges. When contacted by Reuters about the indictments, a spokesman declined to give any new comment.
No one was available for comment at the refinery on Monday.
Prosecutors from the Ploiesti court of appeals indicted the director-general of the refinery, as well as two deputy managers and also a Netherlands-registered holding company, according to a statement issued on Monday evening.
No trial date has been set as of now. Prosecutors said the Romanian secret service, known as SRI, assisted them in their investigation.
“Throughout 2011-2014, the indicted... have used the company’s assets in bad faith and the credit it enjoys, for a purpose contrary to its interests, to favour other companies in which they had a direct or indirect interest to strike crude oil purchasing contracts,” the statement said.
The officials were indicted for “sealing supply deals for finished goods in disadvantageous price terms which produced losses as delivery prices were set below production costs.”
In October of last year police and customs inspectors raided the offices of Lukoil near Ploiesti in an investigation into alleged tax evasion and money laundering concerning an estimated 230 million euros at the time. ($1 = 0.9126 euros) (Reporting by Radu Marinas; additional reporting by Olesya Astakhova; editing by Matthias Williams and William Hardy)Woody Allen. Photo: Splash News
“Oh, it’s amazing how you can regret. I haven’t had a pleasurable moment since I undertook it.” That’s Woody Allen talking to Deadline about agreeing to do a show for Amazon back in January. What seemed like a natural fit — having one of our talkiest directors making television, a medium more open to words than film (at least recently) — has proven to be anything but for Woody. “I’m like a fish out of water,” he explained. “Movies I’ve been doing for decades, and even the stage stuff, I know the stage and have seen a million plays. But this … how to begin something and end it after a half an hour and then come back the next time. It’s not me.”
The problem seems to stem from the fact that he essentially has never watched TV — even the fancy TV that people who say “I don’t even own a TV” (ugh, those people) watch: “I’ve never seen The Sopranos, or Mad Men. I’m out every night and when I come home, I watch the end of the baseball or basketball game, and there’s Charlie Rose and I go to sleep.” Until this interview, he revealed he never even heard the words streaming service before: “When you said streaming service, it was the first time I’ve heard that term connected with the Amazon thing.” Adding, “I never knew what Amazon was.”
So, why did he agree to do the project at all? Well, besides “everybody around” him pressuring him, they basically offered him the world: “Finally they said look, we’ll do anything that you want, just give us six half hours. They can be black and white, they can take place in Paris, in New York and California, they can be about a family, they can be comedy, you can be in them, they can be tragic. We don’t have to know anything, just come in with six half hours.”
Woody assumed it would be like doing a movie in six parts. “Turns out, it’s not.” If only he could take the money and run. Hell, we’d take a cut-up, three-hour sequel to one of his movies. For example: Zelig 2: 2elig; Play It One More Time, Sam; How’s It Going, Tiger Lily?; Radio Weeks; Exteriors; October; Awaker; A Third Woman; Reconstructing Harry; Hannah and Her Sisters and Her Sisters’ Analysts; Big Time Crooks; Melinda and Melinda and Melinda; Everyone Says I Love Two; Husbands and Wives and Their Analysts; Before Midnight in Paris; 2 Crimes 2 Misdemeanors; and, of course, Brooklyn.The Boston Licensing Board will consider forcing bars to give up glassware and drinks in glass bottles if their patrons get injured in attacks with them.
"It's seems like we're seeing a lot of that now," board Chairwoman Christine Pulgini said following two hearings today, one involving a patron at Minibar who appeared to attack another with a glass, another involving a patron at a Langham Hotel bar who now faces criminal charges for allegedly smacking another patron in the back of the head with a beer bottle.
Pulgini noted another incident at the Boston Beer Garden in South Boston in December, in which a man suffered possibly permanent brain injuries after being punched in the head by a man clenching a glass salt shaker. In 2010, a man died when somebody threw a glass beer mug in a fight at a Fenway bar, which shattered and sent a large shard into the man's neck.
Pulgini said the board will likely meet soon to consider a new policy in which bars and restaurants whose patrons wield glassware or bottles as weapons in fight have their licenses amended to include a ban on the service of drinks in glass.
"Public safety is of the utmost importance to the board," she said.
In the first of two glass-related hearings today, the board heard about an incident at Minibar on Exeter Street involving a man jealous his fiancee was talking to another guy and a glass. As the night wore down on Dec. 28, the man went after the chatty man, first with his fists and then with a glass, which he threw at him, a police report states. A bar attorney and bartender, however, said that while the victim was bonked with a glass, that only happened after the two battlers and the bartender, trying to break up the fight, fell to the ground. The victim fled before police arrived; witnesses and the bartender disputed the offended man's assertion that he was forced into action when he saw the other guy lift up his fiancee's shirt and grope her.
Pulgini askd bar attorney Karen Simao why Minibar was even using glassware. It's a high-end place, Simao said, adding the issue is not the method of attack, but whether Minibar could have foreseen it would happen, which she said it couldn't have, because it was a slow night and the few people left in the place were all at the bar and seemed to be quiet and having a good time, until suddenly the man launched his attack.
"It might be high end but [the patrons] are not acting high end," Pulgini replied.
In another hearing, the Langham Hotel on Franklin Street had to answer for an incident in which some sort of dispute over one guest's wife led to another guest smashing him in the back of the head with a beer bottle, sending him to the hospital. The alleged beer-bottle smasher now faces a criminal charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, thanks in part to hotel staffers, who changed the code on the man's room, so that when he showed up at the front desk later that morning to complain, workers were able to stall him long enough to summon police, who arrested him.Little Caesars Arena construction, pictured in October 2016 in Detroit. (Photo: The District Detroit)
►Update: Detroit Pistons are coming downtown: 'We want to be all in on Detroit'
The Detroit Pistons' move to Little Caesars Arena downtown will generate nearly $600 million in economic impact for the city and create more than 2,000 direct and indirect jobs, an analysis of the move by University of Michigan sports experts predicts.
The U-M study, headed by Mark Rosentraub, the Bruce and Joan Bickner Endowed Professor of Sports Management and performed for Pistons' owner Tom Gores' Palace Sports & Entertainment, considered how the Pistons' move downtown would generate new construction jobs, the value of ticket sales for games and concerts switching from the Palace of Auburn Hills, and the creation of permanent jobs both at the arena and at a Pistons practice facility to be built and potential spin-off jobs.
►Related: Everything we know about the Detroit Pistons moving downtown
►Related: Owner Tom Gores: Finish line near if Pistons are moving downtown
Rosentraub's report estimated the likely impact of additional construction because of the move at $216.1 million, both for upgrades at the Little Caesars Arena to accommodate the team and to create a Pistons' practice facility nearby. The annual value of ticket sales for Pistons' games plus an estimated 37 concerts was $90.1 million. And the estimated annual impact of relocating Pistons' employment, including spin-off jobs, to downtown would be $290 million, for an estimated total impact of $596.2 million.
The U-M study does not address how much extra income taxes the Pistons' move will generate for the City of Detroit, nor does it try to capture how much new activity will be created for downtown's bars, restaurants and retail shops or whether it will boost demand for residential apartments and condos or for new office space beyond what the Pistons' organization itself will need.
►Related: The Detroit Pistons' unforgettable moments at the Palace
►Related: If Detroit Pistons move, Palace site likely faces rapid redevelopment
But it's possible that the Pistons's move announced today will boost downtown's already growing identity as a hub of sports and entertainment. At the very least it will generate more than 40 more professional sports events at the new arena each year, which means more revenue for nearby bars and restaurants, parking lots and garages, and likely for taxis, on-demand services like Uber, and more.
The return of the Pistons' basketball team to a downtown the team left nearly four decades ago means that by next fall Detroit's four major-league sports teams — the Pistons, the Detroit Red Wings, the Detroit Tigers, and the Detroit Lions — will all be playing their home games in downtown venues. And with Gores teaming with Quicken Loans founder and chair Dan Gilbert to try to bring a Major League Soccer franchise and an additional arena to downtown, that number of pro sports teams playing downtown could soon rise to five, a rarity among American cities.
Contact John Gallagher: 313-2221-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2fNYbFUKotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
The ropes were there for a reason. That reason was to keep children from knocking this Zootopia statue over.
As NetEase and ShanghaiIst report, a builder named Zhao spent three days building a Nick Wilde from Zootopia statue, apparently using thousands of dollars worth of LEGO.
The statue, ShanghaiIst states, went up at a shopping mall in Ningbo, China, and just an hour after it was shown on the first exhibition day, a child apparently climbed under the ropes and knocked the piece over.
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Zhao was as understanding as one could be, saying the child could have no idea how much time, effort and money went into the statue. He also said that the shopping mall employees were somewhat at fault. ShanghaiIst adds that the child’s parents apologized, and Zhao said he didn’t want any compensation for what happened.
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Damn.Preaching to a choir of union supporters and taking jabs at Republican challenger Mitt Romney on the day of Michigan’s primary, President Obama told the annual gathering of the United Auto Workers on Tuesday that the government’s $85 billion auto bailout succeeded “because I believed in you.”
“I placed my bet on American workers,” Mr. Obama said at the UAW convention in Washington. “And I’d make that same bet again any day of the week. Because three years later, that bet is paying off for America.”
Before the president began to speak, the crowd of about 1,600 auto workers chanted “Four more years!” They interrupted his speech frequently with cheers.
Although the president didn’t mention Mr. Romney by name, he clearly enjoyed criticizing the former Massachusetts governor who wrote an op-ed piece in 2008 that bore the headline, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
“Some even said we should ‘let Detroit go bankrupt,’ ” Mr. Obama said of bailout that began in 2008 under former President George W. Bush. “Think about what that choice would have meant for this country. If we had turned our backs on you, if America had thrown in the towel, GM and Chrysler wouldn’t exist today.”
Mr. Romney, the target of critical Democratic ads in Michigan as voters headed to the polls in the crucial GOP primary there, has said he wanted the ailing auto companies to go through bankruptcy proceedings, reorganize and emerge stronger. And he criticized the campaign of GOP rival Rick Santorum Tuesday for urging Michigan’s Democrats to vote in the GOP primary.
“It’s outrageous to see Rick Santorum team up with the Obama people and go out after union labor in Detroit and try to get them to vote against me,” Mr. Romney said on TV’s “Fox and Friends.”
“Look, we don’t want Democrats deciding who our nominee is going to be, we want Republicans deciding who our nominee is going to be.”
Mr. Obama is working hard in his re-election campaign to promote union manufacturing jobs, including a demand that Congress approve portions of a $447 billion stimulus plan to create more factory jobs. The strategy has electoral implications not only for manufacturing battleground states like Michigan and Ohio, but in communities elsewhere dependent on the vast network of auto parts suppliers.
Taxpayers could lose about $14 billion from the auto bailout, former Obama auto czar Steven Rattner said in December. The final figure will depend on what price the Treasury Department sells its 25 percent stake in GM, purchased at $33 per share. It was trading Tuesday at slightly more than $26 per share.
The president defended the taxpayer-funded bailout, and the deals that gave priority to unions over bondholders of the auto companies. The UAW now owns 41.5 percent of Chrysler and 10.3 percent of General Motors.
Mr. Obama criticized the bailout’s critics: “They’re saying that the problem is that you, the workers, made out like bandits in all of this, that saving the American auto industry was just about paying back unions. Really? Even by the standards of this town, that’s a load of you-know-what.”
He said about 700,000 retirees saw a reduction in the health care benefits, and many workers saw reduced hours or wages scaled back.
“You want to talk about values? Hard work — that’s a value. Looking out for one another — that’s a value. The idea that we’re all in it together — that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper — that is a value,” the president said.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president’s speech was “not at all” a campaign event, but that the debate over the auto bailout was legitimate policy issue.
The president also pledged to buy a Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid, when he leaves office.
“I got to get inside a brand-new Chevy Volt fresh off the line,” Mr. Obama said about a recent visit to a Detroit Chevrolet factory. “Even though Secret Service wouldn’t let me drive it. But I liked sitting in it. It was nice. I’ll bet it drives real good. And five years from now when I’m not president anymore, I’ll buy one and drive it myself.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Last minute changes to a legislative panel reviewing the "heartbeat bill" could give the controversial anti-abortion measure the votes it needs to move to a full House vote.
Rep. Lynn Wachtmann, a Napoleon Republican who chairs the House Health and Aging Committee, said three Republicans and one Democrat have been changed on the committee to ensure the panel has enough members present and votes to give the bill initial approval.
"My goal would be to have the hearing and vote the heartbeat bill out of committee today," Wachtmann said in an interview.
The controversial bill would prohibit abortion once a fetal heartbeat has been detected, as early as six weeks into a woman's pregnancy when many women don't even know they're pregnant. Anti-abortion advocates are divided on the bill, which some say would trigger court challenges certain to fail.
Wachtmann said Republican Reps. Jay Hottinger of Newark, Barbara Sears of Monclova Township and Tim Brown of Bowling Green were replaced by Reps. Margaret Conditt of Liberty Township, Kristina Roegner of Hudson and Margaret Ann Ruhl of Mount Vernon. Democratic Rep. Heather Bishoff of Blacklick was replaced by Columbus-area Rep. Mike Curtin.
The three new Republican members voted in favor of a previous version of the bill in 2011.
The committee meets at 8:30 a.m. Thursday to hear limited testimony in favor and against the bill. Wachtmann said he and the ranking Democrat on the panel, Rep. Nickie Antonio of Lakewood, heard days and weeks of testimony on the bill in 2011 and preferred not to hear days and weeks more.
"It's a pretty clear issue whether you're for it or against it," Wachtmann said.
Wachtmann said House Republicans might not have enough members present Thursday afternoon for a successful floor vote, which would push back the vote until after Thanksgiving. If the bill passes the House again, it faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
House Bill 248 has not had any hearings since it was introduced in August 2013. A previous version of the bill passed the House during the last two-year session but failed to pass the Senate. Then-Senate President Tom Niehaus, a New Richmond Republican, prevented the bill from receiving a floor vote.
Current Senate President Keith Faber, a Celina Republican, told reporters Wednesday he didn't think there was enough support in his chamber to pass the bill.
"I have grave concerns that if the heartbeat bill were to be passed, that it would jeopardize some of the other good, pro-life work that we've done in the General Assembly," Faber said.Southampton Itchen candidate told to report to police accused of ‘treating’ after savouries were provided at event attended by snooker star Jimmy White
The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, has defended one of his parliamentary candidates after claims he tried to bribe voters by providing sausage rolls at an event attended by snooker star Jimmy White.
Kim Rose, who is standing in Southampton Itchen, laid on refreshments at an event at a local community hall on 21 February, after inviting White to play snooker with children.
But the candidate said he was subsequently told to report to Hampshire police over a report that he had been “treating”.
Rose told the BBC: “Maybe it’s a bit naive but all the intentions were good. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m sure people aren’t going to change their mind for a sausage roll.”
Asked about the furore while on the campaign trail in South Thanet in Kent, Farage described it as “utter nonsense”. “There seems all sorts of cases in politics of people behaving badly and doing things wrong, abusing their positions. Having a few sausage rolls I don’t really think counts as one of those,” he said.
Labour is expected to hold Southampton Itchen, where John Denham MP is standing down after 23 years, but Ukip is a credible challenger in the seat.
Electoral Commission rules state that a person is “guilty of treating if either before, during or after an election they directly or indirectly give or provide any food, drink, entertainment or provision to corruptly influence any voter to vote or refrain from voting”.
Hampshire police said: “We have a received an allegation of ‘treating’ by a prospective parliamentary candidate, contrary to the Representation of the People Act 1983. We are looking into the complaint. No arrests have been made.”The United Nations has expressed shock at the sight of thousands of civilians fleeing a rebel advance in the eastern DR Congo and appealed for access to help those caught up in the violence.
Thousands of civilians are fleeing the town of Sake in eastern DR Congo as M23 rebels battling government troops threaten to overrun the city.
Fighters pushed south along Lake Kivu near the new rebel stronghold of Goma on the Rwandan border on Friday.
The rebels' advance comes days after they took Goma, the biggest city in North Kivu province, and have vowed to expand their territorial control and even seize the capital, Kinshasa, although the city is 1,574km away.
The fighting has sparked fears of a wider conflict erupting in the chronically unstable region, and the rebels have largely ignored calls made in a joint communique by the presidents of DR Congo, Rwanda and Uganda to pull out of Goma.
An AFP photographer said the latest fighting had claimed one life in Sake. He said he saw a body in the city centre on Friday, a day after the rebels entered the city, while the head of a relief agency reported numerous casualties.
"There are bodies lining the road" leading south from Sake, Thierry Goffeau, who heads the Goma chapter of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told AFP, without providing specific figures.
Government officials said on Thursday that Congolese troops were trying to repulse the rebels but M23 appeared to have successfully repelled the counterattack.
The UN estimate that 140,000 people in and around Goma have been displaced in recent fighting.
Aid officials said the fighting has made camps for people displaced by earlier conflicts inaccessible, with food and medicines running short.
Dozens airlifted
A spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in the country, known under the acronym MONUSCO, described the situation in eastern DR Congo as "alarming".
"The M23 are now present in Sake, with reports indicating that they may be on the move toward Masisi territory, which is their stronghold," Kieran Dwyer said in a statement.
Camps for displaced people are overflowing after the recent fighting [Evelyn Kahungu/Al Jazeera]
The UN has an estimated 6,700 troops in North Kivu backing up government forces under a Security Council mandate to protect civilians. They have been criticised for not directly confronting the M23.
MONUSCO has airlifted dozens of local leaders and rights activists who feared for their lives out of rebel territory, Dwyer said,
The UN mission was also verifying reports of civilians wounded or killed due to the recent fighting in Goma and Sake, he added.
"There are also reports of targeted killings and health personnel being abducted by the M23. Reports of recruitment and abduction of children by the group continue," he said.
M23 military leader Bosco Ntaganda is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, in Kinshasa, protesters accused the rebels of abuses including the rape of pregnant women. Hundreds of women, clad in black, marched on the UN mission's headquarters, carrying banners calling for peace and criticising the country's small but militarily powerful neighbour. "No to Rwanda!" read one.
The M23 fighters are widely thought to be backed by neighbouring Rwanda.
'External support'
The UN Security Council has expressed "concern at reports indicating that external support continues to be provided to the M23, including through troop reinforcement, tactical advice and the supply of equipment".
The council did not name Rwanda whose experts have previously accused it of backing the rebels, who share the same Tutsi ethnicity with Rwandan President Paul Kagame but are Congolese.
The rebels advanced as their political chief Jean-Marie Runiga was due to meet the president of Uganda on the eve of the Kampala summit of leaders from Africa's Great Lakes region.
Regional and international leaders are scrambling to halt the latest violence in the Great Lakes area, fuelled by a mix of local and regional politics, ethnic rifts and competition for
big reserves of gold, tin and coltan, an ore of rare metals used in electronics and other high-value products.
The rebellion was launched eight months ago by mutinous troops accusing the government of failing to stick to a 2009 deal with fighters to end a previous conflict.
The rebels take their name - M23 - after that peace agreement which was signed on March 23, 2009.Four-fifths of the income received by the Silk Road boss, Dread Pirate Roberts, has not been seized by FBI, research shows
Almost 80% of the Bitcoins received by Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR), the pseudonymous head of the Silk Road digital black market, may not have been seized by the FBI, according to new research by two Israeli computer scientists.
When the FBI seized the Bitcoin wealth of DPR, believed to be 29-year-old San Franciscan Ross Ulbricht, it published the address to which it moved the money. Now, Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir have examined the "blockchain", the public record of every Bitcoin transaction ever made, and identified not only the accounts from which the FBI transferred the 144,000 Bitcoins (presently worth $115m) it seized from DPR, but also several other accounts which appeared to be under his control.
Around a third of the Bitcoins which entered the accounts the FBI seized were moved back out of those accounts prior to the seizure. Some will have been spent, on running Silk Road and paying DPR's living expenses. But the researchers also believe that he had other accounts which the authorities have failed to access entirely.
For the months of May, June and September 2013, the DPR-run accounts received no income from the Silk Road itself. As the site operated on a commission model, taking around 7% of each sale, they conclude that the money for those months must be hidden elsewhere.
"Assuming that DPR continued to receive at least some commissions from Silk Road during these months," they write, "it seems likely that he was simply using a different computer during these periods, which the FBI had not found or was unable to penetrate."
Moreover, going by the known volume of Silk Road transactions – more than 9.5m Bitcoins were spent on the site – then around 633,000 Bitcoins will have been generated in commission. That would mean that the FBI's seizure represented just 23% of the site's gross income.
The research backs up reports from October that the FBI were unsuccessfully struggling to seize a further 600,000 Bitcoins belonging to DPR.
As well as highlighting the difficulty the authorities have in dealing with technologies like Bitcoin, the paper also underscores one of the most popular misconceptions of the currency: that it is anonymous.
While Bitcoin payment addresses need not have any direct link to the person or organisation using them, the decentralised nature of the currency requires transactions to be public. As a result, it is sometimes possible to look at the pattern of transactions carried out by one payment address and deduce who owns it.
The researchers also report on the possibility that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, may have been connected to DPR. Nakamoto, who invented Bitcoin in 2009 and provided the computer power which ran the network for the first year of its life, stopped communicating with colleagues in 2010, and hasn't been heard from since.
But the researchers find that one account, which sent a thousand Bitcoins to DPR in 2013, is linked through a string of high-value transactions to an account which has been active since 16 January 2009, and so Ron and Shamir argue that it is "reasonable to assume" that the account was owned by Nakamoto. They speculate that the transaction "could represent either large scale activity on Silk Road, or some form of investment or partnership".
• Forgetting about Bitcoin can pay off. Kristoffer Koch's £17 of Bitcoin bought in 2009 paid for a new house in 2013.BRÜKSEL
Mektuptaki tozda şarbon bakterisi olması ihtimaline karşın belediye binasının bir kısmı tahliye edildi ve mektubun açıldığı oda karantinaya alındı. Mektupla temas eden belediye çalışanları ise hastaneye sevk edildi.
Polis, tozun mahiyetini ve tehdit içeren notun yer aldığı mektubu kimin gönderdiğini tespit etmek için çalışma başlattı.
"Avrupa'da Türkofobi döneminden geçiyoruz"
Kır, AA muhabirine yaptığı açıklamada, mektubun, ırkçılığın yoğunlaştığı bir dönemde gelmesine dikkati çekerek, "Bunu kınıyorum. Avrupa'da Türkofobi döneminden geçiyoruz." dedi.
Polisten araştırmalarını istediğini ve bir netice çıkmasını umut ettiğini kaydeden Kır, "Belçika belediye başkanı olmuşum ama hala kökenimin sorun olması beni üzüyor." diye konuştu.
Tehdit mektubundaki Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan'a ilişkin ifadeye tepki gösteren Kır, "Tamamen demokratik yollardan seçilmiş olan Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan'ı, Nazi lideri Adolf Hitler gibi bir diktatörle kıyaslamak ağza bile alınmaması gereken bir şey." değerlendirmesini yaptı.
Muhabir: Hasan EsenLight pollution is changing the day-night cycle of some fish, dramatically affecting their feeding behaviour, according to our recently published study.
In one of the first studies of its kind, we found that increased light levels in marine habitats, associated with large coastal cities, can significantly change predator-prey dynamics.
We used a combination of underwater video and sonar to spy on these communities and record how their behaviour changed. Like us, the animals in our study slowed down at night. Predatory fish became sluggish and had little appetite.
But when the lights went on some of these same predators disappeared, while others feasted on the well-lit underwater buffet. Overall, there was much greater predation on seafloor-dwelling communities when the night waters were lit.
Image: Bolton et al, 2017
The dark side of light
The dark blanket of night might once have heralded time to rest, but the great pace of human activity has required that nights get shorter and days become artificially longer.
As the sun sets, streetlights flicker to life, generators go into overdrive and the landscape becomes dotted with artificial light, producing some of the most spectacular images from space. The sky glow from major urban centres can be seen more than 300km away.
While this may have enhanced productivity, we are starting to realise that the ecological effects on animals that have evolved under natural day–night cycles are significant.
Artificial lighting of outdoor areas began in earnest in the late 1700s. We have been manipulating lighting regimes for centuries for purposes that include increased egg production in hens and to encourage birds to sing during winter.
However, we have only recently begun to investigate the damaging ecological consequences. We now know that lighting used on offshore energy installations causes increased deaths of migratory birds and beach lighting can cause turtle hatchlings to become disoriented and reduce the chances of a safe journey from nest to sea.
But these are the more obvious impacts of a disrupted day length. More subtle changes in animal behaviours caused by artificial lighting have yet to be illuminated (pun intended!).
Lights, camera, predation
Using LED spotlights, we manipulated the light patterns underneath a wharf in Sydney Harbour, illuminating sessile (attached to the seafloor and wharf) invertebrate prey communities to fish predators. We recorded fish numbers and behaviour under different lighting scenarios (day, night and artificially lit night), and the prey communities were either protected or exposed to predators.
Despite different changes in different species, overall we found that more animals were getting eaten. The main predators were yellowfin bream (Acanthopagrus australis) and leatherjackets (Monocanthidae). The prey being consumed included barnacles, bryozoans (encrusting and arborescent), ascidians (solitary and colonial), sponges and bivalves.
Large predators are very important |
hearing for the past year at work, at Gautier Steel, exactly what I had been hearing in my conversations around town—a remarkable, undeniable, ongoing vehemence of support.
John Daloni at the UAW Union Hall in Johnstown. | Scott Goldsmith for Politico Magazine
“I don’t give the guy that much credit,” Daloni said, referring to the president, “but man—he knows what buttons to push, and he’s pushing ’em.”
His insistent declarations of success no matter the reality—it’s working. Trump’s inveterate blame-shifting—it’s working.
They don’t mind his intemperate tweets. They don’t mind the specter of scandal, which they dismiss as trifling nonsense. They don’t mind his nuclear saber-rattling with North Korea, saying they feel safer under Trump than they did under Obama. And they don’t mind his mixed record of delivering on the promises he made in their hockey arena.
So many people in so many other areas of the country watch with dismay and existential alarm Trump’s Twitter hijinks, his petty feuds, his penchant for butting into areas where the president has no explicit, policy-relevant role. All of that only animates his supporters here. For them, Trump is their megaphone. He is the scriptwriter. He is a singularly effective, intuitive creator of a limitless loop of grievance and discontent that keeps them in absolute lockstep.
One afternoon last week I stopped to talk to a small group of people who had gathered on the sidewalk across the street from the Johnstown Planned Parenthood office. One woman had set up a bucket of body parts of toy babies. Gale Bala sat on a low rock wall and held a sign that said ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN. She voted for Obama in 2008. She voted for Romney in 2012. Her parents were Democrats, her steelworker husband was a Democrat, and she was a Democrat until two years ago. She voted for Trump last fall, and she’ll “definitely” vote for him in 2020, too.
“He’s kind of the last best hope, in my opinion,” said Bala, 65, a retired high school Spanish and reading teacher. “I haven’t run into anybody who’s said they’d never vote for him again.”
Pam Schilling. | Scott Goldsmith for Politico Magazine
Next to Bala was a gray-haired man who told me he voted for Trump and was happy so far because “he’s kept his promises.”
I asked which ones.
“Border security.” But there’s no wall yet. “No fault of his,” the man said.
What else? “Getting rid of Obamacare.” But he hasn’t. “Well, he’s tried to.”
What else? “Defunding Planned Parenthood.” But he didn’t. “Not his fault again,” the man said.
I asked for his name. “Bill K.,” he said. He wouldn’t give me his last name. “I don’t trust you,” he said.
More than anything, what seemed to upset the people I spoke with was the National Football League players who have knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Frear told me, “if I was the boss of these teams, I would tell ’em, ‘You get your asses out there and you play, or you’re not here anymore.’ They’re paying their salaries, for God’s sake.”
“Shame on them,” Del Signore said over his alfredo. “These clowns are out there, making millions of dollars a year, and they’re using some stupid excuse that they want equality—so I’ll kneel against the flag and the national anthem?”
“You’re not a fan of equality?” I asked.
“For people who deserve it and earn it,” he said. “All my ancestors, Italian, 100 percent Italian, the Irish, Germans, Polish, whatever—they all came over here, settled in places like this, they worked hard and they earned the respect. They earned the success that they got. Some people don’t want to do that. They just want it handed to them.”
“Like NFL players?” I said.
“Well,” Del Signore responded, “I hate to say what the majority of them are …” He stopped himself short of what I thought he was about to say.
Schilling and her husband, however, did not restrain themselves.
“The thing that irritates me to no end is this NFL shit,” Schilling told me in her living room. “I’m about ready to go over the top with this shit. We do not watch no NFL now.” They’re Dallas Cowboys fans. “We banned ’em. We don’t watch it.”
Schilling looked at her husband, Dave McCabe, who’s 67 and a retired high school basketball coach. She nodded at me. “Tell him,” she said to McCabe, “what you said the NFL is …”
McCabe looked momentarily wary. He laughed a little. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said unconvincingly.
Schilling was having none of it. “You’re the one that told me, liar,” she said.
She looked at me.
The NFL?
“Niggers for life,” Schilling said.
“For life,” McCabe added.Tuesday Tips For Playing In The Rain
A few ways to overcome the mental hurdles of wet weather
Last summer I had the (dis)pleasure of playing an amateur-only C-Tier event in the rain. It poured for about 10 or 11 holes during the first round of the tournament, and while it was less than ideal, I learned a lot from the experience. And we’re not talking about “pack extra towels,” here. Instead, I learned five things — five mental tips — which I would like to share with you to help you through your next bout of April showers.
1) Come to terms with the fact that you won’t play your best.
Let’s face it: How many times have you scored a personal best during a tournament anyway? There are multiple reasons you might not shoot like McBeth — pace of play limits your ability to “get in a groove” as you’re forced out of your comfort zone; the pressure of actual stakes, instead of just playing a casual round, get to you — and these issues can be exacerbated during rainy conditions. When the weather is worse, you have to adapt your game, once again taking you out of your rhythm. But if you understand that you might not be at your best, you’ve already tackled one mental hurdle. It might sound counter-intuitive, but lower expectations can keep your score lower, too.
2) Be safe.
This sounds much simpler than it is. I’m a firm believer in practicing like you play and playing like you practice. I’m also a firm believer in going into a tournament with a game plan, and the two disc golfers I like to emulate when I think about this are Nate Sexton and K.J. Nybo. Sexton is probably the best at sticking to his strategies; despite seeing players on his card run for greens with towering backhand drives, he’ll throw the lay-up forehand that he practiced all along. Nybo is probably the most prepared player on the course, as he takes his small notebook and documents every hole to a “T.”
Strategies, though, might have to change when adverse weather conditions strike your round. So what do I mean by “be safe”? I mean don’t push yourself to the limit. If you practiced a 90 percent drive leading up to the tournament, but the teepads are wet, don’t be a hero. During my tournament last year, I played my way onto the lead card for the second round. Although the rain had stopped for the most part, teepads were still very slick. One of my cardmates threw a shot at the power he was used to and he slipped on the teepad, resulting in some bruises and a nasty gash on his leg.
While the spill most certainly hurt physically, it also hurt him mentally. He confessed to the rest of the card that he had zero confidence in his ability to drive after the incident, resulting in him throwing the disc nose-up, high into the air. Had this player simply slowed down, shown control, and been safe, he probably would have played much better.
3) Don’t be afraid to disc up.
I just mentioned slowing down, which probably means you’re going to lose some distance. This is absolutely the case for me, and to compensate for this I learned that it’s okay to disc up to a higher speed disc that has more turn. If there was a hole that I could reach with a midrange in ideal conditions, I would disc up to a fairway driver and throw the disc slower and softer. The higher turn discs would fly straight, giving me the same result as throwing a midrange with more power.
4) Know when to disc down.
But wait, didn’t I just say to disc up? In some cases, yes. But, that is only the case for holes you feel like are “must gets.” If there’s a hole you can’t reach in normal conditions, it’s okay to disc down and throw a nice, controlled shot down the fairway. If you usually play a hole driver-putter-putt, maybe try throwing midrange-midrange-putt. This will force you to continue to play safe, as well as play smart. It might seem boring, but it certainly saved me some valuable strokes in my tournament.
5) Find your go-to disc.
While trapped in that first-round downpour, I found myself reaching for the same disc over and over again. Why? I think one reason is that it was a very reliable disc. My McPro Roc3 was beat in enough so that I could hyzer flip it to straight by throwing it gently. I had bagged the disc for every bit of a year, so I knew exactly what it was going to do. Another reason is because the plastic felt good in the hand, even if it was a little damp. I had a sure grip on the disc and had no worries about the disc slipping out of my fingers early. Finally, it just worked. I could trust it to do the job it was supposed to do — get to the middle of the fairway, or close enough for a putt. Even if it’s not a disc you would throw as frequently in a conventional round, feel free to lean on one that you can — literally — grip and rip.
Despite the awful conditions I played in, that’s the tournament I played the best in, according to ratings. All it took was looking on the sunny side, even when the sun didn’t shine. Have any soggy secrets to share? Leave them in the comments below or on our social media platforms and help us keep the conversation going.President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization. Although hopes were high at the time that the United Nations would serve as an arbiter of international disputes, the organization also served as the scene for some memorable Cold War clashes.
August 8, 1945, was a busy day in the history of World War II. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, devastating the city of Nagasaki. The Soviet Union, following through with an agreement made earlier in the war, declared war on Japan. All observers agreed that the combination of these two actions would bring a speedy end to Japanese resistance. At the same time, in Washington, D.C., President Truman took a step that many Americans hoped would mean continued peace in the post-World War II world. The president signed the United Nations Charter, thus completing American ratification of the document. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes also signed. In so doing, the United States became the first nation to complete the ratification process. The charter would come into full force when China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and a majority of the other nations that had constructed the document also completed ratification.
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The signing was accomplished with little pomp and ceremony. Indeed, President Truman did not even use one of the ceremonial pens to sign, instead opting for a cheap 10-cent desk pen. Nonetheless, the event was marked by hope and optimism. Having gone through the horrors of two world wars in three decades, most Americans–and people around the world–were hopeful that the new international organization would serve as a forum for settling international disagreements and a means for maintaining global peace. Over the next decades, the United Nations did serve as the scene for some of the more notable events in the Cold War: the decision by the Security Council to send troops to Korea in 1950; Khrushchev pounding the table with his shoe during a U.N. debate; and continuous and divisive discussion over admission of communist China to membership in the UN. As for its role as a peacekeeping institution, the record of the U.N. was not one of great success during the Cold War. The Soviet veto in the Security Council stymied some efforts, while the U.S. desire to steer an independent course in terms of military involvement after the unpopular Korean War meant less and less recourse to the U.N. to solve world conflicts. In the years since the end of the Cold War, however, the United States and Russia have sometimes cooperated to send United Nations forces on peacekeeping missions, such as the effort in Bosnia.
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit WebsiteThai Tofu-Vegetable Wraps
With all this cold weather, soup has been a regular on my lunch menu — usually a hearty stick-to-your ribs bean soup or a minestrone loaded with vegetables.
This week, however, I was craving something with a little crunch, but I wanted more than a salad. That’s when I remembered how much I love the Thai Tofu Wraps from Nut Butter Universe, featuring baked tofu strips, a creamy, spicy nut butter spread, and lots of crisp veggies wrapped in a tortilla or levash.
If you don’t want to bake your own tofu, you can use the packaged baked marinated tofu or add strips of seitan instead. Or skip them both and just enjoy it as a salad wrap. Here’s the recipe:
Thai Tofu-Vegetable Wraps
These wraps envelop crisp fresh vegetables and a zesty sauce for a yummy lunch or a light supper. To make this gluten-free, use gluten-free flatbreads. This recipe is from Nut Butter Universe by Robin Robertson © 2013, Vegan Heritage Press. Photo by Lori Maffei.
Serves 2
8 ounces extra-firm tofu, cut into strips
2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce, divided
Salt and ground black pepper
3 tablespoons cashew butter or peanut butter
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon natural sugar
1 teaspoon Asian chili paste, or more to taste
1 cup shredded lettuce
1/2 cup shredded carrot
1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/4 cup bean sprouts (optional)
2 tablespoons finely minced red onion or scallion
2 lavash flatbreads or large flour tortillas
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly oil a baking sheet or spray it with cooking spray. Arrange the tofu strips on the pan, drizzle them with 1 tablespoon of the tamari, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Bake until lightly browned, turning once about halfway through, about 20 minutes total. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
In a small bowl, combine the cashew or peanut butter, remaining 1 tablespoon of tamari, lime juice, sugar, and chili paste. Blend well.
In a medium bowl, combine the lettuce, carrot, bell pepper, bean sprouts, if using, and onion. Toss to combine.
Spread the sauce mixture onto each flatbread, dividing evenly. Top with the vegetable mixture, spreading on the lower third of each wrap. Top the vegetables on each flatbread with strips of the reserved tofu.
Roll up the sandwiches and use a serrated knife to cut them in half. Serve at once.michaelhasanalias Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 1231 Posts Last Edited: 2011-05-03 23:04:37 #1
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=178631¤tpage=2#22
====================
About a month ago there was a TL discussion on
So, I've created a new tool and would like to share it with the community. Currently it supports Protoss and Terran on 1-base, but I hope to expand that soon.
I hope this will help players in determining the success or failure of the initial timing aggression and make more informed economic decisions early in the game. I welcome all feedback (ESPECIALLY any errors in data).
Worker Economic Damage Analysis Tool updated 1/15
WEDAT 1.1.0
Purpose
This tool will determine three things:
1) the total economic damage incurred (both production costs and lost mining time) from killing a certain number of workers in a timing push before an opponent has successfully expanded.
2) the total economic damage from worker production delay.
3) the economic damage from scouting with one of your workers.
Changelog
+ Show Spoiler + - Added support for scouting worker
- Added support for Nexus chrono boosts.
- improved worker mining rate accuracy
- Added a worker Delay Calculator
- Added support for Protoss, as well as race selection.
- Removed 0,1-gas options. It is assumed that a competent player will take both gas by saturation time. May add it back in the future, but seemed to overcomplicate this chart and show correct, but misleading data.
- Fixed an error in workers 19-22 collection rates.
Operating assumptions
+ Show Spoiler + - Constant worker production.
- All geysers are optimal for 3 drones, not 4.
- All mineral patches are fully saturated at 3 workers.
- 3 workers on Gas if there is a geyser – 1-2 @42 gas/worker/minute, 3 @30.
- A fully saturated base is 30 workers, 3 per patch/geyser.
- Gas is taken optimally before 17th mining worker.
- A base/expansion contains 8 mineral patches and 2 gas geysers.
- All workers are mining all the time (none building, afk, etc).
Protoss
- Pre-Saturation time (time to produce 24 workers) is 5:48 with full chrono boosts.
- Probe Production Time is 14.5 Seconds (chrono-adjusted)
Terran
- Pre-saturation time is 6:48. (7:23 with OC)
- Orbital Command has finished (assumed between workers 15-17) by the time of attack. (~3:30)
Tool Limits
+ Show Spoiler +
- Does NOT account for killing mules (although killing a mule necessarily denies between 0-270 minerals).
- Does NOT account for attacks occurring before an Orbital Command is finished
- Does NOT account for SCVs building structures
- Does NOT account for future expansion between worker death and re-population.
Notes
+ Show Spoiler + - This does not factor in MULEs because it does not affect saturation, and therefore does not affect SCV mining rate or SCV mining income.
- Lumps together both minerals and gas simply as total resources. If the player instantly puts back 3 per active geyser, then the gas lost would simply be 0 (but this takes away from the mining time lost), and it’s impossible to know what the player’s decision would be here.
- All static gathering data is from liquipedia.
- It is assumed that after an attack on probes, the protoss player will opt to continue his decision-making with regard to how he spends chrono boosts.
- Hopefully, future implementation for zerg, multiple bases, high yield patches, and build/travel times.
Frequently Asked and Utility Questions (You might find this helpful!)
+ Show Spoiler +
What does PSI mean?
+ Show Spoiler + PSI Is the Pre-Saturation Income. Assuming constant worker production, any worker lost prior to saturation time (7:23 for Terran and 5:48 for 100% chrono'd nexus Protoss) will have an additional PSI cost for delaying that time by the production time of the workers.
For example, if you lose 1 probe at the start of the game, is the cost 50 minerals? How about the 50+ 10 minerals in lost mining time to replace him? Actually it would cost the Protoss 304 minerals! Is that hard to believe? For the first 5:48+14.5 of the game now, you're down 1 extra probe in mining, and that probe WOULD have mined 254 minerals.
How long does it take for this economic damage to be fully realized?
+ Show Spoiler + When we talk about "PSI" and resources lost, it's important to note that the full force of the attack won't be felt until the player is able to re-saturate his base. While the income is denied immediately, there is an exponential decay in the damage over time, with an expiry at re-saturation time. So, if you 6-pooled your opponent and killed half of his 16 probes, that denies him 1902 income over the 5:18 he now has to fully saturate his base. Much of that is of course felt immediately, but all of it won't be realized for 5:18.
How does the Worker Delay Calculator Work?
+ Show Spoiler +
The following is an example of the calculator in action to help grade this player's macro:
replay
As you can see here, the bronze player delays many workers and takes over five minutes longer to reach saturation than necessary. His workers afk during the first 4 seconds, costing him 18 minerals and it's all downhill from there. He also loses his scouting worker, which could have returned to mining.
He lost 1739 potential minerals by 12:55 due to poor macro. When you delay worker production by 1 second pre-saturation, you delay not only that worker, but every future worker until saturation. Thus, if you delay worker 7 (your first worker), by 1 second, you lose 1 second of potential mining time from workers 8-30 as well. This, you can imagine, compounds quickly.The following is an example of the calculator in action to help grade this player's macro:As you can see here, the bronze player delays many workers and takes over five minutes longer to reach saturation than necessary. His workers afk during the first 4 seconds, costing him 18 minerals and it's all downhill from there. He also loses his scouting worker, which could have returned to mining.
How does the Scouting Worker Calculator Work?
+ Show Spoiler + When you scout, you lose mining time. However, the value of that mining time depreciates over time as you saturate your base. This calculator will tell you, based on the length of time you are away, how many resources you lose.
Additionally, it may help you make a pivotal decision with your scouting worker's life!
Let's say you scout with your 9th probe after making a pylon. You decide after poking around a few minutes in zerg's base that you'll wait until his lings chase it out and kill it. You've just cost yourself 331 resources! Now, if you had been a bit more judicious, and left JUST before those lings popped, and rounded a nice 3 minute journey, you get to return that probe to mining, for a loss of only 126 resources. That's a difference of 205 resources by saturation! Given this information, you must now decide whether it's worth it to stick around a bit longer.
A properly timed Banshee harass (vs.P/T) occurs just after 1-base saturation, and often just before a successful expansion. How much economic damage does killing workers deal? What's the break-even point?
+ Show Spoiler + Well, if you only made 1 banshee and you never plan on using the Starport (150min/100gas) or tech lab (50min/25gas) for the rest of the game, your incurred cost is 350min/225gas for the port/tech lab, and then adjusted costs of lost mining time due to building (~35 minerals +/-5 depending on saturation and travel time) plus 37.5 minerals of supply if you plan on keeping your banshee alive. That brings the grand total to ~420/225 (645 total).
If you weight gas 1:1 with minerals (645), then you must kill ~9 workers for it to be considered a success. If you weight gas roughly 1.5 times (757.5), you must kill ~10 workers. And if you weigh it 2 times (900), you must kill ~11 workers.
If you made 2 banshees (~610/325, 935 total, 1097, 1260 ) those numbers are 11, 12 and 13 respectively.
What if you proxy'd the Starport vs Terran and straight tech'd it, such that the banshee arrives at 6:15 (costing you an extra ~35 minerals of travel time for SCV.) Now, because you arrive BEFORE his 7:38 saturation time, your terran opponent only has 26 workers. If you kill 6 SCVs, you've already reached the break even point. If you kill those extra 3, you've denied him DOUBLE your investment!
How long can you be supply blocked before it's worth it to use the calldown vs. waiting for MULE?
+ Show Spoiler +
Is 1 second just too long? Or is it worth it up to 10 seconds?
Supply calldown is ~110-125 minerals, as it requires a building scv to leave the patch (depending on your saturation at the time). We can assume that if you're blocked, you're going to build the SD as quickly as possible, so no roughly 5 seconds travel time + 30 second build time will be considered "lost mining time."
So, where's the break even point? Or does it depend on how badly you need army production?
This question is 2-pronged. If you consider this only from an army production perspective, then any supply block is too long.
If you ONLY consider this from "SCV block" production:
Supply Block Break even Time (Calldown vs. MULE) as compared to SCV count:
@15SCV - 17 seconds - 127.5
@16SCV - 19 seconds - 128.3
@17SCV - 19 seconds - 114.0
@18SCV - 23 seconds - 128.8
@19SCV - 26 seconds - 126.1
@20SCV - 28 seconds - 114.8
@21SCV - N/A
Notes:
- This is based off 1-base Terran. For 2-base, you would divide all of these numbers by 2, and it becomes NOT worth it only at an SCV count of 50.
- This model assumes you take your gas optimally (before 17th worker). That's why the "break even" numbers differ slightly in that range.
However, to FULLY answer this question, we need to look at the army perspective as well.
Having money is not useful if you can't spend it. If you can't spend your minerals, you need to produce an additional barracks/factory/starport or more.
So, how much does it cost you to become supply blocked? Using this link here, let's just take one possible build argument that uses all structures:
2 Barracks (Reactor, Tech Lab) and 1 Factory (Tech Lab) can constantly produce Marinex2, Marauder, Siege Tank.
So, supply blocking for 30 seconds PREVENTS you from spending: 568 resources. In order to compensate for that, you must spend at LEAST 150, which, in conjunction with the ~110 production cost of a supply depot, ALREADY offsets the gain from a MULE. And as we all know, MULE is just faster resources, not more. But the loss is real. (And even if you consider MULE income as static, real income, the cost is far greater to supply block and save the energy for MULE.)
TL;DR / Conclusion - So what's the break even point for Calldown vs. MULE? If you consider both income and expenditure, roughly 6 seconds on a full base, and about 3 seconds on 2-bases.
I don't understand/too lazy to read. Just give me a general rule!
Okay then. With the exception of 19 supply cap, it is almost ALWAYS (re: 99%) more efficient to IMMEDIATELY drop your supply calldown rather than make a MULE. EVEN if you're building a supply depot, if you're waiting longer than about 5 seconds, you should use the supply calldown. Is 1 second just too long? Or is it worth it up to 10 seconds?Supply calldown is ~110-125 minerals, as it requires a building scv to leave the patch (depending on your saturation at the time). We can assume that if you're blocked, you're going to build the SD as quickly as possible, so no roughly 5 seconds travel time + 30 second build time will be considered "lost mining time."So, where's the break even point? Or does it depend on how badly you need army production?This question is 2-pronged. If you consider this only from an army production perspective, then any supply block is too long.If you ONLY consider this from "SCV block" production:Supply Block Break even Time (Calldown vs. MULE) as compared to SCV count:@15SCV - 17 seconds - 127.5@16SCV - 19 seconds - 128.3@17SCV - 19 seconds - 114.0@18SCV - 23 seconds - 128.8@19SCV - 26 seconds - 126.1@20SCV - 28 seconds - 114.8@21SCV - N/ANotes:- This is based off 1-base Terran. For 2-base, you would divide all of these numbers by 2, and it becomes NOT worth it only at an SCV count of 50.- This model assumes you take your gas optimally (before 17th worker). That's why the "break even" numbers differ slightly in that range.However, to FULLY answer this question, we need to look at the army perspective as well.Having money is not useful if you can't spend it. If you can't spend your minerals, you need to produce an additional barracks/factory/starport or more.So, how much does it cost you to become supply blocked? Using this link here, let's just take one possible build argument that uses all structures: http://sc2calc.org/unit_production/terran.php 2 Barracks (Reactor, Tech Lab) and 1 Factory (Tech Lab) can constantly produce Marinex2, Marauder, Siege Tank.So, supply blocking for 30 seconds PREVENTS you from spending: 568 resources. In order to compensate for that, you must spend at LEAST 150, which, in conjunction with the ~110 production cost of a supply depot, ALREADY offsets the gain from a MULE. And as we all know, MULE is just faster resources, not more. But the loss is real. (And even if you consider MULE income as static, real income, the cost is far greater to supply block and save the energy for MULE.)- So what's the break even point for Calldown vs. MULE? If you consider both income and expenditure, roughly 6 seconds on a full base, and about 3 seconds on 2-bases.Okay then. With the exception of 19 supply cap, it is almost ALWAYS (re: 99%) more efficient to IMMEDIATELY drop your supply calldown rather than make a MULE. EVEN if you're building a supply depot, if you're waiting longer than about 5 seconds, you should use the supply calldown.
EDIT 4/30/11: Currently working on a new version that will support multiple bases (and hopefully zerg as well. If you would like to assist me in this process, you can submit a replay of a popular build that is more or less perfectly executed (or offer very specific expansion timings).====================About a month ago there was a TL discussion on the economic damage of workers lost but it never really reached a conclusion (at least, not one that satisfied me).So, I've created a new tool and would like to share it with the community. Currently it supports Protoss and Terran on 1-base, but I hope to expand that soon.I hope this will help players in determining the success or failure of the initial timing aggression and make more informed economic decisions early in the game. I welcome all feedback (ESPECIALLY any errors in data).This tool will determine three things:1) the total economic damage incurred (both production costs and lost mining time) from killing a certain number of workers in a timing push before an opponent has successfully expanded.2) the total economic damage from worker production delay.3) the economic damage from scouting with one of your workers.(You might find this helpful!) KR NsPMichael.805 | AM Michael.2640 | SEA Michael.523 | 엔에스피 New Star Players
michaelhasanalias Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 1231 Posts #2 bump, made the following changes:
- Added support for Protoss, as well as race selection.
- Removed 0,1-gas options. It is assumed that a competent player will take both gas by saturation time. May add it back in the future, but seemed to overcomplicate this chart and show correct, but misleading data.
- Fixed an error in workers 19-22 collection rates.
More to come soon. KR NsPMichael.805 | AM Michael.2640 | SEA Michael.523 | 엔에스피 New Star Players
eth3n Profile Joined August 2010 718 Posts #3 Love the acronym and the obvious effort, hope this has some good utility :D Idra Potter: I don't use avada kedavra because i have self-respect.
michaelhasanalias Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 1231 Posts Last Edited: 2010-12-23 03:23:32 #4 deleted, posted in wrong thread KR NsPMichael.805 | AM Michael.2640 | SEA Michael.523 | 엔에스피 New Star Players
palookieblue Profile Joined September 2010 Australia 326 Posts #5 On December 23 2010 10:49 mlbrandow wrote:
is there a bracket so I can find my opponent and start my match at 9est?
Wrong thread?
Weird considering you're OP.
Also, good job with the tables, me likey. Wrong thread?Weird considering you're OP.Also, good job with the tables, me likey. oyoyo
michaelhasanalias Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 1231 Posts #6 bump, new version up.
Now offers a Worker Delay Calculator (Terran Only) to determine the economic damage of delaying workers pre-saturation (1-base only).
An example of this in use is posted under the FAQ. KR NsPMichael.805 | AM Michael.2640 | SEA Michael.523 | 엔에스피 New Star Players
Zephan Profile Joined December 2010 Canada 29 Posts #7 Quick question with your probe creation, does it factor in the fact that you can only chronoboost about half of the time, since chronoboost takes about twice as long to get back the energy than it lasts. Why hello there
michaelhasanalias Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 1231 Posts Last Edited: 2010-12-24 17:31:59 #8 On December 25 2010 02:19 Zephan wrote:
Quick question with your probe creation, does it factor in the fact that you can only chronoboost about half of the time, since chronoboost takes about twice as long to get back the energy than it lasts.
Yes I did. A Probe takes 17 seconds to produce. You get 33 energy per minute, which is 4 chronos per 3 minutes. 17/1.5 is 11.33 seconds for a chrono'd probe, but of course you can't chrono them constantly. The math ends up working out to about 14.5 seconds per probe under constant chronos. naturally some probes are faster than others (depending when you chrono), but it all averages out if you use it constantly. Naturally earlier chronos are worth more than later chronos, but this is not factored in. (I do hope to add that in the future as part of a build order economic analyzer.)
If you don't use any chronos on your probes for whatever reason, you could use the SCV delay to calculate your minerals lost. I should have a working Protoss one up in the next few days (doesn't take much work, I just may not have time due to holidays).
If you are using the tool, this is why you'll notice for the same X workers and Y lost, Probe takes a smaller economic hit (MULEs notwithstanding). Yes I did. A Probe takes 17 seconds to produce. You get 33 energy per minute, which is 4 chronos per 3 minutes. 17/1.5 is 11.33 seconds for a chrono'd probe, but of course you can't chrono them constantly. The math ends up working out to about 14.5 seconds per probe under constant chronos. naturally some probes are faster than others (depending when you chrono), but it all averages out if you use it constantly. Naturally earlier chronos are worth more than later chronos, but this is not factored in. (I do hope to add that in the future as part of a build order economic analyzer.)If you don't use any chronos on your probes for whatever reason, you could use the SCV delay to calculate your minerals lost. I should have a working Protoss one up in the next few days (doesn't take much work, I just may not have time due to holidays).If you are using the tool, this is why you'll notice for the same X workers and Y lost, Probe takes a smaller economic hit (MULEs notwithstanding). KR NsPMichael.805 | AM Michael.2640 | SEA Michael.523 | 엔에스피 New Star Players
michaelhasanalias Profile Joined May 2010 Korea (South) 1231 Posts Last Edited |
replicated previous findings. Group differences in the Dark Triad traits were also found and included medium and large effect sizes with the largest differences being between economics/business students (having high Dark Triad scores) and psychology students (having low Dark Triad scores). These findings indicate that Dark Triad as well as Big Five traits may influence educational choices.So there I was, drinking a beer, putting fresh wheels on my skates, and watching Pariah. Sometime after B. Free ends a trick by jumping into a motel room and before Erik Stokely proved he’s got the best wall rides in the game, and I got to thinking, Man, this stuff is the shit.
Really, the youth in our sport has incredible talent, in both technical and buck qualities. And the image they’re bringing with them is fucking dope.
I mean the hard rock ‘n’ roll, the shredded fucking duds, and the pure energy and speed of the skating involved.
And the attitude! Hoo-fucking-whee it’s good to see some people getting pissed off about something instead of this apathetic, narcissistic bullshit that goes on everywhere else.
My personal favorite, which I hope continues to a certain extent, is the FUCK YOU OF THE DAY, brought to you by those lovable little scamps, Shredweiser:
That comment, to me, is hilarious. Honestly.
No one wants to get into rollerblading when we all look dirty and poor?
Have you ever heard of hipsters, one of the largest fashion/lifestyle trends of this century? There you have tons of kids purposely dressing like they don’t have money when they have $200 to drop on a pair of Ray Bans?
Hipster bullshit aside, some people want that image.
Yes, people want that swag-laced Dubstep bullshit where you’re awesome because you tell yourself you’re awesome, but that’s not for everyone.
And, in case I haven’t been clear enough in the past, I personally do not want into that shit. It would wholly disgust me to see everyone in rollerblading conformed to a certain standard.
God knows where the Standards of Fashion, Appearance, and Music in Rollerblading Committee (SFAMRC) would take us. Maybe the Powerblading thing would take off and all of our time at the skate park would be devoted to things like this:
(And Jesus H. Christ on a Popsicle stick before you get your Internet titties in a bunch about Powerblading or anything else, realize I’m fucking joking around, something I know few are allowed to do anymore.)
For those of you too young to remember, rollerblading started off with dirty punks, especially here on the West Coast, the bi-coastal epicenter of rollerblading. (NYC, you know you rocked that shit hard, too! Jacklone, Ortega, and Rawlinson “The Johniest Nigga You Know” Rivera, what the fuck is up, boys!)
Personally, I was attracted to rollerblading not by dudes like Tom Fry and Chris Edwards (although they are dope as fuck), but the big belt buckle, big jeans, and graphic Ts worn by Arlo Eisenberg, Mike Opalek, B Love, Brian Smith, and Brooke Howard Smith. Yeah, Hoax II was like a training manual on how to live life: loudly and waving a pierced cock out the window of a Winnebago.
Senate was THE company to take the sport off of the boardwalk and into the streets. They celebrated angry youth in slogan, marketing strategy, and lifestyle.
Their claim to national news fame wasn’t some polished bullshit, but rather from offending women’s groups with the tag on their shirts:
So, yeah, they ruffled some feathers. I know there were some old school cats in other aspects of the business that maybe didn’t like Senate’s message, but you know who did: the fucking kids, man.
I was, and still am, one of those kids.
I had two bumper stickers on my first car. One, was SENATE in Old English. The other said, “My son beat up your student of the month. Senate supports angry youth.” At it had this guy on it:
(For more history on Senate—if you need to see it for the first time or you just want to remember you history—check out the piece ONE Magazine did on it in 2010.)
Holy hog balls! Would you look at that? A shaved head, a wife beater, and bloody baseball bat? And those guys in those videos, with their funny looking hair and big pants. Seriously, what look are they going for? No one would ever like that.
That. That is what you fucking sound like.
You sound like a bunch of piece of fucking shit Valley Girls who snub their noses at anyone who does anything different that your perfect fucking existence.
Sitting there, hating on shit for no fucking reason other than the fact you don’t like it—and no, I don’t see the hypocrisy in saying this, thank you very much—makes you sound like an absolute bitch.
Just a punk fucking bitch with nothing better to do with his spare time than bitch and moan about things he doesn’t like.
As someone whose tried to commit suicide—and then wrote a book about bit—I can only say this one thing to you fucking people who complain anonymously for days upon days, please, for the sake of all that is good and fun in this world, kill yourself.
Now.
Please.
Waiting…
Okay, great. Now that those guys are gone, let’s get back to what really matters: style.
That’s right, style. It’d be nice not to have to be worried about exterior appearances, but we’re an artistic sport and style plays a very fucking important part in what we do, from how we do a trick to the clothes we wear to the music we listen to.
But, before I babble on further, I wish to offer the words of many of a wisemen: no matter what you do in life, you’ll never make everyone happy. Never.
Senate never tried to make anyone happy other than themselves. And it fucking worked.
I remember buying only Senate T-shirts and jeans in high school. I still own some of the packaging. I want my blueberry-scented anti-rockers again. (Seriously, I’ll pay good money if someone has a set.) I think I should start carrying my fat handle comb in my back pocket. Arlo, Opalek, and the rest of those guys are still gods.
That, my wee little babes, began a long time ago in a magical land called Spohn Ranch. My one regret is that I’ve never been there, but for what seemed like an eternity growing up in a boring little small town that was closer to both Canada and Mexico than Southern California.
Now, most of us that remember the red cores of Pleasure Tools and know what Team Paradise meant aren’t so young, but that doesn’t mean our anger has gone anywhere constructive.
We’ve grown up from hopeful little kids to grown men with day jobs, serious relationships, and personal business ventures. Some of us grew more than others, and others want nothing more than to hold onto the spirit of our youth.
When you grow older, you have to think about the future and what the payoff might be. When you stay young, you keep clinging to the greatest moments of your past and are eternally grateful for anytime you can recreate that feeling.
Still being able to blade today, for most of us old cats, can never be explained to a bunch of precious online-anonymous bitchy little shitheads, who have yet to learn anything about pain, disappointment, fear, rejection, or realizing that those daily aches and pains aren’t temporary and the one body you’re given in this life is slowly preparing to expire.
So if you have any problem with what I’m about to say, count your fucking permanent scars from blading and if they don’t equal your age, I’ll pay for your flight to come to California so I can show you fear and pain that would make Freddy Krueger shit his pants!!!!!
Whew. Now that that’s over…
We need to get back to the dirt, and grease, and anger, and frustrations our grandfathers toiled through to make better lives for all of us. They drank hard liquor because they knew it’d work. They drove cars with big engines because they wanted the world to know they were on the road and there would be hell to pay for getting between them and their destination.
They worked their fucking asses off—just like every generation before you, I, or even the oldest person you’ve ever met—in hopes that the generations they left behind might have it a little bit easier than those before them.
And just like our hard-boiled, blue-collar grandfathers used to say, “If you don’t like it, then fuck off!”
I think that is pretty much the motto of Shredweiser in all they do.
The difference between Shredweiser and real “drunken hobo/derelict” assholes is that Shredweiser is putting in work. You’ve heard of them for one good reason and one good reason only: they wanted you to know about them.
It worked on me and for damn good reason.
They’re the guys that gave a dog—but not just any dog, but one named Steve that will acid drop from a van roof—their one and only pro wheel. You tell me there wasn’t one pro with a wheel that didn’t take it as a jest of some sort and I’ll call you a liar.
They’re the ones that sold their wheels for $19, pissing off others in the industry who use Labeda just like soooo many other companies, yet others charge more for their product.
They’re the ones who have all their art hand-drawn by Austin Barrett, a fucking rad-talented dude who also happens to skateboard, completely fucking up your plans to wear a Shredweiser shirt and talk shit on skateboarding.
Fuck, I’m so sold on their shit that I’m proud to have my Blade or Die tattoo designed and inked by Mr. Barrett, himself, in the middle of the Shredweiser house while drinking beer, smoking hash, and Steve supervised.
Why? What makes their shit so great?
Mascu-fucking-linity.
One of the best conversations about blading I’ve ever had was with wife beater-wearing Damien Wilson. Of course it had to take place in the early morning hours of one of many nights at Bar at BCSD.
Basically, I fan-boy thanked him for really fucking doing something. For trying different shit, building shit, and destroying shit. He said the element of masculinity has been missing that was really fucking with blading’s potential. Call me old (fashioned), but that’s what I think being a man is about, now that we’ve civilized our point past our usefulness in the hunter-gatherer way of life.
When Senate lost itself in its image instead of its message, Fight Club—and, yes, it was a book before it was a movie—came into my life and telling me what, as a man, I was supposed to do with my life. Yeah, whoah-is-fucking-white-boy-me, but, like Senate, it gave me some kind of idea of what to do with all of this anger when I wasn’t dumb enough to buy into the bullshit.
(Again, as part of your history, this was before commenting online, calling everyone you’ve never met a fag, and being more ballsy than your 3-D personality will allow was part of modern society.)
Yes, we are a male dominated sport, so maybe a wee bit of the testosterone could do some good.
When a real man sees something wrong, he doesn’t sit behind a computer screen, pretending to be something he’s not, and fucking complains.
What the fuck does he do?
He rolls up his sleeves, sucks up his pride, and puts in the fucking work to make things fucking better.
They start companies.
They host parties, BBQs, and competitions.
They make videos. They make Pariah (and you fucking buy it.)
They start blading.info.
The real heroes that do shit in blading—the shit anyone is going to remember—aren’t online comments or stupid shit columns like this one, but the bladers who put in work in front of the camera and behind the scenes.
The message boards and other cool shit you useless piece of shit mother fuckers do day in and day out, calling out people for the smallest fucking shit, that’s the shit that really fucking kills people and takes the enjoyment out of skating.
Seriously, fuck all of you.
If I had a time machine, I would use it for two trips. First, I would travel to the future to break into your home in the middle of the night so I could kill your children in front of you, and second, I would travel back in time and kill your parents so you’d never be born. I’d suffer the Parkinson’s just to do it.
I say anyone who wants to invest any kind of money into blading should be able to fight for themselves based on quality of product so that others can decide, for themselves, who wants what.
Basically, what I’m saying is…
If you don’t fucking like it, don’t fucking buy it!
While you’re not going to spend the $20 a week your mom gives you for allowance or the money you make working at Subway on skating stuff so you can make sure your ISP bill is paid so you can talk shit on Rollernews or Be-Mag, I will be. I’ll continue to spend money on blading while you’re out buying “swag,” whatever the fuck that may be.
I challenge you put your money where your mouth is.
Blading needs money. Lots of it.
I challenge you to actually start buying blading gear in a good amount. I challenge you to try new things and then give honest product reviews based on your personal experience. I challenge you to expand your vocabulary beyond “shit’s gay,” and expand your vantage point beyond the six inches between your snobby nose and your computer screen.
Like all things in life, you don’t really know something until you experience it.
That’s what I always told people in high school when they asked me what Senate was about. I’m still not sure what Senate was about, but I know for sure it wasn’t about keeping the status quo.
Shredweiser is the most American thing ever made, in the most tragic and horrifyingly beautiful way.
There’s this crew from New Jersey—the same state that supplied us with celebrities like soon-to-be bestselling author Snookie—and they decide to relocate to mother-fucking Oakland, one of the toughest, most dangerous cities in America. Fuck, the other day some dude went nuts at a college and killed seven people. It was a bible college, for Christ’s sake!
Oakland, when not busy being Oakland, is where cops in riot gear will routinely blast Occupy protestors like the Orkin man would love to do to your mother’s crotch.
Oakland—much like Shredweiser—embodies the hate and frustration that boils under the skin of many Americans, which is why we’re on so many pills and drugs just to get through the day.
When antidepressants are prescribed at a rate of 2.88 per 100 people, Shredweiser is the face unafraid to show its anger.
When Americans want everything sterilized and door handle-less bathrooms, Shredweiser wants to wallow in sweat and blood.
While everyone is chasing the American Dream, Shredweiser is attempting to construct the American Nightmare.
Sometimes, that’s pretty easy to do. It seems all they have to do is pretend to not follow the mystical man in the sky, but rather follow the red guy living in the basement.
Americans view Shredweiser like Europeans view American tourists: angry, loud, uneducated heathens that wouldn’t know class if the Queen herself handed it out at soup kitchens.
And God bless the Queen for them.
This entire country is built on some bullshit perfection of rock star ambition for a soulless pre-fab home out in the middle of some -ville-named city away from the core of America’s cities’ biggest product: drug addiction and other vices used to cover up what scars this life has given them.
The image of the American man is becoming diluted with this swag-infused pockets of complete bullshit idiots who spend more time on their hair than they do creating something authentic. Or it’s some kind of Vice-fueled smug sensibility that all you do is inherently better than everyone else because you say so.
Which, of course, is what America is really all about. Or, at least the view from the streets of San Francisco with its vegan, all-organic, yoga cult ideals and hyper politically-correct sensitivities.
I say enough of that.
If skating really takes off again it’s going to be of it’s anti-image.
Just as Senate’s anger and image took blading from the idea of Spandex-clad Valley Girls to one of Frech-kissing Blue Beasts on national television with bleach-blond devil horns, this anti-movement is going to be more powerful than anything else.
Now that everywhere you go there’s a million clean-cut pretty boy skateboarders cruising around, those who want out of that shit might come looking into rollerblading.
And it won’t be because of slow-motion cameras and poppy techno. It will be for speed, blood, and death metal.
They’ll be sick of the action figures, Target clothing lines, and parent-approved Tony Hawk, Travis Pastrana, and Shaun White. These will be the new children of a new angry era who grew up privileged and want nothing more to do with it.
Those who rise will be the dudes who smell, yell, and dedicate their life to be anti-everything American, yet celebrating its worst parts.
This is the return of the new Senate.
It may be in Shredweiser, or Fester, or Southern Scum, or Low Life, or some other dirtbag company, but it’s on its way.
Then again, don’t listen to me. I’m just another 30-year-old white dude who has no idea what he’s doing with his life and is just trying to find an entertaining way to die.
And that’s why I’m proud to support Shredweiser and companies and personalities just like them.
At least they give me someone to root for.
TL;DR: Fuck you.
Blade or Die,
— Brian Krans
P.S.—If you found any of this entertaining, please support my longer rants, whether about college and suicide, or kids and drugs. All of my books are on sale from our Big Cartel site because I need to pay off the loan before I can afford to print the next one.Anti-drugs ads have always had a tendency to veer toward the extreme, or indeed the downright ridiculous.
In an effort to "inform" and "educate" the general public about the myriad harms associated with illicit drug use certain anti-drug posters have become infamous, though not for their success in deterring people. The emphasis on deploying scare mongering tactics (shockingly) does little to engage people and thus bring down levels of use. If anything, many of the below pieces only serve to further alienate people while reinforcing the stigma associated with drug use.
Here is just a small selection of anti-drugs posters from over the years. Who would have thought that drug use would continue in the light of these?
During the mid-1980s, the controversial “Heroin Screws You Up” campaign was rolled out across the UK in an effort to counteract the surge of heroin use during that period.
The emphasis placed in this piece on how heroin can have an adverse impact on physical appearance seems to be somewhat missing the point; threatening a heroin user with poor skin is unlikely to solve the potential issue of heroin dependency, and therefore, this campaign is unlikely to have any impact with those it is supposedly targeting.
Indeed, heroin use rose throughout the 1990s in the UK, highlighting what an utter failure this campaign was.
The Montana Meth Project (MMP) probably takes the award here for most offensive anti-drug advertisement. Relying on aggressive billboard, TV and Internet ads, the MMP has released posters highlighting how methamphetamine could lead you to kill your mother (“My mom knows I’d never hurt her. Then she got in the way”) as well as murder an elderly man (“Beating an old man to death isn’t normal. But on meth it is”). The above billboard ad was deemed so controversial, however, that is was pulled from the group's campaign shortly after being launched in 2008. This 1936 anti-marijuana movie poster is indicative of the hysteria around cannabis during this period, particularly in the US. The alleged causation of “crime”, “despair”, “hate” and “misery,” from smoking marijuana may indeed be a little off-putting to some. But, some of the side effects listed such as “wild parties”, “unleashed passions” and “lust” could well motivate potential users. This seems like mixed messaging, no?
Another from the UK. This was rolled out in London in 2004 in an effort to encourage people to report drug dealers.
Interestingly, the campaign uses the now infamous snapshots of an American woman -- Roseanne Holland -- taken over an eight year period.
It's nice how London's Metropolitan Police emphasize catching the dealer in such a scenario, rather than trying to get help for the person suffering from serious drug misuse.
The final ad comes from Above the Influence, formerly a project of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy.
It's one thing to suggest that illicit narcotics may be laced with rat poison, but doing it in such a roundabout way while portraying drug users as vermin is an absurd tactic.
The only thing likely to be gained from this move -- like many of the above -- is further marginalizing and alienating the target population of these warnings.
Above the Influence is now a program of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. Don't expect these ads to get any less stupid in the future.Tom Hiddleston has fuelled speculation he could be the next James Bond, saying it would be an "extraordinary opportunity" and that he would be prepared for the "physicality of the job".
The actor, currently starring in the BBC adaptation of John le Carre's The Night Manager, has been widely touted as a potential successor to Daniel Craig as 007.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, he described himself as "a huge fan" of the Bond series.
"I simply love the theme tune, the tropes and the mythology. I love the whole thing," he said. "If it ever came knocking, it would be an extraordinary opportunity."
Huddleston, who ranked 12th in a Time magazine poll of contenders for the role last year, said there had been “like 100 actors in the list, including Angelina Jolie”, but said it had been “nice to be included”.
He added: "I'm very aware of the physicality of the job. I would not take it lightly."
The actor disclosed that he had already been undergoing a gruelling fitness training regime with ex-military men, in preparation for his next role as an SAS tracker in Kong: Skull Island.
"I'm quite certain I'm not fit enough to be in the SAS, but I've made strides," he said.
Speculation over a successor for Craig has been rife since the incumbent Bond actor, who has now played 007 four times, jokes he would rather slash his wrists than do another film. “All I want to do is move on,” he said last year.
Many have tipped Hiddleston for the Bond role after his impressive performance as Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager, which some have suggested feels like an audition for 007.
Hiddleston has acknowledged there are "similarities" between the character and that of James Bond.
However, he has previously appeared rather more coy about the possibility of the Bond role.
Asked by the BBC last year, he described it as an "entirely hypothetical situation", adding: "Of course it would be… that would be such a huge… I think I would enjoy the experience."
He said it would be a "huge compliment and huge fun" to play James Bond but insisted it felt "so unlikely and imaginary".For the USC communications professor, see Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins (buried on 9 December 1670 in Bolton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire) was an English supercentenarian claimant said to have been 169 years old at his death.[1]
Biography [ edit ]
Memorial to Jenkins
Memorial plaque
He claimed to have been born in 1501, although parish registers were not required to be maintained until 1538. It is known that he lived at Ellerton on Swale, Scorton, North Yorkshire,[1] and claimed to have been butler to Lord Coniers, of Hornby Castle, where the Abbot of Fountains was a frequent guest, and "did drink a hearty glass with his Lordship."[2] He later followed the occupation of a fisherman and ended his life begging for alms.[3]
Chancery Court records show that in 1667 Jenkins stated on oath that he was aged "one hundreth fifty and seven or thereabouts";[1] when asked by the judge which notable battle he remembered, he named Flodden Field of 1513 and claimed to have carried arrows to the English archers.[4][5] Although his birth date is undocumented, the date of Jenkins's death is known to within days, as his burial is recorded in the parish register of Bolton-on-Swale as having occurred on 9 December 1670. He is described as "a very aged and poor man".[1] In 1743, in his memory an obelisk was erected in the churchyard, and a plaque made of black marble was placed inside the church;[1] the inscription on it, composed by Dr Thomas Chapman, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge,[6] reads
“ Blush not, marble, to rescue from oblivion the memory of Henry Jenkins, a person obscure in birth, but of a life truly memorable, for he was enriched with the goods of nature if not of fortune, and happy in the duration if not the variety of his enjoyments. And though the partial world despised and disregarded his low and humble state, the equal eye of Providence beheld and blessed it with a patriarch's health and length of days, to teach mistaken man these blessings are entailed on temperance, a life of labour, and a mind at ease. He lived to the amazing age of 169; was interred here, December 6, 1670, and had this justice done to his memory, 1743.[3] ”
In 1829, the journal The Mirror of Literature claimed that if Jenkins had followed his legal obligations, during his life he would have changed his religion eight times, between the reigns of Henry VII and Charles II.[7]
T. H. White's science fiction novel The Master: An Adventure Story (1957) compares the eponymous character, aged 150, with Jenkins.
The village of Kirkby Malzeard, North Yorkshire, had a pub named Henry Jenkins after him, until it closed on 29 June 2008.[8]Isn’t it great, leaving questions that we can’t answer to an invisible force that we can’t control? It’s not necessarily helpful, but at least that way it becomes someone else’s problem. Don’t understand where humankind came about? Delegate to a higher authority and we no longer need to solve the question. Housing crisis? No problem – just leave it to that old invisible hand of the market.
The only problem is, market solutions to the housing crisis aren’t exactly working well so far. A decrease in planning regulations to “boost supply” has led to rabbit-hutch sized apartments being made out of old office blocks. All manner of ridiculous forms of shelter – including tents and garden sheds – have been put on the market at ridiculous prices for people to rent. And now we find that landlords are asking for sex instead of rent.
Sex-for-rent is the hidden danger faced by more and more female tenants | Penny Anderson Read more
Responding to claims that the deals amount to extortion of the vulnerable, one landlord said he saw no difference between this type of deal and charging extortionate rents to those who can’t otherwise afford it. Of course, there is a difference – both contractually and morally. The law upholds the right of autonomy over your own body, and with a few exceptions (eg late-term abortions), will not enforce any contract that infringes this right. Contractually speaking, rights in a written contract can at least be, to some extent, clear, codified and safe. Sex-for-rent deals, on the other hand, can’t work in this manner because their very legality rests on ambiguity. The adverts rely on covert language and sexual innuendo to remain legal, and so a number of them commit to ironing out the further detail in person.
This necessarily puts the tenant at risk. When you’re leaving the terms of your residence down to an elusive, verbal contract, how can the terms of consent ever really be agreed and defined? How do you negotiate autonomy over your own body with someone who has a key to your room or lives in your home, and can put you on the street if you refuse? And who do you complain to if those terms are broken? The fact that these landlords are exploiting the law becomes most obvious when you consider what would happen if either party tried to enforce their contract. The landlord would not, for example, be able to take a tenant to court for not paying up on time, or to send bailiffs round to ensure that arrears were paid in full.
Tenant charged £835 … to scribble a new name on a contract Read more
When you look at it that way, the solution seems clear: make this practice illegal so that predatory landlords can no longer act in this manner. Of course we should take measures to protect tenants from being coerced into sex for shelter. But it is not because of technical flaws that this kind of exploitation exists. The problem exists because people need homes, and they’ve been offered nothing but the rules of supply and demand to navigate that need. In such an unequal market as ours – where some can afford to invest in multiple, million-pound complexes as an investment while others wonder where they will live next week – this represents the tipping point. Increasingly priced out, some are forced to trade in a currency that no one but those in the most desperate circumstances would contemplate – in this case their bodies.
The adverts, callous and lacking humanity, are a picture of the market at its worst. “Frequent nudity and overt flaunting/flashing important, as is willingness to be infrequently watched remotely through a camera and photographed,” reads one. These adverts don’t feel like they’re discussing people, they are talking cold, concrete units to be traded. If the Achilles heel of the market wasn’t clear before, now it should be: for all of its supposed benefits, the one type of currency it is short in, surely has to be morality.This webpage is kept for archival purposes only and is no longer updated or maintained.
Micrometeoroid Shield Test - Preliminary Photos
These snapshots were taken during testing at Rice University on October 7-8, 2002
Hypervelocity test gun. The gun uses hydrogen, compressed by a piston driven by a shotgun shell, to accelerate small particles to a velocity of 7 km/s.
The particle enters the evacuated target chamber through the hole just visible at the corner of the target (upper left). The target is the micrometeoroid shield, with a plastic scintillator and phototube behind it to simulate the orbital condition.
Close-up of damage to the shield caused by a 2.2 mm aluminum ball. The layers have been folded back to show the interface between the outer layers (ceramic fabric separated by foam) and the backing layers (Kevlar). In the distance of 20 mm from the point of impact, the shield has dispersed the energy of the projectile into an area approximately 30 mm in diameter. The Kevlar stopped the debris (in this case).
Close-up of damage to the scintillator wrapping caused by debris penetrating the shield (a thinner shield than in the photo to the left). The hole is 8 mm in diameter, smaller than the hole within the shield, but large enough to alow light to reach the scintillator. If this happens in orbit, the ACD tile will be disabled.With the squabbling over potential solutions to California's historic drought reaching a fever pitch (Stop growing almonds? Stop eating meat? Definitely get Nestlé to stop bottling the state's water...), it was only a matter of time before someone proposed a more, um, creative approach.
Stepping forward with one such bold idea is actor William Shatner, who claims he wants to build a $30 billion pipeline from Seattle down to one of California's dried-up lakes. A Kickstarter campaign, he said, should do the trick.
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"There’s too much water [in Seattle]," Shatner told Yahoo Tech's David Pogue. "How bad would it be to get a large, 4-foot pipeline, keep it aboveground -- because if it leaks, you’re irrigating!”
"It's simple,” he insisted. “They did it in Alaska -- why can’t they do it along Highway 5?"
Oregonians, unsurprisingly, are less than thrilled with the idea, particularly as the Pacific Northwest, thanks to this season's record-low snowpack, is facing potential water emergencies of its own. Such fears aren't without precedent, the L.A. Times points out: in 1990, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn proposed digging aqueducts to collect water from further north, prompting Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt to accuse him of attempting to steal his water.
Paul Faulds, the water resources manager for Seattle Public Utilities, told USA Today that the city kind of needs it water supply -- and that it doesn't have a lot to spare. "Our water goes to provide water for people, for businesses and for fish. We use our water wisely and manage it throughout the season," Faulds explained.
"We're not being greedy," he added. "We do sympathize with them for sure."
Thankfully, this is much more theoretical than that other controversial pipeline, as well as -- we've got to hope -- a really well-played joke on the part of Shatner.
Advertisement:
[embedtweet id="590386617652613120"]
If he was kidding, though, it's not clear whether Pogue, who gave the proposal a relatively straight write-up, got it. Come to think of it, it's not entirely clear whether Shatner himself knows whether or not he was serious. He told Pogue that, even if his Kickstarter goes the way of his last, failed attempt to crowdsource funds, he'll at least raise awareness about the drought.
Nonetheless, late Monday night, he called on some other big thinkers to weigh in the idea:
[embedtweet id="590389096003964930"]
"California's in the midst of a 4-year-old drought," Shatner told Yahoo Tech. "They tell us there's a year's supply of water left. If it doesn't rain next year, what do 20 million people in the breadbasket of the world do?" All kidding aside, that's a big question that remains to be answered.Stephanie Diana Wilson (born September 27, 1966) is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew to space onboard three Space Shuttle missions, and is the second African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison. Her 42 days in space are the most of any African American astronaut, male or female.
Early life and education [ edit ]
Stephanie Wilson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 27, 1966. About a year later, her parents, Eugene and Barbara Wilson,[2] decided to move to Pittsfield, Massachusetts.[3] Eugene, a native of Nesmith, South Carolina, used his electronics training from his time in the Navy to get himself a degree from Northeastern University and a long career in electrical engineering for Raytheon, Sprague Electric, and Lockheed Martin,[2][4] while Barbara worked as a production assistant for Lockheed Martin.[2] After attending Stearns Elementary School, she attended Crosby Junior High School.[5] For a career awareness class in middle school, Wilson was assigned to interview someone in a field that interested her. Since she liked to look up at the sky,[6] she interviewed Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff,[5], clarifying her potential career interest in space. In high school, Eugene encouraged Stephanie to go into engineering,[2] so she decided to become an aerospace engineer. Wilson graduated from Taconic High School, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1984. She attended Harvard University, receiving a bachelor of science degree in engineering science in 1988. Wilson earned a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas, in 1992.[1] Wilson has returned to Harvard as a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.[7] She was the Chief Marshal for the 362nd Harvard Commencement on May 30, 2013.[8]
Career [ edit ]
Engineering [ edit ]
Wilson during STS-120, with a model of Node 2 floating in front of her
Wilson worked for two years for the former Martin Marietta Astronautics Group in Denver, Colorado. As a Loads and Dynamics engineer for the Titan IV rocket, Wilson was responsible for performing coupled loads analyses for the launch vehicle and payloads during flight events. Wilson left Martin Marietta in 1990 to attend graduate school at the University of Texas. Her research focused on the control and modeling of large, flexible space structures.
Following the completion of her graduate work, Wilson began working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in 1992. As a member of the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem for the Galileo spacecraft, Wilson was responsible for assessing attitude controller performance, science platform pointing accuracy, antenna pointing accuracy and spin rate accuracy. She worked in the areas of sequence development and testing as well. While at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wilson also supported the Interferometery Technology Program as a member of the Integrated Modeling Team, which was responsible for finite element modeling, controller design, and software development.
NASA [ edit ]
Selected by NASA as an Astronaut Candidate in April 1996, Wilson reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. Having completed two years of training and evaluation, she is qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist. She was initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch to work with Space Station payload displays and procedures. She then served in the Astronaut Office CAPCOM Branch, working in Mission Control as a prime communicator with on-orbit crews. Following her work in Mission Control, Wilson was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Shuttle Operations Branch involving the Space Shuttle Main Engines, External Tank and Solid Rocket |
as a driver of prosocial behaviour: Highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species" Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences 371(1686):20150077. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0077
Goals [ edit ]
Perform a usability experiment such as with the MoodBar. Measure the difference and try to get more than 216 expected additional editors per year on the English Wikipedia.
Get Involved [ edit ]
About the idea creator [ edit ]
Please see en:User:EllenCT
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Would a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.
Expand into an Individual Engagement Grant
Expand into a Project and Event GrantA new study from the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and the Smith School for Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford, shows that we are uncomfortably close to the point where the world’s energy system commits the planet to exceeding 2°C.
In the paper, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Energy, the authors calculate the Two degree capital stock – the global stock of electricity infrastructure from which future emissions have a 50% probability of staying within 2°C of warming. The researchers estimate that the world will reach Two degree capital stock next year, in 2017.
The researchers used IPCC carbon budgets and the IPCC’s AR5 scenario database, and assumed future emissions from other sectors compatible with restricting warming to 2°C. They found that based on current trends, no new emitting electricity infrastructure can be built after 2017 for this target to be met, unless other electricity infrastructure is retired early or retrofitted with carbon capture technologies.
Professor Cameron Hepburn, Professor of Environmental Economics based at INET Oxford and the Smith School, and one of the authors, said: “Investors putting money into new carbon-emitting infrastructure need to ask hard questions about how long those assets will operate for, and assess the risk of future shut-downs and write-offs.”
The team recommend that given the rapid declines in cost of zero-carbon technologies,and strong evidence that as those technologies deploy at scale their costs further decline, the least risky and most economically prudent course of action is to shift all new energy investment to zero carbon as rapidly as possible.
If this doesn’t happen, argue the researchers, the implications are stark. If the 2°C target is to be taken seriously, then current and future assets will have to be written off before the end of their economically useful life (become stranded assets) or we will have to rely on large scale investments down the line, in carbon capture and storage technologies that are as yet unproven and expensive.
The research team hopes to focus the minds of policy makers in this crucial first year post-Paris by showing a realistic view of the time available for making the shift to clean energy.MUNSTER RUGBY IS in a worrying, worrying place.
The coaches failed their players at Stade Jean-Bouin on Saturday. The players failed their coaches too. Munster Rugby as an organisation is failing its rich history and everyone attached to it.
Munster's players were left in utter dejection. Source: Dan Sheridan/INPHO
Munster’s ‘Strategic Plan’ for 2014 to 2017 states qualifying for the play-offs of the Champions Cup every season as one of the province’s detailed objectives, with one outright win of the tournament by the end of the 2016/17 campaign.
No matter how vehemently one argues that rugby is about fine margins, those targets are being missed and the overall goal of a European trophy looks like a pipe dream.
There were arguably several key turning points in the defeat to Stade Français – early injuries to first-choice players, missed kicks at goal, a disallowed try – but those instances are simply too numerous for Munster to be used as excuses any longer.
Whatever about their stated goals, few could argue that this Munster squad look like genuine Champions Cup contenders on paper. Nonetheless, assessment of their effort in Europe this season has to go down as one of underperformance.
This squad of players – including Ireland caps Dave Kilcoyne, Mike Sherry, Dave Foley, Tommy O’Donnell, Conor Murray, Keith Earls and Simon Zebo as well as Wallaby Mark Chisholm and All Black Francis Saili – should be more effective.
Handed what was a relatively straightforward pool, certainly in comparison to what Ulster and Leinster drew, Munster have failed to fire a shot. The display against Stade encapsulated several of the on-field issues that are dragging the province to a new low.
14 men
One of the big questions after Munster’s 27-7 defeat centres around how they completely failed to exploit the fact that Stade had just 14 men for the entire second half.
We don’t know exactly what was said at half-time by Anthony Foley and his coaching staff, but CJ Stander did explain afterwards that there had been a big focus on lifting the tempo of the game in the second 40 minutes.
“We said to ourselves, ‘we have to go out there and pick up the pace’,” recalled the Munster number eight afterwards.
Mention of lifting the tempo in rugby usually leads to thoughts of width and passing the ball rapidly to those wide channels. Evidently that was Munster’s thinking, as they totally failed to address the continuing need for direct carrying in the second half.
The clip above is obviously just one brief snapshot, but it’s telling. Munster lose the gainline on the first phase of their lineout attack, and yet they still attempt to force the ball into a wide channel on the second phase.
Munster’s thinking appeared to be that if they could get the ball to the touchlines, space would be waiting. Aside from Stander, there was a complete lack of players putting their hand up to carry the ball, use a little footwork closer in to the ruck and win gainline for Munster while tying down defenders.
This is not criticism of Munster for being ambitious with the ball in attempting to play with width. Certainly the province have made some strides with their attacking template this season by bringing in clever shapes to move the ball in wide-wide patterns.
However, even the most amateur of teams in the world understand that space on the edges must be created. That occurs when defenders are tied down by strong, threatening ball carrying.
The All Blacks, for example, play beautiful attacking rugby, but the likes of Keiran Read, Jerome Kaino and Brodie Retallick never lose sight of the need for them to carry aggressively and effectively. That in turn helps create the numbers-up attacking opportunities that the likes of Nehe Milner-Skudder exploit so well.
In their coach-driven desire for ‘tempo,’ Munster appeared to completely lose sight of that most basic tenet of the game. The sight of anyone bar Stander carrying at the line in the second half was extremely rare, as were Munster attempts to maul – another means of tying down defenders.
It’s difficult to show examples here because they don’t exist. Dave Kilcoyne – who had to put in a massive 80-minute shift – is a brilliant carrier, Jack O’Donoghue has the footwork and dynamism to attract multiple defenders, Robin Copeland too.
Copeland had just five carries for six metres in 80 minutes. Source: Dan Sheridan/INPHO
They simply were not asked to use those skills in the second half, instead chasing across the pitch as Munster attempted to lift the tempo only by playing wider out from the ruck, even on early phases of their attacks.
That’s not a shortcoming on the players’ part, it’s a direct result of their skills not being utilised in a tactical manner that fits the circumstances.
Having an extra player on the pitch obviously creates a giddiness, a sense of ‘let’s throw the ball wide here and we’ll have an overlap,’ but the coaching staff should be able to lift themselves above that and view the situation with more clarity.
Even as Munster allowed Stade’s 14-man defence to dictate the second half to them, continuing to bring good linespeed, there did not appear to be any tactical direction coming from above.
Munster have always played the game with ‘tempo’. Almost every winning team in the world does. That didn’t always mean width and passing from the Munster side that Foley starred in as a player, but it did mean the pace of the game lifted when they attacked.
Ruck to ruck to ruck to ruck, Foley and the likes of Alan Quinlan and Denis Leamy hammered their carries and hammered the breakdown to force the defence into uncomfortable positions. There was energy, conviction, confrontation.
Munster lacked all of those against 14-man Stade in the second half on Saturday.
Energy
It took until the 75th minute, when Munster were already 27-0 down, for their first quick-tap penalty to come.
Before we go any further, let’s be clear that this is not a lamentation of the fact that Munster did not take more quick-tap penalties.
However, this topic is totally reflective of how Munster failed to lift the tempo of the game despite their stated ambition of doing so after the break. Speaking following the game, Stander mentioned some of his teammates walking to lineouts – inexcusable for a team that wanted to lift the pace.
Munster should have owned the momentum of the half, forcing Stade to play on their terms. Instead, there was an utter lack of energy.
In the example above, it’s European debutant Rory Scannell who takes it upon himself to grab the ball and go. Others around him are standing still, beaten men. Whatever about the losing itself, that acceptance of defeat rankled most with supporters.
The quick-tap above actually led to Munster’s only try of the game. Naturally Stade were easing up having clinched the game, but it’s instructive nonetheless.
With 78.23 on the clock and Munster now having scored a try, we see their second quick-tap penalty, leading to a major gain of yards.
This time it’s Conor Murray who darts away, but was this same energy present when Munster were genuinely in the game? Why only when the contest is already decided?
Humiliation
Humiliation is a strong word, but the second-half amounted to that for Munster.
Again, we go back to the minimum expectation from Munster supporters – that of effort and work rate, of concentration and intent. Those things don’t require talent.
Above, we see a wide shot as Stade begin the phase of attack that ends in Hugo Bonneval’s try. On the left side of the ruck for Munster are six defenders on their feet, with just three of the French team’s players in front of them.
On the right side of the ruck from Munster’s point of view, they are numbers down even before Francis Saili is dragged back in towards the ruck by a clever decoy line.
The missed tackles are poor of course, but that initial failure by Munster to work hard around the corner is just as costly. Even one additional body getting across after two simple phases of Stade attack could have prevented that initial space for Bonneval.
Again, this try comes at a point where Munster have already lost the game [20-0 down with 70 minutes gone] but that only makes the lack of effort and awareness all the more jarring.
Composure
Error upon error upon error. It’s increasingly become the story of this Munster team. Not only have they made mistakes at important times in games, but they have so often backed them up with another mistake within minutes.
Let’s look at one such chain.
With the game still at 0-0 in the 18th minute, Ian Keatley misses a penalty that seems relatively kickable. It’s on the ‘wrong’ side for a right-footed kicker, but away in France it’s the kind of kick that needs to be scored.
As we see above, the ball has barely left the tee and Keatley’s head is up looking at the posts. It’s one sign of a kicker who is more anxious about the outcome than the process that will achieve it.
Whatever about the missed kick, Munster need to react to the disappointment well. Instead, they string together three further errors.
First, Munster botch their attempt to claim the restart, therefore giving up the opportunity to maintain pressure on the Stade defence inside their own half. Dave Foley and his lifting pod misjudge the flight of the ball and then Mark Chisholm loses it too easily as he attempts to gather in behind.
Whatever about that error, Munster must react well now and apply intense pressure to Stade’s attempt to either exit or run the ball at them.
Stade actually have promising numbers wide right here, but fortunately Sylvain Nicolas decides to carry instead of passing. Even with that, and the chance to get a good shot in to kill the momentum, Munster fall off the tackle – one of far too many similar instances.
Stade then opt to kick deep to Munster and there is a chance for the visitors to at least get a strong clearance back towards the halfway line.
Instead, Keith Earls completely slices his kick into touch. Less than a minute after the ball sailed wide from Keatley’s penalty attempt, Munster find themselves defending just outside their 22 after a string of errors.
The above sequence is one of many, many examples of this kind of thing from Munster in recent times. They have lacked composure and the ability to react positively to mistakes through their poor run of results.
It may not seem all that grave in terms of the actual individual errors themselves, but this kind of passage instils the opposition with incredible confidence.
‘These lads are shitting themselves,’ Stade would have thought after this, or after the string of four major mistakes in the seven minutes that followed half time – when Munster should have been playing with confidence and energy against 14 men.
Pinpointing the cause of this issue is not easy. Otherwise, Foley and his coaching staff would have helped lift the malaise from Munster by now.
Coaching is as much about managing personalities, anxiety and confidence as it is about technical knowledge. Are these Munster players being provided with the mental direction that they need?
On the other hand, it can be argued that the best players in the world don’t need a whole lot of managing or minding. Munster’s players at the moment are failing to deliver mentally as much as anything else.
Robotic
A further illustration of the alarming situation Munster have found themselves in is their apparent inability to actually look up during games and identify opportunities.
Again, the examples we use here are illustrative of wider points. Watching Munster on Saturday, the words of centre Francis Saili sprung to mind.
“The boys work hard, they work so hard,” said the Kiwi of Northern Hemisphere rugby, “but I always say there’s no point in working hard if you’re not going to work smart at the same time. For instance, boys can work hard into positions, but they are sometimes like robots and stick to the structures.
“You need to see in front of you and what you’re going to play against. The pictures you see is what you’ve got to adapt to. You’ve got to adapt to the defence and how you’re going to punch holes. You’re trying to problem solve the game.”
Above we see Keatley kicking into touch on the full, again handing Stade a chance to apply attacking pressure.
The most jarring aspect of this clip is not the kick itself, but the opportunity missed by Munster in attack.
It’s about as close to a full backline outside the out-half as you’re likely to get in phase play, and with three defenders in front of them.
Whatever about field position, this is a genuine 5-on-3 as the ball goes to Keatley out the back of Foley. It’s finally on for Munster to have a numbers-up cut at the Stade defence with the likes of Saili, Zebo and Ronan O’Mahony in space.
Instead, Keatley is thinking only of the deep kick. It doesn’t appear that anyone outside him is signalling or calling for the ball.
It’s a similar story below, as Munster ignore a numbers-up chance to the right of the ruck.
This time Murray does actually look up and assess the options, but he nonetheless decides to move the ball left, where Stade are well set in defence. Over on the right, the French side are narrow and short on numbers. It’s a 4-on-3 for Munster at worst.
There are several other examples of the same from Munster in this game. Despite the lack of direct carrying, Stade’s 14-man defence did still give up opportunities to Foley’s side.
“You get all your options off the opposition,” said Steve Hansen during the World Cup, but Munster don’t appear to be doing that in the slightest at present.
Whether that’s a shortcoming in the coaching of these players or a longer-term issue in their rugby upbringing is an important question and must be part of Munster’s review of their European failure.
European low
Munster’s shambolic tackling effort has been well flagged in the aftermath of this defeat and going over the individual examples probably wouldn’t achieve much.
What we can say is that the consistent mistakes in defence from Munster in recent months speak volumes about the need for renewal or change within the province.
There are certainly technical and/or systematic errors involved in some of the examples of poor Munster defence that spring to mind, but defence is perhaps the most obvious illustration of a squad’s mindset.
“Defence is a reflection on team culture,” is how Scotland and Glasgow Warriors defence coach Matt Taylor puts it, a sentiment that is echoed in coaching circles all over the world.
Good defence is built on mindset and commitment, more so than any tactical idea. Off-field culture and buy-in feed defensive success.
Munster don’t have that at present, and it only adds to the sense that things will get worse before they improve.The Senate public services committee removes the 'co-use' provision but retains tax exemptions for telcos with franchises
Published 3:16 PM, March 02, 2017
MANILA, Philippines – Senate wants Smart Communications Incorporated to conduct an inital public offering (IPO) within two years before it grants the telecommunications giant's 25-year franchise extension, which will also give the Manuel V. Pangilinan-led telco some tax breaks.
Senator Grace Poe, chairperson of the Senate public services committee, on Wednesday, March 1, endorsed to the plenary a measure extending the legislative franchise of Smart for another 25 years, even as she sought for further improvements in the quality of service to millions of subscribers.
Poe recommended the approval of House Bill Number 4637, taking into consideration Senate Bill Number 1302.
She said a committee report signed by 15 senators introduced amendments to Republic Act 7294, which originally granted Smart a 25-year legislative franchise in 1992. (READ: Smart seen to get 25-year franchise extension by March)
Among the key provisions of the Senate-endorsed measure is the prerequisite for Smart to make a public offering, restoring the original wording in its original franchise mandating that 30% of its authorized capital stock must be listed through the stock exchange. The House had deleted this original wording.
To recall, the approved House version in January 2016 effectively exempted Smart, the wholly-owned subsidiary of listed PLDT Incorporated, from the IPO requirement by adding, "Unless the grantee is wholly owned by a publicly listed company."
Poe said the Senate deleted this phrase to comply with the original mandate under RA 7294.
Smart legal counsel Ray Espinosa had earlier said the listing requirement has already been fulfilled.
"Fulfilled na siya eh (It's already fulfilled). I'm not trying to make an excuse, it's public ownership of the company, but PLDT Incorporated is already publicly-owned. We're looking at dividends and profits straight up," Espinosa said in a previous Senate hearing.
No more 'co-use'
Other than the IPO requirement, the Senate committee also removed the adoption of the "co-use" term in the bill.
Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) Commissioner Johannes Benjamin Bernabe and civil group Democracy.Net.PH had earlier expressed concerns on the co-use term adoption.
"The adoption of the term 'co-use' will potentially legitimize and make legal future collusion and anti-competitive behavior," said Pierre Tito Galla, co-founder and co-convener of Democracy.Net.PH.
"It also appears to be a means to ensure that the current dispute between the telecommunications giants and the PCC in the Court of Appeals becomes moot and academic, and resolved in favor of Smart," he added.
This was echoed by Bernabe, who said that "from a competition perspective, [a] co-use agreement will enhance telcos' dominance."
"This cannot be invoked in employing anti-competition practices," Poe said.
Although the co-use term was removed, the committee retains the provision on exemption for telcos with franchises from paying Customs duties, tariffs, and taxes on radio telecommunications and electronic communications equipment, machinery, and spare parts. (READ: PLDT's income drops by 33% on Rocket Internet losses)
Smart was granted authority to operate as a mobile cellular service provider in 1992 and has since been operating as a telecommunications provider for both domestic and international customers.
Smart runs cell sites, mobile broadband base stations, and fixed wireless broadband-enabled base stations, covering 1,634 cities and municipalities in the Philippines.
Congress has only two weeks or until March 15 to extend the mobile telecommunications giant’s legislative franchise, which will expire later this month. – Rappler.comThe mammals use trees, mud and stone to make a type of moat where they can use their swimming skills to evade any predators.
The families live in lodges on the dams and spend their days adding to and repairing the incredible structures.
The dam was spotted by experts monitoring the size and spread of the beaver dams in North America.
It is located on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park in Northern Alberta, Canada.
While beaver dams are often found to be around 1,500ft in length, this one has surprised biologists because of its length.
It is thought that several beaver families joined forces to create the massive dam that contains thousands of trees and must have taken many months to complete.
The dams are an important part of the ecology and wider environment and climate change can be judged by the spread of the dams.
Sharon Brown, a biologist from Beavers: Wetland and Wildlife, an educational organisation in North America, said: "Beavers build dams to create a good habitat.
"They are very agile in the water but they're a bit slow moving on land.
"They create a habitat with lots of water like a moat around their lodges so they can swim and drive and keep one step ahead of predators such as coyotes and bears.
"They also use water to move the trees they use in their dams because it is easier floating wood on water than dragging them over land.
"These habitats are not just good for them but for other animals and the environment.
"Their dams are also good because they slow the flow of water leading to less drought and less flooding.
"And when plant matters dies in water it turns to peat and that is one of the best ways for storing CO2."Space History News
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Go / No Go :
"Apollo 17: End of the Beginning" DVD
Review by Rick Houston
Studio: Spacecraft Films Release: November 2004 Length: More than 27 hours on 6 discs MSRP: $84.99 Extras: CGI flyover of landing site; onboard audio recorded during launch; training footage
By the time Apollo 17: End of the Beginning concludes with the welcoming ceremony on the deck of the USS Ticonderoga, you almost get the sense that you've been on the mission yourself.
After all, the 27-hour runtime is approximately five hours longer than the total amount of time Eugene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt spent on the surface during their three EVAs. You've seen them train for those moonwalks and been with them on geology field trips. You have watched Cernan, Schmitt and command module pilot Ron Evans take part in the photo shoot for their familiar crew portrait.
They lift off from Florida, land at Taurus-Littrow, explore, launch the LM Challenger from the surface, dock in lunar orbit and you're there. Evans gets his moment in the sun, so to speak, and does a trans-Earth EVA. You're happy for him. You watch as fire streaks past a window during re-entry, followed by those beautiful parachutes as they blossom above the CM America to bring you safely down into the Pacific Ocean.
One of the critiques often expressed about Spacecraft Films' products has been that they tend to contain too many static, boring shots, with little or no commentary. Such critics miss the point, and miss it very badly. These are historical documents that seek to give as complete a record as possible of each mission.
What Spacecraft Films provides isn't a Cliff Notes version of space history. Prefer a condensed version of what's happening in today's world? Read USA Today. Want a sound bite? Flip to CNN. Need a documentary? Call Ken Burns. You watch what Spacecraft Films has put together to form an opinion about history for yourself.
Certainly, the 27 hours of Apollo 17 is a lot to digest in a single - or for that matter, multiple sittings, but most DVD players have fast forward buttons, right? And each of the six discs have multiple menus by which topics interesting to you can be selected. However, when you skip ahead, precious nuggets of history are missed.
A few observations while watching the 27 hours...
Disc One Who's the girl in the short, short mini-skirt watching the EVA training?
The working Rover mock-up has to have been the coolest go-kart ever.
Schmitt's pre-flight commentary that's played over video of geology training is fascinating, but sad as well. So many of the things Schmitt hoped to accomplish on future trips to the Moon were never realized.
Disc Two
The computer-generated flyover of the Taurus-Littrow landing site and EVA routes was a tremendous addition. However, it would have been nice to put the flyover's overall view of the valley in the center spread of the menu booklet, just to provide a point of reference.
Quite possibly the most poignant moment of the mission, even more so than Cernan's last words on the surface, takes place just after Cernan and Schmitt plant the American flag. Emotion is clear in Cernan's voice as he calls it "one of the most proud moments of my life, I guarantee you." Ten minutes later, after more work and as he's back at the LM, the event is still on Cernan's mind. "I've gotta tell ya, Bob," Cernan tells Capcomm Bob Parker. "I haven't done everything there is to do in the Navy, but deploying that flag has gotta be the most proud thing I'll ever do in my life."
Disc Three
During the closeout of EVA 1, Cernan is startled by something landing near the rover and LM. He wonders aloud if he and Schmitt have been witness to a lunar meteor strike, when in fact, the debris (visible at the top of the screen as it flies by) is from the bursting of a piece of styrofoam on the rover's antenna. As with the flag raising, the sentiment in Cernan's voice is evident. He's clearly surprised by what had just happened, certainly not panicked, just surprised.
Here's something I had never seen before: At Station 2 of EVA 2, Cernan brushes the rover's camera lens. As he does, he lifts his visor, leaving his face clearly visible. The picture is so clear, you can see his lips moving as he speaks. It's a picture vastly improved from the grainy, ghostly images of the historic Apollo 11 EVA.
Also at Station 2, EVA 2, it's hard to tell if Schmitt is grumpy or just matter-of-fact when he tells Cernan flatly that mission control can't appreciate the grade of slope they're trying to negotiate, so it'll be up to them to rely the information back to Earth. Throughout the three EVAs, it's evident geologist Schmitt wasn't about to waste any of his time on the lunar surface. His descriptions of what he sees are a near-constant barrage back to Earth and mission control. Don't get lost in the terminology. Remember that you're watching two explorers, a long, long way from home.
Disc Four
Schmitt's not-so-graceful fall at Station 3, EVA 2 puts into perspective just how physical he and Cernan were about their work. They've knelt in the lunar soil, they've jumped, they've pushed, pulled and tugged to get things right. Parker calling Schmitt "Twinkletoes" and telling him that NASA has received a call from the Houston ballet are great examples of adding a bit of levity to the situation.
When Schmitt discovers orange soil at Shorty Crater (Station 4, EVA 2), the excitement in his and Cernan's voice is palpable. However, just how hurried they were becomes all too clear when Parker's first response to the discovery is, "Copy that, but I guess we'd better work fast."
Disc Five
At Station 8, EVA 3, Schmitt "skis" downhill, making the sounds of skis against snow as he goes. My first thought? These were guys who, while working harder than they ever had, were having the times of their lives.
Finally, Cernan makes his well-known farewell speech before climbing up Challenger's ladder. Having already parked the rover a good distance from the LM, so as to get a good picture of its lift-off from the surface, Cernan is not visible as he speaks. However, his words come across as open and honest. Watch this segment, and it's hard not to feel some sort of emotion yourself. There's pride in the accomplishment of having made it there. There's sadness in not having went back. There's anger that the effort seems to have been "abandoned in place." If NASA had continued on the track of Apollo, what new frontiers would we be exploring today?
Disc Six
During the in-flight press conference, a small American flag and Beta cloth crew patch in a vacuum-sealed bag has been placed between the astronauts. The collector in me immediately perked up. "Darn, those things would look mighty good framed and hanging on my wall," I thought, paying not the least bit of attention to the press conference.
The video during recovery seems to have been shot just yesterday. The helicopter comes in for a landing on the Ticonderoga, and it looks clear as a bell. However, the segment switches back and forth between video and murkier, older-looking film. Go/No Go: Go. Apollo 17, the mission, was arguably the most successful of the Moon voyages, and Apollo 17, the DVD set, is the most complete record of a mission in the Spacecraft Films catalog.
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Fox News anchor Heather Childers is on Twitter, and she’s merrily tweeting links to a bugeyed crazy far right website called “Godfather Politics,” asking the question:
Thoughts? Did Obama Campaign Threaten Chelsea Clinton’s Life 2 Keep Parents Silent? Godfather Politics: godfatherpolitics.com/4506/obama-cam… via @AddThis — Heather Childers (@HeatherChilders) April 3, 2012
Your eyes are not deceiving you, this is an actual Fox News “journalist” asking whether President Obama threatened to kill Chelsea Clinton.
And that’s not all. She followed up with another tweet from the same batshit loony website:
Thoughts??? Supreme Court: Authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate “cause for concern” shar.es/pLIQJ — Heather Childers (@HeatherChilders) April 3, 2012
Yes, it’s true! She just wants your thoughts about whether President Obama faked his birth certificate.
My reply:
Ms Childers is now feeling very persecuted. All she wanted was to have a nice, pleasant conversation about President Obama, the impostor who threatens to kill children.
Name calling… nice. Nice conversation folks. Does anyone have an actual point to make? wow so many VERY angry people. — Heather Childers (@HeatherChilders) April 3, 2012
Also seeIf the last decade of video game technology has shown one thing, it is the rise and seemingly unlimited potential of the digital marketplace. While the term may be often tied to the success of Xbox Live and PSN, PC gamers know that the invention doesn’t lie with home consoles. Digital sales have been present on PC for years, and one company has been leading the charge since the beginning: Valve.
The video game developer has grown its PC client Steam into a force to be reckoned with, slowly but surely leading the market forward, and accruing more than half of all digital sales along the way. In case any out there had yet to realize just how dominant Steam is in the marketplace, a handy new infographic should make things clear.
Valve and its President Gabe Newell have already become significant to more than just PC gamers, with Forbes magazine declaring them ‘names to know.’ The fact that the studio behind the Half-Life and Portal franchises – two of the most critically acclaimed series in game history – is seen as a force in the industry without any reference to their own games speaks volumes. Steam may have been an interesting experiment so many years ago, but with records being broken every year in sales and users, its momentum isn’t slowing one bit.
EA has recently upped their game with the introduction and integration of their own Origin service, muscling their way into the digital PC sales by force alone. Newell welcomes the competition, but this infographic from VideoGameDesignSchools shows that any challenger will have to put the world’s leading companies to shame if they hope of making up ground.
Have a look:
Some statistics contained within the image will likely shock gamers, particularly the fact that video game retailers are taking 70% of a game’s mark-up. Lest we forget, that’s 70% of retail copies on top of the 100% reaped from used copies. When comparing those numbers to the 30% cut that Steam takes from digital sales, it isn’t hard to see why so many developers and publishers have gotten on board.
What seems to be escaping many business analysts and economists is just how many traditionally held beliefs are being challenged and shattered by Steam on a daily basis. Does the fact that Steam sells video games mean that its ability to defy laws of commerce shouldn’t be examined closer?
One of the most interesting aspects of the Steam client is the ability it grants Valve to examine their customers’ hardware and software, granting them a massive amount of exclusive knowledge. That’s just one of the benefits enjoyed by the company that actively avoids the kind of restrictions and barriers to entry that services like Xbox Live put in place. Even so, Valve remains committed to having Xbox Live become more accessible for those who develop and sell video games.
With this dominance of the digital market, and Steam now making its way onto mobile platforms, could we soon see the service leave even the iOS in the dust? And with Valve ready to roll out its ‘Big Picture UI,’ making it possible for users to display their Steam library on HD displays and televisions (and as always, playable with gamepads) could the dominance of Steam be ready to take on the home consoles?
The sky seems to be the limit for Valve, and the unstoppable force of Steam power.
Follow me on Twitter @andrew_dyce.DPA Miss Eastern Germany, Svetlana Tsys, won the Miss Germany contest earlier this year. Eastern Germany is suffering from a lack of young women.
The problem has been well known for years: Ever since the mid-1990s, young Eastern Germans have been fleeing the region due to a lack of economic opportunity, hoping to find jobs in the western part of the country. Some 1.5 million have already left the region -- roughly 10 percent of the population of East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. Even worse, most of those who leave are under 35 and many of them have above average education or training.
But according to a new study released by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, there is another problem that accompanies the migration. Since 1991, more than two-thirds of all those who have left Eastern Germany have been women. The result is that in many towns in the region, there are simply not enough to go around -- some places are missing up to 25 percent of their young women. Even worse, the young men who stay behind are often poorly educated, unemployed and frustrated -- perfect fodder for neo-Nazi groups looking for members.
"In general," the study finds, "right-wing radical parties receive more votes in those areas where the most young women have left."
The reasons behind the mass migration from east to west are primarily economic. Despite some regional improvements, the economy in former East Germany continues to lag far behind that of Western Germany. Unemployment remains persistent and is well over 10 percent for those under 25 years of age. The fact that young women in the region tend to be better educated than the young men means that women have an easier time finding work in the west.
Even worse, the problem is unlikely to improve any time soon, the study finds. Already, Eastern Germany is missing some 100,000 babies that otherwise would have been born in the region had more young women stayed. The brain drain and the lack of offspring further erode the economy.
"In those regions where the economic problems are largest, a new, male-dominated underclass has developed, the members of which are excluded from participation in large parts of the society," the study finds. "Many of them have no job, no education and no partner. It is exactly these difficult conditions that make it more difficult to slow the negative demographic trend or even to reverse it."
The study comes on the heels of a report that right-wing violence rose in Germany in 2006, with many of the neo-Nazi-related incidents occurring in Eastern Germany. Additionally, the neo-Nazi party NPD has seen increasing success at the polls in Eastern German states. In state elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the NPD captured fully 7 |
K Party hierarchy and a close aide to Kim, spent a week in Russia. He delivered a personal letter from Kim to Putin which asked for renewed aid and diplomatic support to keep the United Nations from passing a critical human rights resolution. For the first time, the text of the resolution advocated sending Kim and other DPRK leaders responsible for human rights atrocities to the International Criminal Court.
The Russian government has not resumed economic or military aid, but did help block the human rights sanctions. Moscow has even supported Pyongyang against U.S. allegations that North Korea launched a cyber attack against Sony Pictures for producing The Interview. Russian officials and media joined their North Korean counterparts in denouncing the film’s depiction of a fictional assassination of Kim as needlessly provocative. When he received the new DPRK ambassador to Russia in November, Putin declared that, “A further deepening of political ties and trade and economic cooperation is definitely in the interests of the peoples of both countries and ensuring regional stability and security.” Both governments have discussed plans to reconstruct North Korea’s railroad network and connect it to Russia’s, build a natural gas pipeline and electricity power lines through the Korean Peninsula, and develop North Korea’s potentially extensive mineral riches.
Russia’s latest diplomatic initiative has been to invite Kim to Moscow to take part in the Victory Day celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Germany in World War II. Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said such a would promote “peace on the Korean peninsula, as well as northeast Asia,” and “would be a logical continuation of a recently noticeably activated Russian-North Korean political dialogue [and] would contribute to the implementation of agreements reached by the parties in the economic field.”
By inviting Kim to Moscow, Russia also demonstrates that it retains considerable diplomatic influence despite Western efforts to isolate Russia over Ukraine. Through its engagement with Pyongyang, Moscow also gains leverage with Tokyo, as the Russian and Japanese foreign ministries have launched a wide-ranging dialogue on North Korea-related issues. Moreover, having Kim sit next to Putin will certainly help the Russian state media distract viewers from the likely absence of many Western leaders at the event, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who has already said he will not come. If South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye attends, Putin could even venture his hand at some high-profile personal diplomacy between the Korean leaders.
The Russian government’s recent drive to improve relations with North Korea was not unexpected. Even before the West imposed economic sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s March 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the government had been striving to deepen Russia’s economic ties with Asia by shipping more energy eastward, joining regional institutions, and encouraging more Asian investment in Russia. Since Ukraine, Russians have redoubled their Asian Pivot, though thus far the main surge has occurred almost exclusively with China rather than Japan, South Korea, or the DPRK.
Moscow’s policies towards Korean issues have remained remarkably consistent during the past two decades. Russian policymakers are eager to normalize the security situation on the Korean Peninsula both for its own sake and to realize their own economic ambitions. Moscow’s goals include avoiding another major war on the Korean Peninsula; preventing DPRK provocations from prompting additional countries to obtain nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles; eliminating the DPRK’s nuclear program through positive incentives rather than punishments; encouraging all parties to fulfill their commitments; building transportation and energy corridors through the Korean Peninsula; and enhancing Moscow’s diplomatic presence in East Asia.
Still, at the end of the day, Russian strategists consider a nuclear-armed DPRK as only an indirect threat, since they do not see any reason why North Korea would attack Russia. Therefore, Russia is unwilling to incur major risks to force the North Koreans to renounce their nuclear weapons ambitions. Russian officials oppose strong sanctions that could precipitate North Korea’s collapse into a failed state. They seek to change Pyongyang’s behavior, but not its regime. Russia remains more concerned about the economic and security consequences of the DPRK’s collapse for Russia than Pyongyang’s intransigence and provocations.
Moscow’s ability to pursue its goals is constrained by its limited influence in the Koreas and the rest of East Asia. Russian officials constantly fear being shunted aside in the Korean peace and security dialogue, despite what they see as Moscow’s obvious interest in the results. Russian policymakers strive to maintain a high-profile in regional diplomatic efforts, including Moscow’s central role in the Six-Party Talks – a framework that, like the United Nations, substantiates Moscow’s claims to great power status in negotiating East Asian security issues. Russian policymakers have also sought – rather unsuccessfully over the past decade – to mediate Korean security disputes by playing up their country’s good relations with both Koreas.
Russian and U.S. leaders have cited their cooperation in managing the North Korean nuclear dispute as evidence that, despite their many differences, the two governments can continue to work together in solving important international security issues. But Russian government representatives have faulted the United States for impeding a resumption of the Six-Party Talks: “If the American side takes adequate steps and makes the effort, not just claims, to North Korea to meet one-sided requirements, we will definitely welcome it,” an anonymous Russian Foreign Ministry official told the media.
The DPRK has many minerals and other natural resources, but what Russian entrepreneurs most value about North Korea is its pivotal location between Russia and East Asia. They want to make the DPRK a transit country for Russian energy and economic exports to South Korea and other Asia-Pacific countries. Russian planners aspire to construct energy pipelines between Russia and South Korea across North Korean territory. They have also discussed building a trans-Korean railroad and linking it with Russia’s Trans-Siberian rail system. If realized, the new rail line would allow the shipment of goods between Europe and Korea to proceed three times faster than through the Suez Canal. Russians have also sought to use the DPRK’s ice free ports which, unlike Vladivostok, are accessible year-round. In addition to the economic benefits, Russian policymakers say that these projects would contribute to regional peace and security. However, the DPRK’s continuing alienation from the international community has severely slowed the progress of transnational projects involving its territory.
To jump-start these projects, in the first half of 2014 the Russian parliament and president approved the 2012 agreement to write off 90 percent of the DPRK’s $10.94 billion Soviet-era debt (valued as of September 2012). Russia agreed to allow North Korea to repay the remaining $1.09 billion in semiannual installments over the next twenty years, and use these payments to fund bilateral economic infrastructure projects.
Moreover, the Russian-DPRK joint venture to develop the Rajin port has so far completed the modernization of a pier and built a 34-mile railway connecting the facility to the Russian border. This project to develop a transshipment center for northeast Asia continues to attract interest among South Korean businesses, with the South Korean government even granting a waiver from the economic sanctions that were adopted after the 2010 provocations. Moreover, Russian energy officials and firms are evaluating various plans to transmit electricity from the Russian Far East to North or South Korea. The Russian and DPRK governments are pondering a megaproject in which Russia would spend $25 billion over 20 years to modernize North Korea’s dilapidated 3,000-km rail network in return for privileged access to North Korea’s mineral resources, whose value might exceed that cost by several orders of magnitude.
The prospects for Russian-DPRK military cooperation are less clear. In November, the vice chief of the DPRK’s Army General Staff, No Kwang-choi, travelled to Moscow with a North Korean leadership team. According to the Korean Central News Agency, No met with his Russian counterpart and, “Both sides had a wide-ranging exchange of views on putting the friendship and cooperation between the armies of the two countries on a new higher stage.” Last week, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said that the Russian and North Korean militaries would hold joint drills later this year.
The DPRK is especially eager to acquire new Russian warplanes to replace its aging Soviet-era planes. The North Koreans have reportedly notified Moscow that they want to obtain Russia’s top-of-the-line Su-35, but they might settle for Russian help in sustaining and modernizing the DPRK’s existing fleet of planes. Although international sanctions limit foreign military sales to North Korea, Russia might be able to provide spare parts under the guise of aiding North Korea’s civilian airliners.
To circumvent the Western sanctions imposed on both their economies, which make it difficult for them to use Western currencies and financial institutions, the Russian and DPRK governments agreed to use rubles for some transactions, thus facilitating the realization of their declared objective of raising two-way trade to $1 billion by 2020. The first ruble-based transaction occurred with agreements reached during the October 2014 meeting of the Russia-DPRK intergovernmental committee on commercial-economic relations..
Actually realizing all of these plans will remain a challenge. According to the latest data, Russia-DPRK trade remains low, with the first three quarters of 2014 seeing a slight decline compared to the first nine months in 2013. In contrast, North Korea’s trade dependence on China has reached record levels, with more than 90 percent of DPRK exports going to China in 2013. The volume of DPRK trade and investment with China is many times greater than with Russia. These figures are unlikely to change any time soon given the greater degree of compatibility between the Chinese and North Korean economies and the deep-rooted and long-standing PRC ties with North Korean economic activities.
Moreover, trying to reconstruct the DPRK rail network and build new trans-Korean railroads and pipelines could take decades and cost billions of dollars. The success of these projects would also require an unprecedented period of cooperative relations among the two Koreas and Russia. The same is true of Russian aspirations to establish an enduring commercial presence in Kaesong Industrial Complex or to boost bilateral commerce to $1 billion, some ten times current levels.
Russia could better achieve these goals if it departed from its post-Soviet insistence that all foreign economic intercourse proceed according to market principles and instead returned to the “friendship prices” of the high Soviet era of the 1960s and 1970s. Russian officials have thus far refused to do this.
Other barriers to DPRK-Russian economic exchanges include the limited commercial experience and marketable skills of the North Korean workforce, widespread impoverishment that makes purchasing Russian consumables impossible for most North Korean consumers, and the country’s underdeveloped transportation, energy, and other infrastructure systems.
Most likely, Russia will use any renewed commercial presence in the DPRK less as a revenue source and more as a foundation to expand Russia’s economic ties with more valuable East Asian partners. Conversely, as in the case with Iran, Russian planners may calculate that they need to establish some kind of robust economic foothold now, in case North Korea should later reconcile with the West and embrace South Korea, Japan, and other new economic partners.
In terms of the broader implications of the recent Russia-DPRK reconciliation, Moscow might gain more influence in the stalled Six-Party Talks and thus push to resume negotiations or alternatively play a spoiler role and punish the United States and Japan for imposing sanctions on Russia. Indeed, Russian government officials have recently warned that they might break with Washington on the nuclear talks regarding North Korea and Iran due to U.S. sanctions. While Moscow has thus far eschewed such disruptive actions, the tensions between Russia and the U.S. over Ukraine and other issues have likely already made Pyongyang bolder in resisting its nuclear disarmament.
Although it is unlikely that anything Russia, China, or any other country does regarding North Korea will induce this regime to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions, international pressure by Russia and other countries seems to have discouraged more nuclear or long-range ballistic missile tests since 2013. With Kim expecting to visit Moscow in May, the DPRK is less likely to conduct another nuclear test or additional provocations before then. Afterwards, he would have to weigh a potential loss of his new Russian ties when contemplating future disruptive steps.
Given the race to see which happens first – the DPRK develops a credible nuclear deterrent and when the regime in Pyongyang collapses from its own internal contradictions – the Russian-DPRK reconciliation could help keep the situation from getting worse while we await a more enduring solution to the Pyongyang problem.Courtesy of Biharphoto/Prashant Ravi
India’s caste system, in which people are born into a certain group, is now asserting itself even before birth as more couples in rural areas turn to sperm donors as treatment for infertility.
In Patna, the capital of Bihar, one of the most populous states, Dr. Himanshu Roy runs a popular fertility clinic that also has a sperm bank for patients. In the huge hall that leads to his office, a poster of “Vicky Donor,” a recent Bollywood comedy about a sperm donor, greets the crowds of hopeful couples.
Dr. Roy said the demand in Bihar for sperm donations in recent years has outstripped supply as more rural couples shed their social inhibitions to visit clinics like his. “And, yes, the film ‘Vicky Donor’ too has played its part,” he said.
Naturally, couples using donated sperm want to know all they can about the donor. In many parts of the world, that would include where a donor went to school, his medical history or what kind of job he had. In Bihar, couples’ primary concern is caste, doctors said.
Courtesy of Biharphoto/Prashant Ravi
“Sometimes, before asking about the culture, health, physical features, even religion, they ask about caste of the donor, and it becomes very difficult not to satisfy them,” said Dr. Saurabh Kumar, who runs Frozen Cell, another sperm bank in Patna. He reveals the donor’s caste if patients ask.
A gynecologist who runs a fertility center in the adjoining district of Muzaffarpur said that patients can get “fanatical” about knowing the caste of the donor.
“It’s almost like tubes in our sperm banks are labeled with ‘Brahmin,’ Bhumihar,’ ‘Yadav,’ ‘Rajput’ and several other caste stickers,” said the doctor, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue. In Bihar, caste plays a large role in society and culture, but many people are reluctant to discuss caste preferences openly out of concern that it would make them appear to be prejudiced.
In a rural state like Bihar, the emphasis on “purity” is driving such inquiries about a sperm donor’s caste, said S.N. Sinha, a sociologist.
“They might think that right caste would ensure the bloodline stays pure,” Mr. Sinha said.
About 40 of Frozen Cell’s donors come from Patna, said Dr. Kumar. “Most of them are college-going students living in hostels or lodges,” he said.
His clinic pays 300 to 500 rupees ($5.40 to $9) each time men donate. “The payment depends on the quality of their sperm,” Dr. Kumar said.“Usually, they donate for buying cellphone recharge coupons or to buy petrol in their bikes,” he said. “But they’re very particular about their anonymity.”
One Frozen Cell sperm donor, a university student who asked to remain anonymous because he doesn’t want anyone to know he donates, said he receives 500 rupees each time he visits the sperm bank. “It supports me financially,” he said. “I donate every week. It is as normal as a blood donation.”
He has persuaded two of his young friends to donate as well, he said.
“Initially, when I told them, they laughed at me, but when I convinced them about its benefits they readily agreed, and since then they too have become regulars,” he said.
Another sperm donor, a 25-year-old bank employee, who also asked not to be identified, said, “First I did it for fun, but now I do it for money.”
“Invest koi nahi hai; profit hi profit hai,” he said, quoting a line from “Vicky Donor” that translates to “there is no investment, only profit.”
That movie did more to raise the profile of sperm donation in Bihar than anything else, said Dr. Kumar.
“The supply of sperm in my bank has increased by 25 percent after the movie ‘Vicky Donor,’ but we still need more Vicky Aroras in Bihar,” he said, referring to the leading character of the film.
The Bihar-based writer is an assistant editor for The Pioneer. He has also reported for BBC online and worked for Outlook magazine for five years.The Swiss government has ordered a freeze on all funds held by Tunisia's ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Micheline Calmy-Rey, the country's foreign minister has announced.
At the same time, prosecutors in Tunisia opened an inquiry into the assets of Ben Ali and his extended family, the official TAP news agency reported.
The Tunisian inquiry will reportedly look into possible illegal financial transactions, foreign bank accounts and real estate held by Ben Ali, his wife Leila Trabelsi and other relatives.
Meanwhile, the last political prisoner has been released from jail, a move promised by the so-called "government of national unity."
Wednesday's move by the Swiss government was announced at a cabinet meeting following domestic political pressure as well as legal action taken by Tunisian exiles in Switzerland this week.
"The government decided at its meeting today to freeze any funds in Switzerland of the ex-Tunisian president and his entourage with immediate effect," Calmy-Reys, who currently also holds the rotating Swiss presidency, said.
"Switzerland wants to avoid our financial centre being used to hide funds illegally taken from the populations concerned," she added.
Calmy-Reys said the move was aimed at both preventing any assets that might be in Switzerland from being withdrawn, and ensuring that Tunisia's new authorities would be able to retrieve illicitly taken public assets.
More deaths
Protesters are out on the streets of Tunisia once again demanding the ousted president be brought back to stand trial on corruption charges.
Reporting from the capital, Al Jazeera's James Bays said the political situation is in crisis. Ministers postponed Wednesday's cabinet meeting, which will now take place some time on Thursday.
Al Jazeera's in depth coverage of the crisis
Tunisians say they will continue to protest until symbols of the old regime have disappeared from the political scene.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said on Wednesday that her office received information on more than 100 deaths during the country's recent turmoil.
"My office has received information concerning more than 100 deaths over the last five weeks as a result of live fire, as well as protest suicides and the deadly prison riots at the weekend," Pillay said at a news conference in Geneva.
'Work in progress'
Meanwhile, Gordon Gray, the US ambassador to Tunisia, called the popular uprising in the country a "work in progress" and a "new phenomenon".
Speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday in his first public remarks since a month of protests ended with the overthrow of longtime president Ben Ali, Gray called for "responsibility" on both sides.
"I think what we have in Tunisia is a situation where... this democratic expression is a work in progress," he said. "And it's a new phenomenon and it's something that people are doing without very much experience."
"This democratic expression is a work in progress... it's a new phenomenon and it's something that people are doing without very much experience" Gordon Gray,
US ambassador to Tunisia
Gray called the protests "a constitutional right that we cherish and we engage in," but said that demonstrators had to voice their disagreements in a peaceful manner, and security forces should also act with responsibility.
For now, Tunisia's "work in progress" seems nearly dead on arrival. On Wednesday, the opposition Democratic Forum for Labour and Unity (FDLT) party announced its refusal to rejoin the fracturing "unity" government and called for the former ruling party of Ben Ali to dissolve.
On Tuesday, a day after Mohamed Ghannouchi, the prime minister, announced the makeup of the first post-Ben Ali cabinet, the FDLT withdrew three of its ministers. A fourth, party leader Mostapha Ben Jaafar, said he would "suspend" his role as minister of health.
Cracks within ruling party
The resignations were not the only bump in the road; also on Tuesday, Ghannouchi and Fouad Mebazaa, the interim president, both resigned from Ben Ali's RCD in an effort to appease the opposition.
Ghannouchi and Mebazaa were forced into the move after the opposition ministers refused to sit in a cabinet that contained eight high-ranking members of Ben Ali's government, which many Tunisians see as corrupt.
The government has been in a state of limbo since the resignations on Tuesday.
The opposition Ettajdid party said it will also pull out of the coalition if ministers from Ben Ali's RCD do not give up party membership and return to the state all properties they obtained through the RCD, state television said.
Ghannouchi, who has been prime minister since 1999, said that ministers from Ben Ali's party were included in the new government "because we need them in this phase."While a formal date hasn’t been set, UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones expects to return to the octagon in March.
Jones (19-1 MMA, 13-1 UFC) was briefly slated to make his seventh 205-pound title defense against Glover Teixeira (22-2 MMA, 5-0 UFC) in February, and despite separate announcements saying he would headline UFC 169 and then UFC 170, “Bones” said he’s simply not healthy enough for either card.
“The reason why I didn’t take the fight [in February] is because I don’t feel my body is ready for a training camp,” Jones told MMAjunkie. “I wanted to be there for the fans, I wanted to be there for the UFC, but in order for me to do that, I need to listen to my body and come prepared to compete, and that’s being healthy.”
Although Jones’ most recent fight, a narrow decision win over Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 165, took place in September, he’s still feeling the effects of the grueling contest.
Gustafsson pushed the champion to his absolute limit for five hard rounds, and even though he won, Jones came out of the fight far from unscathed.
The 26-year-old suffered a large laceration above his right eye early in the fight with “The Mauler,” and he also aggravated the toe injury he gruesomely suffered against Chael Sonnen at UFC 159 earlier this year.
Several months later, those injuries are still lingering for the champion, which is why he didn’t feel comfortable accepting a fight at either February event.
“My eye is definitely not ready to be punched,” Jones said. “I’m afraid that it could reopen, which would make scarring terrible and prolong the whole thing even more. My foot is definitely not ready to go yet. I wake up to step off the bed, and it’s cracking and crackling and stuff. I’m just not ready for the training camp.”
Beyond his physical inability to start a proper training camp, Jones said a February fight date also conflicted with his personal schedule.
Several of Jones’ recent bouts have been scheduled around the holidays. While the champ said he has no problem giving up the hearty foods that come along with the Christmas season, he relished the rare chance to spend time with his family – without the stress of training for an upcoming fight.
“I’ve spent the last three Christmases in Albuquerque, and I really want to just be with my family back in New York state and let my kids see Christmas the way it’s supposed to be,” Jones said. “That’s a big reason why I kind of delayed that next fight until March.”
While the date for Jones’ next fight isn’t set, his opponent has remained the same. Teixeira became the top contender in the light heavyweight division with a first-round knockout of Ryan Bader this year in Brazil.
While Jones has taken on a murderers row of challengers since attaining UFC gold, he views Teixeira as one of the most threatening, which is exactly why he wants to be completely healthy when the fight ultimately takes place.
“He’s just an amazing athlete,” Jones said. “(He’s) a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, one of the best boxers I’ve ever faced, probably has the most knockout power I’ve ever gone against. It’s just a big match. He’s a big, scary, intimidating dude, and when I fight these guys, it brings out the best in me.”Digital art is everywhere! With more and more devices being developed, and with the advancement of software used to create digital art, coming up with unique artworks using modern tools has become much easier. There are tablets specifically made for digital art creation and gone are the days when you would have to use just your mouse and crude brushes to create the effect you want. Today, there are more advanced tools like digital pens and even software which allows you to create realistic and more texturized brush strokes.
I really like how digital art looks more real by having genuine-looking brush strokes. The texture and depth they add to the artwork makes the piece look more like what you would get when using an actual brush – far from monotonous and obviously computerized, if you know what I mean. Brush strokes make digital art seem more natural, and having a variety of brush strokes to choose from can be highly beneficial when you’re a digital artist.
If you use Adobe Illustrator for your digital art creation and would like to have varied brush strokes, you’re in luck because there are tons of free brushes you can download online. I’ve browsed many different sources and collected the ones which I think will give your artwork more life. From creative to more traditional-looking strokes, I have come up with a collection of Adobe Illustrator brushes that will give you access to about 1,136 different strokes!
If you feel as if your art is looking like a repeat of what you have previously done, add a new twist to it by using these fresh brushes. Make them a part of your artistic arsenal and see the difference they can make to your digital illustrations. Enjoy these modern, abstract, creative, and traditional brush strokes for your new artwork and digital creations:
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DownloadRemember when bitcoin was going to disrupt the world’s banking system? That was two years ago and, while new payment platforms like Venmo and Apple Pay have gained traction, virtual currencies now feel more like a fad than a phenomenon.
At least that’s the view of Felix Salmon, a financial blogger and early bitcoin skeptic, who did his best to dump cold water on a room of alt-currency enthusiasts gathered Monday at a Bloomberg event titled “Bitcoin: Beyond the Currency” in New York City.
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“This is pure Silicon Valley utopianism,” said Salmon, suggesting that bitcoin backers are blinded by “solutionism” and adding that investors who embrace the currency are no more rational than goldbugs.
Salmon also pointed out that, as a five-year-old technology, bitcoin has grown long in the tooth even as it fails to make inroads among ordinary consumers.
“I don’t think it’s going to zero [dollars], but it will always be currency of the future,” said Salmon, who also took shots at the motives of Barry Silbert, a large investor in bitcoin who acted as Salmon’s opponent in an occasionally salty debate over bitcoin’s future.
Silbert, meanwhile, got in a few licks of his own, telling the purple-suited Salmon that he may have wit and style, but that Silbert had the facts on his side.
So who was right? As someone who has written about bitcoin for two years and shared some of the fascination over a new borderless money system, I found that Salmon made the stronger points.
Even though he hammed up his stage role, Salmon drove home some obvious truths: bitcoin remains too complex for the average person to understand, let alone use; the global banking system is indeed broken but that doesn’t mean bitcoin is the solution; bitcoin is not — and never will be — relevant for “normal” people.
He did, however, acknowledge that virtual currencies have attracted an incredible amount of “intellectual capacity” and that the repositories of GitHub are now filled with an “open source technology that will be incredibly robust and that people will build on top of it” — but that such building should be directed at existing currencies, not virtual ones.
Salmon’s suggestion is also consistent with others who think the public ledger “blockchain” function at the core of bitcoin, which allows strangers to verify if a transaction has taken place, has a promising future. (Indeed, this week a high-profile group of tech figures made a $21 million bet that the blockchain will disrupt the work of trustees, notaries and other record keepers).
Overall, Salmon’s skepticism appeared to win him few friends in a room of bitcoin believers (my elevator ride down was full of people denouncing him), but at a time when Apple Pay is ascendant, it’s hard to see how virtual currencies fit in the mix.SEAN Maitland has left London Irish to join Saracens for next season.
The 27-year-old Scotland international will make the switch to the reigning Aviva Premiership champions and European Cup holders following Irish's relegation from the top flight.
Maitland spent only one year with the Exiles having joined from Glasgow Warriors in 2015.
He made 17 appearances for London Irish last season, but was ultimately unable to help keep them up.
Exiles have lost a host of players since their relegation was confirmed.
Prop Halani Aulika has moved to Sale, while Andrew Fenby, Geoff Cross and Tom Guest have all retired.
Bath are showing interest in Irish forward Blair Cowan, who also plays for Scotland, while New Zealand forward, Ben Franks, is expected to move to a Premiership club before the new season starts.
London Irish head of rugby operation, Glenn Delaney, said: “The club has agreed with Saracens that Sean can join them at the end of this season.
"We wish him well and thank him for all his efforts both on and off the pitch.
“We have a number of signings that have committed their future to London Irish for next season.
"We will continue to strengthen the squad ahead of the 2016-17 season as we aim to compete effectively in the Championship and to make an immediate return to the Aviva Premiership.”Use the Red Bull TV Live Stream schedule to start planning who you’ll watch and listen to this weekend at EDC Las Vegas 2017!
The Red Bull TV Live Stream schedule for EDC Las Vegas 2017 has been released! Each year, Insomniac Events gives headliners from all over the world a chance to experience moments from their biggest event, EDC Las Vegas, via a digital live stream. Partnering up with Red Bull Media to provide the stream around the world on Red Bull TV, the magic of EDC Las Vegas will be seen by many this year. The new partnership will allow for millions of people to tune in and check out some epic sets, artist interviews, and special features that showcase what EDC Las Vegas is all about.
The Red Bull TV Live Stream of EDC Las Vegas will take place throughout June 16-18, and feature over 110 artists that will be taking the stage over the weekend. These will include stunning sets from artists like Above & Beyond, Excision, Firebeatz, RL Grime, and REZZ, while you can even catch some of the jaw-dropping b2b sets from Alison Wonderland b2b Diplo b2b JAUZ. Check out our suggestions of artists you should tune into for House/Techno, Hardstyle, Trance, Drum & Bass, and more!
Watch the festival online from your computer at Redbull.tv/EDC or on YouTube or on any connected device using the Red Bull TV APP including iPhone, Android, Xbox and Playstation.
Join us on Discord to chat with other ravers while watching the live stream here.
EDC Las Vegas 2017 Live Stream Schedule:
FRIDAY, JUNE 16
8:45 p.m. – Will Sparks
9:15 p.m. – Nucleya
9:30 p.m. – San Holo
9:50 p.m. – Don Diablo
10:13 p.m. – GTA
10:40 p.m. – Cristoph
11:10 p.m. – Ghastly
11:30 p.m. – RL Grime
12:00 a.m. – John Askew
12:15 a.m. – Illenium
12:45 a.m. – Jauz
1:20 a.m. – Major Lazer
1:45 a.m. – Nicole Moudaber b2b Chris Liebing
2:15 a.m. – Astrix
2:30 a.m. – Galantis
3:06 a.m. – Afrojack
3:30 a.m. – NGHTMRE
3:50 a.m. – Simon Patterson
4:10 a.m. – Audien b2b 3LAU
4:25 a.m. – Slushii
4:40 a.m. – Andrew Rayel
5:00 a.m. – Gryffin
5:15 a.m. – Trippy Turtle
SATURDAY, JUNE 17
8:45 p.m. – Autograf
9:00 p.m. – Jonas Blue
9:30 p.m. – Laidback Luke
9:45 p.m. – Wilkinson
10:00 p.m. – Louis The Child
10:15 p.m. – Tommy Trash
10:45 p.m. – Chase & Status
11:00 p.m. – Rüfüs Du Sol
11:15 p.m. – Sander van Doorn Presents Purple Haze
11:30 p.m. – Duke Dumont
11:45 p.m. – Boombox Cartel
12:00 a.m. – Tïesto
12:30 a.m. – Alesso
12:45 a.m. – Valentino Khan
1:05 a.m. – Cut Snake
1:30 a.m. – Snails
1:45 a.m. – Dillon Francis
2:00 a.m. – Above & Beyond
2:30 a.m. – Alison Wonderland
2:45 a.m. – Datsik
3:00 a.m. – W&W
3:15 a.m. – Mr. Carmack
3:30 a.m. – Dirtyphonics
3:45 a.m. – Oliver Heldens
4:00 a.m. – Cosmic Gate
4:15 a.m. – Martin Solveig
4:30 a.m. – Mija
4:45 a.m. – Kungs
5:15 a.m. – Virtual Riot b2b Barely Alive b2b Dubloadz
SUNDAY, JUNE 18
8:30 p.m. – K?D
8:50 p.m. – Baggi
9:00 p.m. – Firebeatz
9:20 p.m. – Black Tiger Sex Machine
9:40 p.m. – Gammer
9:50 p.m. – Getter
10:10 p.m. – Slander
10:40 p.m. – REZZ
11:00 p.m. – Wildstylez
11:15 p.m. – Gramatik
11:40 p.m. – Showtek
12:40 a.m. – Coone
12:55 a.m. – Marshmello
1:15 a.m. – Seven Lions
1:45 a.m. – Yellow Claw
2:00 a.m. – Axwell^Ingrosso
2:15 a.m. – Alison Wonderland b2b Diplo b2b Jauz
2:30 a.m. – Da Tweekaz
2:45 a.m. – Ookay
3:00 a.m. – Excision
3:45 a.m. – The Prophet
4:00 a.m. – Ephwurd
4:15 a.m. – Billy Kenny
4:40 a.m. – Vini Vici
4:55 a.m. – Miss K8
About Red Bull TV:
Red Bull TV is global entertainment for viewers seeking inspiration. Enjoy exclusive access to live sports events, the world’s top music festivals, authentic films and original series. From June – October, Red Bull TV presents livestream coverage of the world’s most celebrated music festivals, including Primavera Sound (Barcelona/Spain), Demon Dayz (Margate/UK), Electric Daisy Carnival (Las Vegas, Nevada/US), Roskilde (Roskilde/Denmark), Montreux Jazz Festival (Montreux/Switzerland), Lollapalooza (Chicago, Illinois/US) and Austin City Limits Music Festival (Austin, Texas/US). Access festival broadcast at redbull.tv/Festivals. @RedBullTV on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat & Twitter.
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Featured Photo Credit: Insomniac EventsThe First World War
The reasons for the First World War are complicated and have been fiercely debated by historians. In the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, Blackadder, Baldrick and George discuss why the war started and, in its essence, they do perfectly summarise the causes.
Baldrick: I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry.
Edmund: I think you mean it started when the Archduke of Austro-Hungary got shot.
Baldrick: Nah, there was definitely an ostrich involved, sir.
Edmund: Well, possibly. But the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to have a war.
George: By Golly, this is interesting; I always loved history...
Edmund: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way there could never be a war.
But of course, there was…
At the turn of the twentieth century, several treaties and agreements were in place between a variety of countries. As Blackadder points out, these treaties and agreements led to two blocs forming in Europe. The Central Powers - Germany and Austria |
supporters worldwide. The research firm Kantar, in their study last year found that for every 5 people all over the world, United have at least one fan. Roughly 325m live in the Asia Pacific region, 173m are from the Middle East and Africa, 90m are in Europe and 71m in the Americas.
Liverpool’s estimate is hard to find, in a recent Talksport survey it estimated our global fan-base at 77m, and United at 337m, however this was with a sample size of 1000. Kantars survey was based on 54,000 people therefore this study is clearly more accurate. So considering the bigger sample, you could legitimately double the estimate which would take us to 154m worldwide. That’s enough to fill Anfield a staggering three and a half thousand times over.
With Liverpool Vs Man United being broadcast to over 221 countries around the world, 5 times that of AC Milian and Internazionale, even Real Madrid vs Barcelona, the reach of the premier league is massive with the two most successful clubs in English football having a huge appeal. Surprisingly Arsenal have a larger fanbase estimated between 113m, to 326m depending on the sources you believe, however Rangers and Celtic have more people watching them than Arsenal do.
4.7bn people watch the Premier League every year. The commercial opportunity to capitalise is huge. Why do you think Manchester City’s away kits actually represent AC Milan and Internazionale? The reason is because they want people to associate City with the giants that are the two great Italian clubs. They knew that even though they were Champions, Liverpool and United both had trophy cabinets and global fan ratings that they could only dream of. So that had to do the old marketing trick, get people to associate with something familiar and enough people will surely buy it.
That’s why Swansea City have turned to white and gold this season in order for the little known Welsh side to capitalise on their new audience which is the Premier League loving billions all across the world. Their current strip is meant to associate people with the giants that are real Madrid. This gives the little side from Swansea a new commercial opportunity that 2 years ago would have been sheer fantasy back in their leisure centre training ground compete with badminton court etchings and basketball nets. It’s a far cry from the Black and White Tartan waistcoat & scarf they had Brendan Rodgers and Joe Allen model in 2011.
Yet Liverpool already has a massive fan-base both at home and abroad. The lack of success in recent times has hurt the club financially, but it’s only served to stunt the rapid rise of the fan-base throughout the world rather than see it decline. They have a massive opportunity commercially to reach out to the developing world in new ways and they’ll take it. Why? So they can add new lines of revenue and in order to attract the top sponsorship/strip deals to enable transfers, new stadiums and the best budgets to run the club.
In my view, these new strips are designed for just that. They’re designed to appeal to Asian markets and a new breed of premier league loving fans. Barcelona have also done the same thing with their away kit this year, and why not? Barcelona knows that whilst La Liga is massive, the premier league has a far greater cut through and audience due a much more successful marketing strategy over the last 20+ years. Barca are all about building a sustainable business, look at their academy success in bringing world class players through. That’s not luck, that’s planning. They also know that they wont win the Champions League every year, therefore despite being the awesome side they are, they have to keep interest in the Barca brand alive and kicking. They know Asia is the very hotbed of football fan growth.
Liverpool in all fairness has never hidden the fact that they want to expand their global appeal. Twitter accounts across all the world and new websites launched is part one of the plan according to Paul Rodgers, LFC’s Head of International Development. They want Liverpool to become the largest followed side online and this year achieved that aim. That’s phase one, phase 2 is clearly more than that. Phase 2 is where the serious money is made.
Well that’s great I hear you say, what’s the issue? Well, the issue is that in doing all that you forget what makes Liverpool a little bit different. The Kop!
The Kop is flown all over the world on laptops, commercial brochures, powerpoint presentations and endlessly talked about by the clubs senior staff and rightly so. The Kop is probably as famous and the club itself. It’s a product the club sell to would be investors and it’s one hell of a product.
Yet with ever increasing ticket prices, many people now fear the Kop will become a bit like the centenary stand. You’d have to be crazy if you haven’t felt the difference in atmosphere at Anfield in the last few years. The singing is occasional, the flags, smoke bombs, and the wildness replaced by middle class calm and corporate hospitality. Ticket prices are ever increasing and the people who made the Kop what it is can either no longer afford to go, or each year finding it difficult to really justify the amount paid week in and out for a place on the hallowed turf.
Andy Heaton made a great point on The Anfield Wrap last week around this very point, he said ‘it’s like they’re destroying the very thing the club wants to sell’. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Liverpool will no doubt deny this, and they’ll point to focus groups and research they’ve done to show how wonderful a concept Warrior have designed. Yet it’s all just talk.
Alas these are new strips and they’ll be around for a season. Yet with each commercial decision, the club seems to be alienating the very fans that make Liverpool FC what it is, and that would be a tragedy.
Part of the enticement of Liverpool for me is the culture, the people, the music and the brand of football that Shanks made famous. I’ve no issue in trying to appeal to a global audience, but I do have an issue with watching my beloved team walk out looking like Picasso has had a few too many jager bombs before the game and went a bit mad with the strips.
This for me is a departure from the wonderful brand we have as a club. Brands do evolve, but they evolve based on tradition. Let the brand appeal go too far away from the amazing fearsome reds of the past, and we’ll end up looking a bit daft like Deportivo did in 2005-6 with their famouns Da Wanka strips. Alas some idea’s seem good at the time…TOKYO — Tens of thousands of people on the Japanese island of Okinawa gathered on Sunday to demand the removal of American military bases in what organizers said was the largest demonstration against the United States presence there in two decades.
The protest, in Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, was billed as a memorial for a 20-year-old woman who was found dead last month. A United States Marine veteran who was working as a civilian contractor on the island has been arrested in connection with the killing, prompting a public outcry.
Organizers said 65,000 people had attended the protest. That would make it the largest demonstration since 1995, when two American Marines and a Navy sailor were arrested over the rape of a 12-year-old girl, an episode that shook the tight military alliance between the United States and Japan and is still bitterly remembered by many Okinawans.All vegan, all Chicago.
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Please join us; we look forward to seeing you out at some of our many fun events, thanks!HITLER'S DEATH:ÉAMON DE Valera was told that by expressing condolences to the German ambassador on the death of Adolf Hitler, he had “shown allegiance to a devil”, newly declassified papers reveal.
The files also disclose that it was decided not to fly the Irish flag at half-mast at Áras an Uachtaráin in the Phoenix Park, even though a similar gesture had been made on the death of US president Roosevelt three weeks previously.
The Nazi leader shot himself at his bunker in Berlin on April 30th, 1945. Two days later de Valera, who was taoiseach and minister for external affairs, called on ambassador Eduard Hempel to express his condolences.
The gesture aroused immediate controversy. The file in the National Archives contains a number of strident letters sent in the immediate aftermath. Angela D Walsh, with an address at East 44th Street, New York, writes to de Valera the day after: “I am horrified, ashamed, humiliated... You, who are the head of a Catholic country, have now shown allegiance to a devil.”
The writer concludes by saying a copy of the letter was being sent to President Douglas Hyde. On the day the letter was written, Michael McDunphy, secretary to the president, also visited the ambassador to express condolences.
A note by McDunphy states: “After consultation with the government and acting on the authority of the president, I called today on the German minister, Herr Eduard Hempel, at the Legation in Northumberland Road, and on behalf of the president expressed condolence on the death of the Fuehrer and Chancellor of the German Reich.”
In another note, dated May 7th, 1945, McDunphy writes that he raised with the government the issue of whether the Irish flag should be flown at half-mast over the Áras after Hitlers death.
The question arose, “in view of the fact that on the death of President Roosevelt of the USA, the flag was half-masted from the date of his death until after the funeral on the following Sunday”.
The note continues: “The official view was that the special ties of historic friendship which linked Ireland with the USA did not apply to the same extent to Germany, and it appeared therefore that the half-masting of the flag immediately on the announcement of the death was not necessary.
“A decision could be taken later as to whether the flag should be half-masted on the day of Herr Hitler’s funeral. At the moment it did not seem there would be any funeral.”
The episode resurfaced in a letter dated January 22nd, 1970, when de Valera was president. Fr Kevin Keegan, writing from an address in France, said he had been watching a television documentary in which the famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal “said that you went to the German ambassador to express your sympathy when you heard that Hitler had committed suicide”.
The letter continues: “Needless to say I was astounded to hear such a statement. I would be very grateful to you if you inform me whether it is true or not. In the case of it being untrue, I will inform the French Television immediately asking them to make a public rectification.”
Responding, Máirtín Ó Flathartaigh, secretary general to the president wrote that de Valera was “convalescing from a recent illness” and was “not at present dealing with correspondence”.
The letter confirmed, however, that in his capacity as minister for external affairs at the time, de Valera had called on ambassador Hempel on May 2nd, 1945, “following the announcement of the death of the German head of state” and the visit was made “in accordance with established diplomatic practice”.
He continues: “The reference to suicide in your letter is, however, incorrect; no announcement had then been made (or for long afterwards with any degree of certitude) about the circumstances of Hitler’s death. Had there been, both charity and protocol would, no doubt, still have had to be considered.”
The presidential papers also include a report of a letter to the Timesof London two weeks after the incident by playwright George Bernard Shaw, who defends de Valera as “a champion of the Christian chivalry we are all pretending to admire”.Trump threatens that only 'one thing' will work against North Korea
WASHINGTON — President Trump tweeted new storm warnings Saturday, this time aimed at North Korea.
In a pair of late-afternoon tweets, Trump wrote that negotiations with the truculent, isolated nation had backfired, "makings (sic) fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!"
He didn't make clear what that "one thing" is but has been hinting for several days that the time for diplomacy has passed, leaving a military strike as the most likely option.
Trump tweeted Sunday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was "wasting his time" negotiating with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
► Oct. 6: Trump's tease: 'You'll find out' about 'the storm' that may be coming
► Oct. 1: Tillerson wasting time negotiating with 'Little Rocket Man,' Trump says
On Friday, the morning after he met with the nation's top military commanders, Trump spoke in cryptic terms about the "calm before the storm." When asked to clarify, Trump said: "You'll find out."
Later Friday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders declined to clarify what Trump was hinting at.
Pentagon officials have predicted that a military clash on the Korean peninsula would likely result in civilian casualties on an enormous scale.
Follow Tom Vanden Brook on Twitter: @tvandenbrook
Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid...... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017
...hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017
I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2ktJr2WPart One of a four-part series analyzing Cintra’s and NCDOT’s public claims using their own numbers.
A funny thing happens when a company applies for a public loan: they have to make their loan application public. That’s how we discovered Cintra’s toll estimates and traffic projections. You may recall earlier we published a consultant’s estimate. The numbers we present below are Cintra’s own estimates, as well as refinements by the lenders themselves.
C&M performed the traffic and revenue analysis under contract to Cintra. The data below comes from their April 2014 report. Lender financial data comes from the official issuing document for the private activity bonds (PABs) dated May 13, 2015.
Cintra Estimates $17 RT When Toll Lanes Open; $44 by 2035
Toll rates by segment are given in the table below. The report has four time segments- AM, Mid-day (MD), PM, and Nighttime (NT). For simplicity we are reporting only the commuter toll rates, i.e. southbound toll rates in the morning and northbound toll rates in the afternoon.
The study assumes the project will open in 2018, so these are the initial rates once dynamic tolling starts. Note that the total round trip (i.e. from Mooresville to Charlotte) is projected to cost over $15. These are in 2012 dollars; in current year dollars (assuming 2% inflation), the cost would be $17.05. This is very close to the $20 cost that we reported earlier, and as been widely reported.
The Mooresville segments are the most expensive, but not a whole lot of people from there are paying attention, so we’ll focus the following analysis on the rest of LKN.
The table below shows the 2035 projected toll rates.
A round trip in 2035 is expected to cost $28.24 in 2012 dollars. Assuming 2% inflation, round trip tolls in 2035 are projected to cost $44.53, again quite close to what we’ve seen projected elsewhere.
Lender Is More Skeptical
The bond underwriters contracted the consulting firm of Ove Arup & Partners, based out of New York City, to review Cintra’s revenue projections. Arup concluded several of Cintra’s assumptions were overly optimistic. They developed two financial scenarios, called the “Lender’s Base Case” (LBC) and “Lender’s Downside Case” (LDC).
The Lender’s Base Case estimates revenues are 30-40% lower than Cintra’s, and the Lender’s Downside Case is 30- 40% lower than the Base Case. This has enormous implications for the Fair Market Value calculation of the cancellation penalty.
You may recall in an earlier post we mentioned the $300 million penalty that was supposedly “audited” by North Carolina used Cintra‘s revenue estimates. It was really Cintra’s dream scenario. An honest attempt at deriving a number would have used the LBC estimates.
We’ll discuss the implications to the penalty amount, as well as what the financing looks like in Part 2.PragerU — the educational video outfit founded by conservative commentator Dennis Prager in 2011 — is suing YouTube and its parent company Google for unlawful censorship and free speech discrimination.
Prager said in a statement that his company believes the internet giants are trying to squelch "conservative political thought" by restricting access to or demonetizing PragerU videos. (Prager is slated to speak to TheBlaze's Glenn Beck on the radio about this very issue at 11 a.m. EST Wednesday, so be sure to tune in.)
How did this all start?
PragerU CEO Marissa Streit told TheBlaze that college students began contacting PragerU in the summer of 2016 saying they couldn't view some of the outfit's videos on campus browsers.
That's when PragerU discovered that YouTube subjected the videos to "restricted mode" filtering.
Streit said at first YouTube didn't respond to PragerU's information requests — but after a ton of people signed a petition and the issue began hitting the news cycle, YouTube finally started answering.
This summer, she said, YouTube indicated it had reviewed the videos in question and determined they should be restricted as "inappropriate" for younger viewers or demonetized — which means PragerU loses advertising revenue.
The explanations for the decision were vague and included continued referrals to YouTube's community guidelines, which Streit said are so broad that they amount to "we can do whatever we want."
How about an example?
The suit said Google/YouTube told PragerU the videos “Why Isn’t Communism as Hated as Nazism?” and “What’s Holding the Arab World Back?” were placed in Restricted Mode because they purportedly discussed “hate and genocide” and “terrorism and genocide,” respectively.
"No further explanation as to what language constituted an inappropriate discussion of 'hate and genocide' or 'terrorism and genocide' was given," the suit read.
Following rebuff after rebuff, PragerU brought the suit Monday in U.S. District Court, asking for monetary damages and an end to the censorship.
What did YouTube/Google have to say?
Google on Tuesday didn't immediately reply to TheBlaze's request for comment on the matter.
Which PragerU videos have been affected?
PragerU made a list of nearly 40 videos that YouTube restricted — and many of them also have been demonetized, the suit says. The total number of videos that have been restricted or demonetized is about 50, Streit said.
Among the restricted videos are "Why America Must Lead," "The Ten Commandments: Do Not Murder," "Why Did America Fight the Korean War," and "The World's Most Persecuted Minority: Christians."
Of course, less controversial videos like the clip on forgiveness have been left alone, she said:
"It looks like it’s the videos they don’t agree with ideologically," Streit told TheBlaze.
And since PragerU's charter includes a commitment to reach young people with its conservative message, the censorship hurts all the more, she added.
For noted Harvard Law Professor Alan Derschowitz — who spoke on a PragerU video on the legal founding of Israel — the fact that YouTube restricted his clip was unsettling.
Streit recalled getting a phone call from Dershowitz in which he asked, "Does YouTube think our content is pornographic?"
In fact, she said, there's "no profanity, nudity or otherwise inappropriate'mature' content" in PragerU videos, which "fully comply with YouTube's user guidelines."
How has PragerU been impacted?
Streit told TheBlaze it isn't as though PragerU has tens of thousands of videos in its library — there are only about 250, she said.
Therefore when 50 or so are restricted or demonetized — a fifth of its total catalogue — that's a significant portion.
Streit added to TheBlaze that PragerU is in the process of determining how much ad revenue it has lost due to demonetization — but she mentioned a couple of other disturbing revelations found along the way.
She said YouTube "copycats" have taken videos restricted on PragerU's YouTube page, uploaded them on their personal pages — and voila: the videos weren't restricted anymore.
Streit told TheBlaze that means the issue isn't a global algorithm but a concerted effort by YouTube to "specifically" target PragerU videos.
What's more, she said those "copycats" also are making ad money from PragerU clips.
Streit added that new PragerU videos are added Monday mornings and "within an hour they’re restricted."
What does PragerU want?
"As the person who runs this organization, I want fair treatment," Streit said. "I don’t want to be discriminated against.... Our hope is to make a correction that will lead to goodness."
But in the end, the lawsuit isn't about recouping lost ad revenue — it's about taking a stand for freedom of speech and "for America."
"Can you imagine what the wold would look like if Google is allowed to continue to arbitrarily censor ideas they simply don't agree with?" Streit asked.
And right now Google/YouTube is "controlling one of the largest vehicles of information of all time," she told TheBlaze — and their video censorship is "one of the most un-American things you can do."
"We feel like this is an important cause to take on," Streit added, knowing full well that comparatively tiny PragerU taking on behemoths like Google and YouTube is akin to David challenging Goliath.
But she said, "somebody has to fight Goliath."
Here's a look at another restricted PragerU clip:This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 889 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year and our current goal, funding our guest bloggers.
By Robert Ayres, a Professor Emeritus at INSEAD, and Michael Olenick, a research fellow at INSEAD. Originally published at Olen on Economics
The libertarian bible is Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. There are two groups of villains in Rand’s dystopia, looters and moochers. Heroes are producers, who create products and services.
I’ll reserve judgment on my own feelings on the book other than to say it’s a perennial favorite for conservatives. The Library of Congress ranks it as the most influential American book ever written.
Rand’s looters are government officials who rig markets to favor various constituent groups, chief among them existing industries faced with disruptive technology. For example, one of her heroes builds a new type of steel and sells it to the heroine, who runs a railroad. Existing steel companies successfully pressure the government to nationalize the processes and patents “for the common good.”
Rick Perry is Trump’s appointee to the Department of Energy, an agency Perry once vowed to eliminate. Given the excitement in Trump-land many have forgotten about Perry. Sure, Perry is a bona fide idiot but in an administration where somebody called “The Mooch,” discussed, on-the-record, being “cock-blocked” by Trump’s now former Chief of Staff, Perry begins to look almost normal.
But make no mistake, Perry is the typical parasite we’ve come to expect from Trump.
Perry has started a pre-ordained process to subsidize coal and nuclear plant operators, taxing people through artificially high electricity rates to subsidize costly coal and nuclear plants.
What’s the problem with coal and nuclear plants, besides that they’re expensive? Coal pollutes. Badly. Nuclear, when it works well, leaves radioactive waste behind that has a half-life of 24,000 years. When it does not work well, like it didn’t at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, it tends to create ecological disasters.
Besides that the two sources of power have serious environmental problems they’re more expensive than alternative energy sources that do not. The US Energy Information Administration released a report on the various costs of energy, here. Spoiler alert: nuclear power costs a fortune to generate. Coal comes next. Then solar. Then wind. Then natural gas. Hydroelectric is marked “N/A” in 2015 but, in 2013, it was cheaper than coal.
The price of wind declined 25% from 2013 to 2016 and the price of solar declined 67%. Assuming those price declines continue — and with the newfound Chinese enthusiasm for renewables that seems a given — it won’t be long before renewables cost less than any fossil fuel.
For Perry, the former Governor of Texas — who works for a guy that promised to Make Coal Great Again — this is a meltdown (I couldn’t resist).
Perry’s still-in-existence Department of Energy has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to begin the rule-making process to subsidize both the cost and profitsof coal and nuclear plants.
Perry’s puppet-master’s constituents, with their aging nuclear and coal plants, argue that renewable energy from wind and solar is variable so that backup generators are sometimes needed for days with calm winds or cloudy skies.
For now, let’s ignore the rapid pace of battery progress (which I’ll get to later) and take this assumption as true. There is an easy solution: turn on the inexpensive natural gas plants to make up the difference. In fact, right now, that is exactly how things work: energy companies constantly sell backup energy capacity to one another.
But, under Perry’s scheme, companies would be required to purchase a certain amount of this backup energy from fuel plants that store 90-days or more of fuel on-site. Why 90-days? Because it’s completely impractical to store 90-days of natural gas on-site but easy enough to store that much coal and nuclear fuel.
This is an old-school Rand-style looter giveaway from a bunch of self-described “conservatives” trying to rescue a dinosaur industry that’s choking the world.
Just to clarify: Republicans, through Rick Perry, are working to increase electric bills to subsidize and protect coal and nuclear plant owners. Trump and Perry specifically require people to pay not only for plants but guaranteed profits to the owners of filthy old generation technology. Knock knock to objectvists Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, you’ll both be introducing veto-proof legislation to block this, right?
Now let’s return to the subject of standby electrical power generation. Of course it is needed and natural gas works just fine. End of argument. But even natural gas won’t be needed indefinitely.
There is plenty of capacity that either exists or is in the works and renewables are rapidly dropping in price and being installed. Germany, on average, produces 35% of overall electricity from renewables. But much of the remaining 65% is for factories so on weekends, where fewer factories operate, the percentage is even higher. On Sunday, April 30, 2017, Germany produced 85% of electricity used from renewables.
Longer-term, the solution might come from cars. The price of electric cars is dropping quickly. Electric cars are simpler than internal combustion engines and experts agree will last far longer. More to the point, they already have enormous batteries. So cars can be charged from solar, during daylight hours, then used to power houses during evening hours, then be recharged, from wind power, during sleeping hours. Plus, the economies of scale will make batteries, for battery farms and in-home storage, both cheaper and more efficient over time.
There are other systems to store renewable power and one or more will eventually be perfected.
So the US already has plenty of back-up generation from low-cost natural gas and new technologies are likely to add more as they evolve. Perry’s alleged problem isn’t even real and his solution, subsidizing coal and nuclear plants, is a form of pure theft, a transfer from the most deserving, clean renewable and safe plants, to the least deserving, filthy and dangerous ones.
Trump and his cronies cabinet are on-track to go down in history as the worst in US history, both individually and as a group. Thanks to Congressional dysfunction much of what they’ve done is by decree and can be expeditiously undone once sanity is returned to the White House. Until then be prepared for higher electric bills to pad the pockets of people who built filthy coal plants decades ago.
This isn’t to say the original engineers were bad — they used the technology they had — but it’s been disrupted and that’s how disruptive innovation works. Low-cost alternative technology that is not ideal is invented. It matures and eventually replaces the existing tech. This is almost always a good thing.
Channeling Gandhi, first they ignored the new tech. They they laughed. Now they’ve enlisted Rick Perry. But the fight is hopeless; it is only a question of when renewables will dominate, not if.
By the way, for anybody interested here is how Rick Perry signs his name to official correspondence.Even by his own dynamic standards last week was a busy one for Cameron Mackintosh. One night saw the opening of his new production of Miss Saigon that had already clocked up more than £10m in advance-sales. The next day Mackintosh announced that he was buying two new London theatres – the Victoria Palace and the Ambassadors – to add to his existing seven-strong portfolio. When you consider that he has produced the three longest-running musicals of all time – Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – and that he is worth an estimated $1.1bn (£658m), you might be forgiven for thinking of him as a mega-tycoon. Yet, talking to him this week in his Bloomsbury offices, I was struck by how he remains the same bubbly enthusiast I have known on and off for 40 years. You go expecting to meet Citizen Kane: what you see is Peter Pan.
Mackintosh, although now 67, has the unlined features and bright-eyed fervour of someone who has spent all his life doing precisely what he wants: putting on shows. He also brings to the acquisition of theatres the same enthusiasm, and microscopic attention to detail, he does to producing musicals. I've never forgotten how, after he bought the Gielgud theatre in 2006, he insisted I inspect the radically transformed ladies' loo: not a subject, I confess, on which I had any expertise.
Now he is excited by his purchase of the Victoria Palace and the Ambassadors (to be rechristened the Sondheim). "I love old buildings," he tells me, "and, if I hadn't been a theatre producer, I'd have been an interfering architect. The Victoria Palace is the best house designed by the great Frank Matcham from the point of view of intimacy and sightlines, and will have an extra stage depth of 20ft." Mackintosh is equally fired up by the new Sondheim and juggles a sheaf of architectural plans with the enthusiasm of a madcap Christopher Wren.
But what will the Sondheim be used for? "I want it," says Mackintosh, "to give a longer life to some of the best work from the subsidised houses in London and the regions. I've talked to the two Nicks [Hytner and Starr from the National Theatre] and they say it would have been perfect for the transfer of the musical, London Road. A show like the Young Vic's The Scottsboro Boys would also have been ideal for this space. Or it could have taken National Theatre Scotland's Black Watch. The idea is to run each show for eight to 16 weeks but not to plan too far ahead so we can take in shows from, say, the Royal Court or the Menier or the Chichester Minerva that deserve wider exposure."
Mackintosh quickly scotches the idea that the Sondheim will be used to try out new musicals. But, before we get on to the controversial subject of whether the musical is a declining form living off its golden past, I am intrigued to know how Mackintosh remains so sane and rooted in spite of his vast wealth. How can one not be intimidated by the knowledge one is a billionaire – especially when the information has been proclaimed on the Sunday Times super-rich list?
"For a start," he says, "I'm only worth a billion if I want to sell my shows or theatres, which I don't propose to do. But I've known sufficiently hard times not to be affected by wealth. I'm a war baby, I was brought up with rationing and my parents always had to struggle. I remember when I was sent to boarding school – Prior Park College in Bath – my father was asked how he was going to pay the fees and he replied: 'In arrears.'
"As a young producer, I also learned the hard way. One of my first shows, Anything Goes in 1969, lost £40,000 in unsecured loans and another one, Home With the Dales, lost another £10,000 because no one wanted to see it. And I've never forgotten the dagger in my heart of a show called After Shave, which I hoped would be a female Beyond the Fringe, and which turned out a complete disaster.
Miss Saigon is one of Mackintosh's biggest successes. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
"I survived because I never took on big responsibilities in my private life. In the early days I lived on two or three pounds a week and learned to cook – and I'm a good cook – because I had to. Even when I went on holiday, I stayed in other people's houses. Now I can take friends on holiday and, if I wanted to, could afford a private jet. But, if I'm taking a short flight to Scotland or the continent, I travel economy. I go on EasyJet all the time and I've got my travel pass for the underground, which I use whenever I'm dashing between different rehearsal rooms. Like Ed Miliband, I probably couldn't tell you my week's grocery bill but I use public transport for two reasons. It's often the most practical way to get around London and it's important for me to know what it means to someone to fork out £50 or £60 for one of my shows. I realise that the people who've made my fortune are people who have to budget carefully and who want value for money."
Mackintosh is, in no sense, a tightwad. He has set up a foundation that supports numerous charities, individuals and theatrical projects including an annual Oxford professorship at St Catherine's College. He even, in 1998, gave a handsome donation to the Labour party. When I ask if he is likely to repeat that, he offers an emphatic "No", adding: "I'll never vote for them again because of their incompetence." But, Mackintosh remains a benign capitalist and one who has never insulated himself from daily reality. "I'm privileged," he says, "to have had some success but I've never forgotten what it was like to queue for a half-crown gallery seat for Oliver! which is why I ensure that there are £20 day tickets for Miss Saigon and that the balconies in my theatres are as comfortable as I can possibly make them."
To use an old-fashioned term, Cameron Mackintosh is a good egg. He only bridles when I suggest that the musical, despite its economic buoyancy, is living off its back catalogue. For all the success of Les Mis, Phantom and Miss Saigon, new musicals, I suggest, are thin on the ground and recent much-touted entries such as Andrew Lloyd Webber's Stephen Ward and Tim Rice's From Here to Eternity have not survived long. There even seems little room for a modest show such as Betty Blue Eyes by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, which Mackintosh originally produced and which had only a brief West End run in 2011.
"I disagree with you," he says. "To take the specific case of Betty Blue Eyes, the only problem was one of timing. We were too close to the royal wedding and the economic crisis. But the show's just been wonderfully revived in Colchester, is going on a six-month tour and has been a great success in America.
"What you forget is that a lot of the shows we now regard as classics didn't make it the first time round. Cabaret had only an eight-month run in London in the late 1960s, even with Judi Dench, and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd was not a big hit when it was first done at Drury Lane."
But don't musicals now have to be epic and expensive in order to succeed? Is there still room for shows such as Trelawny or The Card, both of which Mackintosh himself produced in the early 1970s? "Of course, there is," he says. "Two of the biggest hits in London right now are Matilda and The Book of Mormon. Both are medium-sized musicals, both slightly oddball and both attracting huge audiences because of the quality of the writing and imaginative staging. There are also far more venues for new musicals than when I started out. Today you can take a project to the Menier or Southwark Playhouse in London or to Leicester, Leeds, Sheffield or Chichester. In the old days, it was shit-or-bust but today there are far more opportunities. No producer, however, can put together a hit musical if the material isn't there."
Several times Mackintosh makes the point that producers can |
Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Natural Resources Latest Action: House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources. ( House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
44. H.R.1312 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To recognize tribal cooperation in the environmental review of proposed actions affecting the revised Yurok Reservation, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (4) Rep. Huffman, Jared [D-CA-2] (Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Natural Resources Latest Action: House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 45. H.R.1311 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to ensure that unmet needs after a major disaster are met. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Graves, Garret [R-LA-6] (Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Transportation and Infrastructure Latest Action: House - 02/20/2019 Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management. ( House - 02/20/2019 Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
45. H.R.1311 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to ensure that unmet needs after a major disaster are met. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Graves, Garret [R-LA-6] (Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Transportation and Infrastructure Latest Action: House - 02/20/2019 Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 46. H.R.1310 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 to include the rural development voucher program as a covered housing program, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (3) Rep. Gonzalez, Vicente [D-TX-15] (Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Financial Services Latest Action: House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Financial Services. ( House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Financial Services. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
46. H.R.1310 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 to include the rural development voucher program as a covered housing program, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (3) Rep. Gonzalez, Vicente [D-TX-15] (Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Financial Services Latest Action: House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Financial Services. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 47. H.R.1309 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To direct the Secretary of Labor to issue an occupational safety and health standard that requires covered employers within the health care and social service industries to develop and implement a comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (26) Rep. Courtney, Joe [D-CT-2] (Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means Latest Action: House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the Committee on Education and Labor, and in addition to the Committees on Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the... ( House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the Committee on Education and Labor, and in addition to the Committees on Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
47. H.R.1309 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To direct the Secretary of Labor to issue an occupational safety and health standard that requires covered employers within the health care and social service industries to develop and implement a comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (26) Rep. Courtney, Joe [D-CT-2] (Introduced 02/19/2019) Committees: House - Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means Latest Action: House - 02/19/2019 Referred to the Committee on Education and Labor, and in addition to the Committees on Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-19 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 48. H.R.1308 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to provide for a limitation on the time for the use of contributions or donations, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (0) Rep. Takano, Mark [D-CA-41] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - House Administration Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on House Administration. ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on House Administration. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
48. H.R.1308 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to provide for a limitation on the time for the use of contributions or donations, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (0) Rep. Takano, Mark [D-CA-41] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - House Administration Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on House Administration. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 49. H.R.1307 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To provide for an online repository for certain reporting requirements for recipients of Federal disaster assistance, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Meadows, Mark [R-NC-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Transportation and Infrastructure, Small Business, Financial Services Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committees on Small Business, and Financial Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within... ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committees on Small Business, and Financial Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
49. H.R.1307 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To provide for an online repository for certain reporting requirements for recipients of Federal disaster assistance, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Meadows, Mark [R-NC-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Transportation and Infrastructure, Small Business, Financial Services Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committees on Small Business, and Financial Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 50. H.R.1306 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Disaster Recovery Reform Act to develop a study regarding streamlining and consolidating information collection and preliminary damage assessments, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Meadows, Mark [R-NC-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Transportation and Infrastructure Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
50. H.R.1306 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend the Disaster Recovery Reform Act to develop a study regarding streamlining and consolidating information collection and preliminary damage assessments, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Meadows, Mark [R-NC-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Transportation and Infrastructure Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 51. H.R.1305 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To implement the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (15) Rep. Lowenthal, Alan S. [D-CA-47] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Natural Resources, Foreign Affairs Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
51. H.R.1305 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To implement the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (15) Rep. Lowenthal, Alan S. [D-CA-47] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Natural Resources, Foreign Affairs Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 52. H.R.1304 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To require the Federal Trade Commission, in consultation with the Federal Communications Commission, to establish a robocaller bounty pilot program, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (2) Rep. Graves, Garret [R-LA-6] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
52. H.R.1304 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To require the Federal Trade Commission, in consultation with the Federal Communications Commission, to establish a robocaller bounty pilot program, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (2) Rep. Graves, Garret [R-LA-6] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 53. H.R.1303 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To direct the Comptroller General of the United States to evaluate and report on the in-patient and outpatient treatment capacity, availability, and needs of the United States. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (0) Rep. Foster, Bill [D-IL-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce, Natural Resources Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Natural Resources, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Natural Resources, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
53. H.R.1303 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To direct the Comptroller General of the United States to evaluate and report on the in-patient and outpatient treatment capacity, availability, and needs of the United States. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (0) Rep. Foster, Bill [D-IL-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce, Natural Resources Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Natural Resources, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 54. H.R.1302 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To authorize the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, acting through the Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, to award grants to States to expand access to clinically appropriate services for opioid abuse, dependence, or addiction. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (0) Rep. Foster, Bill [D-IL-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
54. H.R.1302 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To authorize the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, acting through the Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, to award grants to States to expand access to clinically appropriate services for opioid abuse, dependence, or addiction. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (0) Rep. Foster, Bill [D-IL-11] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 55. H.R.1301 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for coverage under the Medicare program of certain mental health telehealth services. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. DelBene, Suzan K. [D-WA-1] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
55. H.R.1301 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for coverage under the Medicare program of certain mental health telehealth services. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. DelBene, Suzan K. [D-WA-1] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee... ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 56. H.R.1300 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To provide for a temporary safe harbor for certain failures by individuals to pay estimated income tax. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (13) Rep. Chu, Judy [D-CA-27] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Ways and Means Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
56. H.R.1300 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To provide for a temporary safe harbor for certain failures by individuals to pay estimated income tax. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (13) Rep. Chu, Judy [D-CA-27] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Ways and Means Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
BILL 57. H.R.1299 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To require any delivery vehicle owned or leased by the United States Postal Service have an air conditioning unit, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Cardenas, Tony [D-CA-29] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Oversight and Reform Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. ( House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of Legislation: Introduced Array ( [actionDate] => 2019-02-15 [displayText] => Introduced in House [externalActionCode] => 1000 [description] => Introduced ) Passed House Passed Senate To President Became Law
57. H.R.1299 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) To require any delivery vehicle owned or leased by the United States Postal Service have an air conditioning unit, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Cosponsors: (1) Rep. Cardenas, Tony [D-CA-29] (Introduced 02/15/2019) Committees: House - Oversight and Reform Latest Action: House - 02/15/2019 Referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. ( All Actions Tracker: This bill has the status Introduced Here are the steps for Status of LegislatTentatively identified by Conder Kitchener with the biblical city of Rabba (Josh. 15:60) because of their phonetic similarity, and which site is located in the territory given by lot to the tribe of Judah. Still, it is only a conjecture, without any valid oral tradition to substantiate the claim, or otherwise refute the claim.Others have speculated that the Rabbah of Joshua 15:60 may be the town known as, an unidentified town believed to have been near the biblical Gezer and mentioned in Thutmosis III ’s list of Canaanite cities (no. 105), and what is also thought to be mentioned in a cuneiform letter found at Taanach. According to two el-Amarna letters (289, 290) sent by the king of Jerusalem to the pharaoh, Milkilu, the king of Gezer, together with Shuwardata capturedwith the aid of mercenaries.The problem with this identification, however, is that no one has yet found a city near Gezer by the name ofor, and even if they had, Gezer - and by way of extension, Rabbah - would not be in the territorial domain of the tribe of Judah, but rather in what belonged to Ephraim (cf. Josh. 21:20–21). It was, therefore, imperative to look for the Rabbah in the tribal inheritance of Judah.It’s pretty clear at this point that the Obama administration explicitly misrepresented what they knew to be the truth about the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
In yesterday’s hearings, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) publicized a heretofore classified State Department email describing the attack as a premeditated assault by Ansar al-Sharia, a group that “is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.” Note, this email was sent on September 12th, a day after the attack and preceding several official administration statements that the attack had been the result of a spontaneous protest against a YouTube video depicting the prophet Mohammad.
Congressional Republicans have been up in arms at the Obama administration for not having enough security at the Consulate and for not being up front about whether the attack was a protest gone awry or a premeditated attack.
But the controversy kind of just stops there. Few Obama critics in Washington have any idea why the administration would knowingly mislead on the Benghazi attacks.
I can only speculate, but my best guess is that they wanted to avoid the political costs of another terrorist attack on American interests that was only made possible because of the U.S.-NATO bombing war in Libya aimed at toppling the Gadhafi regime. The decision to change the regime in Libya and excite the civil war had long-ranging consequences, from destabilizing the entire north African region to bolstering the presence and influence of al-Qaeda affiliated groups.
According to a book written by former Navy SEAL Jack Murphy and former Army Ranger Brandon Webb, the Benghazi attack was retaliation for the secret raids Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan directing on militias in Libya at the time.
Fox News:
“Brennan waged his own unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure,” the book says, calling it an “off the books” operation not coordinated with Petraeus and the CIA. The authors then claim that these raids were a “contributing factor” in the militant strike on the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex on Sept. 11. The raids, they said, “kicked the hornets’ nest and pissed off the militia.”
Benghazi was blowback. Is it any wonder the Obama administration tried to cover it up? No. But what is amazing is that Republicans are so allergic to acknowledging blowback as a phenomenon that it has barely entered the debate.Have a day, Brock Osweiler.
On Monday morning, Osweiler worked out with the Broncos as their backup quarterback. Meeting, drills and lining up the No. 2 offense to practice plays against “air” or no defense.
Then weights, conditioning, shower and fly out to Phoenix where thanks to taking 21 credit hours online in his past two offseasons with the Broncos, Osweiler will walk in the Arizona State commencement ceremony Monday night in Tempe.
His degree is in interdisciplinary studies, which is a 50-50 split of political science and sociology.
“The past two years, it’s amazing how fast the time has gone,” Osweiler said. “But it was one of those deals where I knew myself and I knew the longer I waited, the harder it would be to go back. I just knocked it out as soon as possible.”
How Osweiler turns out as a Broncos quarterback nobody knows. Drafted two years ago in the second round, Osweiler has yet to take a meaningful snap, as he’s spent his professional career observing Peyton Manning win the NFL’s MVP award last season and finish second in the MVP balloting in 2012.
But Osweiler has been a disciplined, studious backup, getting to the team’s headquarters early each morning to watch film and master the playbook during the season.
He then took nine ASU credit hours during his first offseason, then 12 more this spring, plus an internship with Arizona congressional hopeful Andrew Walter, a former NFL quarterback and Grand Junction High School standout.
“He’s intrinsically motivated,” said Broncos quarterbacks coach Greg Knapp. “He has shown all the qualities you like to see as a starter in this league. With the way he prepares. When he’s quizzed in the classroom or on the field on the progressions or reads, he is always on top of it. He asks questions that are well thought out.
“And then I saw great progress physically on his mechanics in tightening up his drop and his footwork. He has shown all the signs. You never know until a guy plays, but he has shown everything for us to believe he’s on track to becoming a starting NFL quarterback.”
Among the many characteristics teams and fans want from their quarterback, the most cerebral of positions, shouldn’t a college degree be one of them?
“I always wanted to do very well at school because ultimately I always wanted to play in the NFL,” Osweiler said. “And to play in the NFL it always helps to play for a big school. And to play for a big school my parents always told me I had to have good grades. To me, school and football always correlated.”
In the Broncos’ quarterbacks meeting room, there is a large sign, easy to see. It says the three greatest attributes to NFL quarterback play are decision-making, timing and accuracy.
“It is in that order,” Knapp said. “The good ones in this profession that last make good decisions because they study, they plan ahead, they prepare well and they’re not surprised come Sundays. And that’s what Brock has done here with his college degree. He planned ahead, he stayed on top of his classes, he started early. It shows the preparation he has. And it’s carried over.”
The key to Osweiler finishing up his degree online was leaving Arizona State within striking distance — no small accomplishment considering he left school halfway through his true junior season to prepare for the NFL draft.
Major universities understand the time demands on football and other college sports to the point they usually extend a student-athlete’s scholarship through a fifth year. Osweiler got the jump by accumulating 21 credits before his freshmen class reported to its first semester.
Like many blue-chip football recruits, Osweiler graduated early from high school so he could participate in ASU’s spring ball program in 2009. He then stayed around the Tempe campus to work out and take summer classes.
That got him well ahead academically. After Osweiler dons the cap and gown for his ceremonial walk Monday night at Arizona State’s Wells Fargo Arena, he will fly back to Denver on Tuesday and return to Broncos’ football activity Wednesday.
If Manning can miss a workout to be on Letterman, Osweiler can get a day off to get his degree.
“Now that I have it, I’ll put it in a frame, hang it up, know it’s there, and hopefully put it on the backburner for a long time,” Osweiler said. “Obviously I have very lofty goals here in the National Football League to complete. Hopefully, I won’t have to use that thing for a while.”
Mike Klis: mklis@denverpost.com or twitter.com/mikeklisFormer QPR midfielder and MOTD2 pundit Jermaine Jenas explains what his old club needs to do next following their relegation back to the Championship after a single season in the top flight.
QPR's relegation proves that their players are not good enough for the Premier League but the real problem at Loftus Road is the lack of a long-term plan.
I played for QPR from January 2013 until the end of last season and stayed on all summer doing my rehab after suffering a cruciate ligament injury in April of last year.
During my time there, it was not being run as a Premier League club. For too long, the thinking was just to chuck money at the team.
There has been no organisation, no vision, and no discipline in the way things were done.
That is why I think it is unfair to blame relegation on the manager Chris Ramsey, or even his predecessor Harry Redknapp.
'The club needs a revamp from top to bottom'
It is the same with trying to pin it on the players too. There are a lot of good pros in that squad.
Yes, one or two of them were not quite up for the fight, but most of them did their best - they were just part of a system that was failing them.
Sunday's 6-0 defeat by Manchester City relegated QPR from the Premier League
There is a point where the manager has to accept responsibility but, even at the start of the season, Harry had those concerns.
I think it was a wake-up call for him that things were not right when he had to go on a pre-season tour with only 12 outfield players.
For me, the club is being run by some really nice people who are not 100% sure of what they are doing, and have taken some bad advice in the past.
I think the reason Les Ferdinand is now director of football is because the owners have realised their mistakes.
Hopefully, even if Ramsey is not manager next season, he will stay around as well.
The club needs a revamp from top to bottom and there is a huge rebuilding job to be done.
'Bad eggs are down to poor transfer policy'
I have heard QPR midfielder Joey Barton putting their problems this season down to one or two "bad eggs" in the squad, and it is something I had experience of at Loftus Road too.
The club's recent transfer policy has been to pluck players from here, there and everywhere.
When you do that, you are probably buying on the basis of talent rather than the mentality and personality of a player, and you are asking for trouble.
People like Clint Hill, Robert Green, Bobby Zamora, whom I played with at QPR when we were relegated in 2013 and are still at the club, are examples of the type of attitude you want from your players.
QPR have now conceded 67 goals this season, the most in the top flight
No matter how much money they are earning, it hurts them if they are not performing well individually or as a team. When things are going badly, there is a point where they say "right, we need to do something about this".
But unfortunately, when I was at the club, there were a few players whose thinking was along the lines of "if we go down, then it is OK, I will just leave".
That hung over the club at the start of the following season too because some of them had not left yet and nobody knew if they would be staying or not.
We basically just winged it to bounce straight back up because enough good players were still in contract, we bought Charlie Austin and stretched the loan system to the absolute max.
That is how we did it, but it is not the way to run a club properly.
And I cannot see it happening again this time, because it is hard to see the squad staying together again.
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A study by Dr Zerrin Atakan and Prof Philip McGuire from 2009 threw some light on the way cannabis actually works by looking at the effects of THC and CBD – the two principal components of cannabis.
The fact that there are two major active components has meant the nature of cannabis has been seriously misrepresented and therefore misunderstood for years, originally through ignorance but more recently deliberately.
For just about all other drugs of intoxication (or enlightenment depending on how you look at these things) there’s really only one consideration: How much of the drug you take, i.e. the dose. Strong drugs simply give you more of the drug per gram, pint or whatever unit the drug is measured in. In other words, drugs generally consist of an active compound contained within a larger volume of something else which can be considered neutral.
Hence we have a very simple variable to talk about which we call “strength”. Even if they don’t really understand how it works, most people are familiar enough with this concept as it applies to booze and understand that a beer with a 3% ABV is a lot weaker than a beer with 10% ABV, even if they don’t know what a “% ABV” actually means*. Most people know something else about “strength” as well, which is that you don’t need as much of the strong stuff as you do the weak, but have enough of the weak stuff and you end up in the same place as you do with the strong stuff more or less.
Hence we have a simple variable called “strength” which is widely understood and is nice and easy. This concept extends way beyond booze to include all the naughty drugs – cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, you name it the same logic applies, “stronger” means “higher dose” per gulp/snort/fix.
But when we come to consider cannabis we find things are measured differently and we find a new word is used: “potency”. Whenever governments or their agencies start using a subtly different term for something you think you understand it’s always a good idea to ask why?
The Home Office study into cannabis potency of 2008 (PDF read it here) had a go at defining this “potency” concept. The definition the study gave was:
The potency of cannabis is defined as the concentration (%) of delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)
Sadly it didn’t specify what the concentration is a percentage of, giving the misleading impression perhaps that a sample of herbal cannabis consists of upwards of 40% THC. Now, this is clearly not the case as a sample of herbal plant material plainly doesn’t consist of nearly half THC, either by volume or by weight. No matter how strong the cannabis is, most of it is clearly plant material. Indeed, it’s pretty obvious that it doesn’t even consist of 5% THC by weight or volume because that would still be a huge amount of what is a very powerful psychoactive drug. So it’s clear that “potency” isn’t anything like the same simple concept as strength.
Actually the % THC figure is the proportion of THC in the oils produced by the plant. The plant oozes oils – the pure resin – from glands known as “trichomes”. It’s these tiny beads of oil which contain the active chemicals that make cannabis what it is and the “potency” figure often quoted is the proportion of this oil which is THC.
Two important points flow from this:
1: Potency is not strength. Clearly you could have a sample of cannabis with very few globs of resin on, which would make it quite weak, although the resin it did contain could be high in THC, making it a high potency. Likewise a concentrated form of low potency cannabis could deliver a large dose of THC, making it quite strong. One “concentrated form of cannabis” is known as hashish, being the resin of the plant with far less vegetable matter included.
2: The THC is expressed as a percentage (by weight actually) of the oils, there are clearly other substances in the oil, quite a few of which are psycho active but it turns out that one in particular, known as CBD or cannabidiol, is very important when it comes to understanding just what cannabis does to the user.
Spurred on by the Reefer Madness V2 scare of the last decade there were two “Cannabis and Mental Health” conferences held in London in 2004 and 2007 and one of the more interesting presentations (for me) came from Dr Zerrin Atakan who was involved in a study which reported in 2009 called “Distinct Effects of Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol and Cannabidiol” on Neural Activation During Emotional Processing”. The study undertaken by Zerrin Atakan and Professor Philip McGuire consisted of giving subjects a dose of THC or CBD or a placebo and examining the effects on the subject by both a series of standard tests and also by magnetic resonance imaging of the brain (here). Professor Philip McGuire stated
“These studies show that THC and CBD have distinct effects on brain function in humans, and these may underlie their correspondingly different effects on cognition and psychiatric symptoms. Determining how the constituents of cannabis act on the brain is fundamental to understanding the role of cannabis use in the aetiology of psychiatric disorders.”
In English this means understanding the combined roles of THC and CBD is important for understanding how cannabis works and what its effect on the brain will be; it isn’t just about THC,
The really interesting thing about this is that CBD turns out to be playing a significant role, yet until recently it had never been routinely measured. It’s almost the polar opposite of THC in its effects in some respects; if THC is linked to psychotic type episodes, CBD has anti psychotic properties. If THC is thought to cause panic attacks, CBD calms those impulses. Put in terms the Daily Mail could understand, if THC is “bad”, CBD is “good”.
The practical upshot of all this is that talking of cannabis simply in terms of “potency” masquerading as “strength” is meaningless, we need to be far more sophisticated in the way to describe it. The measure of “potency” as used by the government is simply not up to the job, which is no surprise really as it came from the law enforcement requirements of prohibition, not from concerns of public health or any real understanding of the plant. To mean anything, “potency” has to state the concentration of both THC and CBD.
Of course, all this isn’t news to experienced cannabis users. It’s long been known that the old skool hash from Morocco for example was laid back and dreamy whilst some of the modern strains are somewhat “edgy” or “trippy”. But we can thank Zerrin and her team for providing the explanation in terms of the combined effects of THC and CBD on the brain and providing the science, this difference is real.
Now the the Home Office “potency” study of 2008 was close to being “cod science” because of the way it collected its data and on its lax definitions of potency but it did show one interesting result which is relevant to this discussion; the THC/CBD balance of “traditional” hashish we used to get in the UK is very different to that of some herbal cannabis on sale today. The traditional hash contained something like 5% THC and 3.5% CBD on average. Now what this means is the oils in the sample contained a total of 8.5% active ingredients and 91.5% uninteresting goo – ie mostly none psycho-active resin plus a range of minor active chemicals. The valuable bit of information here isn’t the THC concentration but the ratio of the two chemicals of 7 parts CBD to 10 parts THC. That isn’t too far off 50-50. It’s interesting to note that the composition of Sativex – the cannabis medicine – is 51/49 THC/CBD, a composition arrived at because it had the best effectivity with the minimum unpleasant side effects.
The thing to note is that before the present prohibition policy choked off imported hash from north Africa, most of the cannabis supplied to the UK was of this type with a more or less equal ratio of THC:CBD. The policy so enthusiastically followed by our government has seen this replaced by strains which are much lower in CBD. So there we have an “unintended consequence” of prohibition, the suppression of a well balanced product and its substitution with something very different, but different in a way no-one thought important to monitor, much less control.
This is at the root of the claims that cannabis potency has increased in recent years, which is a claim often made by prohibition campaigners and used to justify continued prohibition. Far from being an argument in favour of continued prohibition however, this change was caused by it. If as the government claims it is true that high potency (ie low CBD) cannabis is dangerous for some people it is a danger caused directly by the prohibition policy.
With most – if not all – other drugs the control of the strength is important. With cannabis the composition in terms of THC and CBD is equally if not more important. This variable is determined primarily by the strain grown, in other words by the seeds sold, but also to an extent by the maturity of the plant when harvested. If the government is really concerned about the potential for harm caused by the type of cannabis on sale in the country as they claim to be, controlling and properly regulating the seed suppliers and the growing industry is the way to go. Here we have some solid science to support that suggestion.
Thus far, the law has only served to make things potentially more dangerous whilst relying on a useless measurement which is widely misunderstood, but that’s how prohibition works.
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* % ABV means “the percentage of Alcohol by volume”, so 100 ml of 10%ABV plonk will contain 10ml of pure alcohol.Welcome to the Apache UIMA™ project. Our goal is to support a thriving community of users and developers of UIMA frameworks, tools, and annotators, facilitating the analysis of unstructured content such as text, audio and video.
What is UIMA?
Unstructured Information Management applications are software systems that analyze large volumes of unstructured information in order to discover knowledge that is relevant to an end user. An example UIM application might ingest plain text and identify entities, such as persons, places, organizations; or relations, such as works-for or located-at.
UIMA enables applications to be decomposed into components, for example "language identification" => "language specific segmentation" => "sentence boundary detection" => "entity detection (person/place names etc.)". Each component implements interfaces defined by the framework and provides self-describing metadata via XML descriptor files. The framework manages these components and the data flow between them. Components are written in Java or C++; the data that flows between components is designed for efficient mapping between these languages.
UIMA additionally provides capabilities to wrap components as network services, and can scale to very large volumes by replicating processing pipelines over a cluster of networked nodes.
Apache UIMA is an Apache-licensed open source implementation of the UIMA specification [pdf] [doc] (that specification is, in turn, being developed concurrently by a technical committee within OASIS, a standards organization). We invite and encourage you to participate in both the implementation and specification efforts.
Here you can find:
Frameworks
Components, and
Infrastructure,
all licensed under the Apache license. The dashed-line boxes above are placeholders for possible future additions.
The Frameworks run the components, and are available for both Java and C++. The Java Framework supports running both Java and non-Java components (using the C++ framework). The C++ framework, besides supporting annotators written in C/C++, also supports Perl, Python, and TCL annotators. The UIMA-AS and UIMA-DUCC are both Scaleout Frameworks and are addons to the base Java framework. The UIMA-AS supports very flexible scaleout capability based on JMS (Java Messaging Services) and ActiveMQ. The UIMA-DUCC extends UIMA-AS by providing cluster management services to automate the scale-out of UIMA pipelines over computing clusters. Visit the UIMA-DUCC live demo description and the UIMA-DUCC live demo itself.
The frameworks support configuring and running pipelines of Annotator components. These components do the actual work of analyzing the unstructured information. Users can write their own annotators, or configure and use pre-existing annotators. Some annotators are available as part of this project; others are contained in various repositories on the internet.
Additional infrastructure support components include a simple server that can receive REST requests and return annotation results, for use by other web services.
The Addons and Sandbox is for Addons (Annotators and other things) for UIMA, and a place where new ideas are developed for potential incorporation into the project.Had I known the man in the water was about to die, I would’ve stopped complaining.
My favorite time of day is early in the morning. An hour or two hours before the sun comes up, the air is still; the streets are empty; fat, lumpy clouds saunter casually and unnoticed overhead; the last stars of the night fight against the inevitable glow lurching higher and higher on the horizon.
This was how it was on Sunday morning in Beaufort, North Carolina. I had driven since 5 o’clock, past the Marine base, past the sleepy fishing town of Swansboro, past Cape Carteret and, finally, past Morehead City. This coastal corridor is normally overloaded with tourist, weekend fishermen, kayakers, boaters, and a few locals – but not before the sun comes up.
Front Street in Beaufort ran parallel to the waterway without a single vehicle, save the policeman patrolling its avenue. The linen shop, the olive oil company, the wine shop, and restaurants and bars and fudge factory buttressed a silent umbra. Empty parking spaces lined the street with a sort of unemployed hopefulness. A plastic shopping bag slowly cartwheeled in front of my car like tumbleweed. A sultry, marsh breeze blew through my window like lingering spirits. At 6:30, similes staged the town and supported its structure: it was only like something else because it was near indescribable without the usual plodding traffic and excited tourist eating ice cream cones.
I parked in front of the ferry where I was supposed to meet my photography club and walked the boardwalk. Sailboats rested easy in the calm waters and their mast and top lights flickered and waned a silken reflection in the brackish channel. I set my camera bag down, decided which lens to use, and set up my tripod. No matter what adjustments I made, however, I couldn’t frame the shot right. I have yet to learn all the knobs and dials of my tripod and ended up kicking the contraption out of frustration, which was much easier and more satisfying than slowing down to actually learn how to manipulate the tree-legged mongrel.
I dragged my bag and mongrel up and down the boardwalk, taking one bad photo after another. This is the hardest thing about photography and the reason why it is both an art and a science. A good photograph captures both the quality and the essence of a place. It gives the viewer a sense of standing on the boardwalk absorbing the blues and reds as they slowly fade to purples and pinks, while a surge of expectancy wells up. Morning will dawn, boats will sail, tides will turn.
I’m not a great photographer. I may be a good or half-way descent photographer, but that weak-kneed superlative is only granted or bestowed out of pity. The amount of effort and money devoted to the art is enough to make the harshest critic find mercy and sympathy. “Yeah, I see what you were going for,” I can imagine her saying.
As I fail and fail and fail to capture the simple beauty of boats in the predawn, I remind myself that I actually don’t have critics and it doesn’t really matter how many pictures disappoint. One, it only takes one decent picture. That is my goal. Just one. Breathe. Calm down. Be present in this moment.
When this meditative approach fizzles out, as it nearly always does, I figure someone must be serving coffee somewhere. Coffee, the great elixir: if God had brought Adam a cup of coffee instead of the chore of naming all the animals, it is reasonable to question whether humanity would have ever known melancholy or hopelessness. And had God given Adam and Eve a single cup of coffee before that snake slithered up, this whole sin business might have been avoided.
But God’s wisdom didn’t prevail so many years ago; now the coffee warming my hands soothed my angst as a lower rung sacrament. After tanking up, I joined my camera club when they started gathering at the boat dock. We exchanged our sleepy-minded hellos and boarded the boat for Shackleford Banks. The ferry was nothing more than a stripped down, tanker sized pontoon boat, but in about 30 minutes it crossed the channel as well as a private yacht could.
Shackleford Banks is a nine-mile-long barrier island that is maybe a mile wide. It is the southernmost island connected to the Cape Lookout National Seashore, which runs from Portsmouth Village, an island just south of Ocracoke, to the first step our camera club landed on Shackleford Banks. There is nothing on the island. There are no roads, no stores, no bathrooms. Nothing except what you bring with you. It is a piece of perfect desolation with the exception of the water taxi shuttling people back and forth from Beaufort. And the people come. We were on the first boat of the morning, and when we arrived at the island, a hoard of ill-slept, disheveled campers was packed up like mules. They stood patiently with their tents and coolers and backpacks and bottles of water and fishing poles – their sunburned faces, windblown hair, gritty, sandy bodies – for the taxi to ferry them back to civilization.
Every half-hour the boat would shuffle people on and off the island. At first, I thought what good is a deserted island that isn’t deserted. But as I walked into the island’s interior it quickly became |
look at Critter Crunch. But one aspect of the latter does deserve mention, because it surely contributed more than anything to the quality of Clash.
In early 2008, just after Clash had moved into full production, Capybara made their first splash when Critter Crunch won both the IGF mobile grand prize and audio prize. "Then right at that moment when Critter Crunch won the IGF there was a brand new ray of excitement that arrived at the studio," says Piotrowski. "We saw a way to kind of jump out of this burning car and into something else. And we took it. I think it was good. I personally wish we'd done it earlier, but because of the nature of the studio, the size it was, it was very hard to change direction on a dime. It took us a while to become the Capy we are now where we're working on three original games that are our own games, and when they come out they'll be helping the studio."
"We were out two days before Zelda. If you're ever going to die on DS, that's how to do it." Nathan Vella
"It took us ten years to get there in fact!" Piotrowski laughs. "But Clash and Critter Crunch were the first steps in that direction, and they came out of what I'd call the dark days. That's how it felt! For me and for I think a lot of us here. Rising Tide and Critter Crunch were the two things happening in the corner of the studio that were keeping us basically sane. The little flame in the corner keeping us warm while we worked on all this other depressing stuff."
These days Capybara thread such an unusual route through experience and mechanics that Clash of Heroes leaves me with one question: will we ever see such a straightforward game from the studio again? Because for all they may be indie darlings, Capybara do old-school brilliantly.
"We're really interested in continuing to make gamey games like Super Time Force, mechanics-driven stuff, a straight line from player to game and that's what it is," says Vella. "At the same time we're really interested in the Below type stuff, where there's no text in the game, no tutorials, it's about you being this tiny character in a randomly generated world and the art and the music, and that experience of exploring and surviving and discovering. I think it's rad."
"And I think that's.... this might sound a bit cocky but I don't care, that's one of the things I'm most proud of at this studio, one of these things we do that there aren't a lot of other people out there doing. We can be running a team doing a really interesting mechanics-driven game, and also be doing an experimental kind of game - and it doesn't seem weird or strange we're making those two things."
The fact that Clash of Heroes didn't change the world hardly matters: it changed Capybara.
"We're now at a point where we're very comfortable with what we want to do," ends Vella. "And what we want to do is have our cake and eat it."About Us
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I haven’t seen that one Republican of any note, from Reince Priebus on down, has uttered a word of criticism of the man. Plenty of conservative commentators have said he should step down from his leadership position. Even Sarah Palin sees the sense in this. But among elected Republicans and Priebus, it’s been defense, or silence.
It’s pretty clear what this tells us. Most of the time, institutions of all kinds—political, corporate, nonprofit, what have you—try to duck from scandals and hope they’ll blow over. But occasionally they don’t. Every once in a while, they act swiftly and acknowledge the problem. They do that when they know their bottom line is threatened—when the higher-ups are getting freaked out phone calls from key constituents or stakeholders who are making it clear that this one is serious, that it flies in the face of some basic principle they all thought they were working for, and won’t just blow over.
So the fact that Scalise still has his leadership gig tells us that the key stakeholders and constituencies within the GOP aren’t particularly bothered by the fact that he spoke to white supremacists and indeed might be one himself. They’re certainly embarrassed, I should think. Surely they see the problem here. But they see it as a public-relations problem, a matter to be damage-controlled, which is quite different from seeing it as being plainly and substantively wrong.
This is especially striking, though hardly surprising, in the case of Priebus, Mr. Outreach. As Joan Walsh noted, Priebus has been fond of saying that his GOP would “work like dogs” to improve its standing among the black citizenry, and the brown and the young and the gay and so on. He didn’t specify what breed of dog, but obviously it’s less Retriever and more Bassett Hound.
Here is the RNC’s idea of inclusion. Go to gop.com right now (I mean after you finish reading me!). If the homepage is unchanged from yesterday, when I was writing these words, here’s what you’ll see. Most of it is taken up by a graphic inviting the visitor to participate in the 2016 online presidential straw poll. There are four photos there of representative presidential candidates. Chris Christie and Scott Walker are two. Okay, fine, they’re probably running and are legit candidates.
Let’s see, who else? Jeb Bush? No. Rand Paul? Nyet. Mike Huckabee? Nope. Try Tim Scott and Nikki Haley. Now, Scott and Haley (the black senator and Sikh governor, respectively, from South Carolina) are likely presidential contenders in about the same sense that I’m on the short list for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But, as the Wizard said to the Scarecrow, they’ve got one thing I—and Bush and Paul and Huckabee—haven’t got: melanin. So, says Reince, throw their names in the poll so we can slap ’em up there on the homepage!
That’s just so very RNC, isn’t it? The people who bring you all the gospel choirs and so on at their conventions, which looking solely at the entertainment you’d think were Stax-Volt reunions. You’d never guess that only 2 percent of the delegates (36 out of 2,000, in 2012) were black.
As for elected Republicans, if any prominent one has called on Scalise to step down, it has escaped my notice and the notice of a lot of people I read; the farthest any have gone is to offer up some quotes on background about how Scalise is damaged goods, like this quote, which “a GOP lawmaker” gave to Politico: “As far as him going up to the Northeast, or going out to Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago, he’s damaged. This thing is still smoking. Nobody is really fanning the flames yet. … The thing that concerns me is that there are people who are still out there digging on this right now.”
Note: The thing that concerns this “lawmaker” is not that his or her party is being partially led by a sympathizer to white supremacists. It’s that the rest of us are still making a fuss about it, which in turn will damage Scalise’s ability to go prostitute himself before the party’s millionaires. If that’s not a near-perfect summation of contemporary conservative politics in America, then such doesn’t exist.
The media tend to frame situations like this as aberrations, but in this case, quite the opposite is the truth. This person who once said that David Duke’s biggest problem was not his racial views but the fact that he couldn’t get elected is who Scalise is. And this is what the Republican Party is—an organization that isn’t bothered in any meaningful way by the fact one of its top national leaders should hold these kinds of ideas in his head. And finally, this is who most of our political press is—gullible enough to be surprised by either of the first two.The Palestinian attacker shot dead by Israeli security forces Saturday morning at a checkpoint near Jenin as he tried to stab a security guard posed as a seller of Krembo, a popular chocolate-and-marshmallow Israeli winter treat.
The Defense Ministry said the teenager, identified as Muhammad Zakarna, 16 from Kabatiyeh in the northern West Bank, carried a box full of the treat as he approached the checkpoint.
According to the ministry, the Palestinian teenager was moving between cars waiting at the checkpoint leading into Israel, where IDF soldiers were checking identification cards. Suddenly, he tossed the box aside and ran toward security forces knife in hand before being shot.
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The incident occurred at the Jalama checkpoint, or the Gilboa crossing, at the northern entrance to the West Bank City.
The checkpoint is manned by private security guards alongside IDF troops.
No one on the Israeli side was hurt in the attack.
The teen’s parents have been asked to identify his body, Maariv newspaper reported on its website Saturday.
מקום ניסיון הדקירה במעבר ג'למה. צילום: משהב"ט pic.twitter.com/ccST54u9ed — amir bohbot (@amirbohbot) October 24, 2015
סיכום ראשוני של תחקיר האירוע: מחבל פלסטיני כבן 16, שהתחזה לרוכל עם קרטון קרמבו בידיו, התקדם לכיוון המעבר>> pic.twitter.com/jT31Ku4CQA — משרד הביטחון (@MoDIsrael) October 24, 2015
The incident came after a reported attempted stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City earlier Saturday.
Police were searching for a suspect after an Israeli man told police that an Arab man tried to stab him on Nablus Road in the capital.
The Israeli told officers that he was walking on the road when he heard some yelling and turned around to find an Arab man wielding a knife. According to his account, he fought off his would-be attacker, who then fled in the direction of Damascus Gate, tossing the knife as he did so.
The Israeli man reportedly handed the knife over to police, who launched a search for the suspect.
On Friday, two Israeli parents and their three young children were wounded in a firebombing attack on their car near the settlement of Beit El, in the West Bank north of Jerusalem.
The family members suffered burns of various degrees. The youngest girl, aged four, was moderately hurt. Her brother, 12-year-old sister and mother and father were lightly injured.
The five were treated at the scene by Magen David Adom medics and evacuated to a Jerusalem hospital for further treatment.
A series of Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and Israeli-Palestinian clashes, have erupted in recent weeks over Palestinian claims that Israel was planning to change the status quo, despite vehement denials from the Jewish state.
Nine Israelis have been killed and dozens injured in a string of attacks since the beginning of the month. At least 50 Palestinians have also died, many while carrying out stabbing attacks on Israelis and others in clashes with security forces.
AFP contributed to this report.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
BioWare senior development director Chris Wynn has responded to criticisms about how Mass Effect: Andromeda, the next game in the spacefaring RPG series, is leaving Commander Shepard behind.
In response to a fan who said Mass Effect would be "embarrassing" without Shepard, Wynn said on Twitter that the RPG series doesn't necessarily need Shepard to be successful.
"Be open-minded to a Mass Effect with no Shepard," he said. "It can be good."
Shepard was the main character in Mass Effect 1-3. But in October 2012, BioWare confirmed that the next game in the series, which we now know is Andromeda, would not feature Shepard.
"There is one thing we are absolutely sure of--there will be no more Shepard, and the trilogy is over," BioWare Montreal producer Fabrice Condominas said at the time.
BioWare hasn't ruled out Shepard references in Andromeda. Speculation that he might somehow return continues as BioWare has yet to divulge the time period for Andromeda. Asked to share this information, Wynn said on Twitter, "not yet :)"
However, Shepard showing up doesn't seem likely. Wynn previously said Andromeda will not feature any familiar faces from past Mass Effect games. "Story-wise, it wouldn't make much sense," he said.
It's possible BioWare will have some Andromeda news to share soon, as the Mass Effect holiday, N7 Day (November 7), is now just a few weeks away. On November 7, 2014, BioWare released new Andromeda concept art and talked more about the game.
Andromeda launches in fall 2016 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. For more, watch the video above and check out our previous coverage of the game here.
What do you think about the Mass Effect franchise moving forward without Shepard? Let us know in the comments below.If you haven't hopped on the Amazon Prime bandwagon already—or felt that $99 was a little too steep—you can grab a year's membership for about 25% off.
Amazon is celebrating the Golden Globe wins for their series Transparent and now you can take advantage of it. All day Saturday the 24th you can sign up for Amazon Prime at $72 for the year. This gives you the free two-day shipping and access to Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming. Additionally, any Amazon customer—including non-Prime members—can watch the entire first season of Transparent for free. The downside is that the promotional pricing is only available to new accounts. Overall, we love Amazon Prime around here and recommend it if you do a lot of online shopping. So if you haven't taken the plunge yet, now's the time.
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In Celebration of Golden Globe Wins | Amazon Press Releases via The VergeRand Paul doesn’t think MSNBC is very fair to him, but it may surprise him to learn that one of that network’s hosts considers himself a Rand Paul fan. Ronan Farrow, during a segment today about gay marriage, made a short aside about his personal feelings on the senator who thinks his network is full of “cranks and hacks.”
Farrow brought up “incredible sound” of Paul talking about gay marriage. In the audio, Paul expresses more traditional views about marriage and calls marriage the “foundation of civilization.”
But after playing it, Farrow actually said, “Look, I’ve gotta say, I’m a Rand Paul fan, I don’t want to caricature him.” He went on to provide more context to what Paul was saying about marriage and poverty.
Well, one thing is clear: I’m sure at least one of Farrow’s colleagues will be amazed to hear this.
Watch the clip below, via MSNBC:
[h/t Breitbart]
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comUPDATE::::: SUNDAy>>>>OPEN SUNDAY!!! DEALS DEALS DEALSS.... WE NORMALLY DONT DO SUNDAYS BUT THERE WAS SO MUCH STUFF WE HAVE TO, CRAZY DEALS!!!! COME ON BYE!!! Even by The Clean Out King standards this house is beyond packed, some might even say hoarder house, I say just crazy stuffed with stuff...We've been asked to liquidate the contents of this 4 bedroom 2 story home in St. Petersburg.. Everything must be sold 3 days only, tons of cool stuff and still digging out daily... This is one that has so much stuff I'm not even sure how we are going to display it all but we are working hard right up until the day of the sale, so check back for updated pictures.. Highlights: Tons of vintage glassware, books, old post cards, maps, pottery, old crocks, antique furniture, fire arms magazines, vintage clothing and electronics, tons of kitchenware, tons of usable household products, garage items including tools, old car parts and more...wrought iron, old fountain pens, old camera's and so much more you won't believe how much is there so just stop on bye and have a look.. Tons of stuff not pictured but will update later this week, please check back for updated pics and info...Hope to see you there! Attention::: PARKING IS AN ISSUE::::: Park down 13th ave a bit there are big fields or across the street at the bank, please DO NOT PARK IN THE POST OFFICE LOT OR THE ACCOUNTANTS office next door!! This sale is beyond packed truly something for everyone, come get some great deals...LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Someday soon, buying items online may require you to smile before paying, no matter how high the price. At least, this is where Alibaba Group Holdings Inc.’s new technology seeks to lead us.
Earlier this week, Alibaba BABA, +0.16% founder and Chairman Jack Ma unveiled the company’s “Smile to Pay” system, which will allow users to confirm their identity by face-recognition technology rather than with passwords or other digital tokens.
Ma showed off the new system in a presentation at the opening of the CeBit technology conference in Hanover, Germany, taking a selfie with his phone to pay for a vintage stamp offered on Alibaba’s e-commerce site, according to reports.
The application compared the photo to a stored image of Ma linked to his account and, after confirming that the picture was of the same person, authorized the payment.
Of course, this technology would require safety features — such as a way to make sure the picture is of a real person and not a stolen photo — and a South China Morning Post report Tuesday about Smile to Pay noted past efforts at face recognition have been plagued by bugs.
But the report quoted an Alibaba spokeswoman as saying the company was “quite serious” about developing Smile to Pay. No launch date has yet been set, but the e-commerce major plans to offer the system in China first, before introducing it elsewhere, the South China Morning Post said.
Alibaba said its financial arm, Ant Financial, was developing Smile to Pay.
Meanwhile, a separate report by CNBC said Alibaba was looking at other biometric verification systems, such as using voice recognition, as well as technology that could confirm identities “by scanning something like a tattoo or even a pet.”
Want news about Europe delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Europe Daily newsletter. Sign up here.Plans for a Chinatown high-rise containing 380 condominiums are advancing, despite the developer’s proposal last year to scale it down to include half as many units.
Like the Oakland Tribune Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from Oakland and beyond.
The project at 325 Seventh St. was first approved by the city in 2011, and consisted of two towers — one 27 stories tall and the other 20 — which included the condos, almost 12,000 square feet of open space and almost 10,000 square feet of commercial space.
In 2016, local developer Balco Properties unveiled plans to submit a new proposal with the same amount of commercial space, but half as many condos.
But at the Oakland Planning Commission meeting last week, Balco CEO Mollie Westphal announced the company would be returning to its original plan of 380 condos.
The site sits alongside Interstate 880 between Harrison and Webster streets, across from Chinese Garden Park. A Queen Anne Victorian that sat on the lot was destroyed in a 2013 fire.
Westphal last year said the costs of such a large project seemed too high. But as the company blossomed and other developers attached themselves to the project, it was able to shore up the funds, Westphal told planning commissioners.
“This particular project was our first big development project,” Westphal said. “Back when we did it we thought we’d be able to develop it. The economy changed; we didn’t have the funds. Now after reviewing it, it looks like we’re going to be able to do it.”
For more Bay Area housing affordability, home sales and other real estate news
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At the meeting Wednesday, Balco requested an extension of the 2011 approval. The approval had been extended through December 2016, but now that the company is returning with the original number of condos, it needs more time to “redesign and figure out the structure to be the best for that whole area,” Westphal said. The company is looking to just have one tower as opposed to two, but include four or five more stories, she said.
Though Balco asked for a two-year extension, the commission extended it for a year, to Sept. 6, 2018.
Commissioner Clark Manus expressed concern that a two-year extension would be too long, since the project already has taken so long.
“The leash needs to be tighter,” Manus said. “Clearly I am in full support of delivering housing and this getting built, but I worry about the history of this project so far. … We want the project to succeed in the city.”
Commissioner Jahmese Myres urged developers to reach out more in the next year to people who live in the surrounding community to get their input.
“This is one of the first developments actually in the heart of Chinatown, and it’s in an area of importance, which to me indicates that there should be some more community engagement than it appears there is,” Myres said.
Several other new developments meanwhile have been approved nearby, including a six-story mixed use development across the street from the post office on 13th Street and a 634-unit, 40-story tower to replace the Merchants Parking Garage between 13th and 14th streets, Webster and Franklin streets.
Westphal said Balco’s project is “a benefit to the community,” since the site consists of a mostly empty lot apart from some old warehouses, which the company plans to demolish.
Yui Hay Lee, the project’s architect who said he considers himself a “Chinatown stakeholder,” noted the development provides much-needed housing to the area.
“This project is right in the heart of Chinatown, and on a piece of land that, forgive me I say this, is functionally, physically and economically obsolete,” Lee said. “So we’re talking about returning a piece of land like that into 380 units of housing, I think it would make a major impact on Chinatown.”
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Sign up for the free PM Report newsletter.Image caption The boat was carrying Iranian, Iraqi and Kurdish asylum seekers
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard says as many as 48 asylum seekers may have been killed when their boat sank last week off Christmas Island.
So far 30 bodies have been recovered after the boat hit rocks and broke apart in stormy seas on Wednesday.
Officials have been talking to the 42 survivors to try to determine how many more people may still be missing.
Ms Gillard said around 90 people were now thought to have been on the boat, but some bodies might not be recovered.
"We may never know the precise number, but the advice to me is that the best estimate at present is that there were around 90 people on the boat," she said.
"That does mean of course that we are still not able to account for around 18 people."
The passengers of the flimsy wooden boat are believed to have been Iranian, Iraqi and Kurdish asylum seekers making their way to Australia via Indonesia.
Christmas Island lies in the Indian Ocean about 2,600km (1,600 miles) from the Australian mainland, but only 300km south of Indonesia.The agreement means that homeowners and businesses with rooftop solar systems can sell any electricity they generate but do not consume back onto the grid, and receive the full retail electricity rate in compensation.
Under the agreement – praised by solar advocates and major utilities like Duke Energy alike – the issue will be revisited in 2020. Anyone who installs a solar system before the end of 2020 will continue to benefit from the current terms until 2026 – offering a full decade of pricing and regulatory clarity to South Carolina homeowners currently considering going solar.
“We believe this is a positive step for South Carolina and the future of solar energy in our state,” says Clark Gillespy, Duke Energy president for South Carolina.
The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), a lobbying group for rooftop solar companies, noted that seven US states have expanded their net metering caps during 2014, while none fully retracted their programmes.
TASC’s members include SolarCity, Sunrun and Verengo.
Net metering has emerged as a major battleground for the US rooftop solar industry and utilities looking to slow or throttle that sector’s growth. Some utilities claim that customers with rooftop PV systems are benefiting at the expense of those who do not have solar systems in place, by avoiding paying their share of grid-upkeep charges.
The solar industry denies this is the case.
So far, the industry has been largely successful in stamping out attempts to squelch net metering programmes.
Its biggest setback to date came last month, when Wisconsin’s regulator approved a proposal from We Energies, a subsidiary of Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Energy Corporation, to raise the fixed monthly cost on homeowners with solar by 78% and reduce the compensation they receive for each kWh of power they feed back into the system.The idea of fusion music is nothing new, but when you talk about mixing pre-teen J-pop with death metal, now you’ve peaked my interest. Babymetal sounds like an insane idea for the sheer novelty of it, but somehow the group caught real life anime insanity in a bottle on their new, self-titled album, making music that actually works.
The persistent percussion and aggressively grinding guitar shows Babymetal is not to be toyed with, even if the costumes and theatrics make them look like creepy toys already. This is genre-bending at its loudest, but in some tracks it’s possibly at the breaking point.
Babymetal erupted on the metal scene back in 2010 and is the combination of a immensely talented backing band and a trio of young girls by the names of Su-Metal (lead vocals), Yuimetal (scream, dance), and Moametal (scream, dance). These are not their real names of course, but they are the characters they inhabit as the story of Babymetal weaves a tale of a deity known as the Fox God, who rules over the world of metal. He took in these three girls, renamed them, and they are now his prophets and leaders of the Metal Resistance.
The comic book-styled backstory may not mean a ton on paper but when brought to life in the live shows, it’s a whole new ballgame.
Babymetal has steadily risen the ranks of metal music and even pop music charts while also playing increasingly large sold-out shows at venues like the Budokan (20,000 seats), Sonisphere Festival in Knebworth (65,000 people), and the Forum in North London (sold out in a few hours). They were even brought out by Lady Gaga during her ArtRave: The Artpop Ball tour in the United States.
They’ve been slowly releasing singles, like “Ijime, Dame, Zettai,” “Megitsune,” and “Gimme Chocolate!!,” which through word of mouth and viral status online have gained them a massive following. “Gimme Chocolate!!” is the most catchy of those three, and if you like what you hear on this track, you’re good to go for the rest of the album. It’s the near-perfect blend of metal and pop, as it showcases the balancing act these girls do so well.
The album also has other musical pairings, like on the tracks “Doki Doki Morning” and “Uki Uki Midnight.” The former contains the most bubblegum-sounding refrains on the album, and the latter has strong resemblances to the dubstep world and land of Skrillex.
“Song 4” is a bit of sticking point for me with its odd drop into reggae. It feels a little more forced than the other musical mashups, but maybe I’m in the minority there.
From beginning to end, Babymetal and their debut album (which is already available digitally in the U.S. but drops physically on June 16) prove they are far from just a novelty act. They are a metal-laden wrecking ball, ready to destroy your expectations and blow your eardrums out, all while not being old enough to drink.
[amazon template=iframe image&asin=B00VRJ6HNC]Judicial corporal punishment by caning is in widespread use for male offenders in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, three adjacent and closely linked members of the British Commonwealth in South-East Asia.
This article is about judicial CP (JCP) and CP for infractions of prison rules. There are separate articles on caning in the military, on caning in youth reformatories, and on the caning of boys at school.
Thousands of judicial canings are ordered each year, although the number has been falling sharply since 2008.
Men are caned for serious crimes and also for some non-violent offences like illegal entry and vandalism.
For certain offences it is a mandatory punishment.
These canings are very severe and are criticised by such organisations as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch.
In all three countries, caning in the case of adult men is administered across the bare seat. Contrary to popular myth, this is carried out privately inside the prison. There has been no public JCP of adults in these countries for perhaps a hundred years.
The prisoner is stripped naked and shackled by strong leather straps to a trestle or A-frame. In Singapore and Brunei he is held in a bent-over position with his buttocks protruding. In Malaysia he stands upright at the A-frame to which he is tied.
He is then punished by a well-built warder wielding a four-foot long length of flexible rattan which has been soaked in water.
Left: Official demonstration of caning of a dummy in Singapore
Right: Official demonstration of caning of a dummy in Malaysia
Left: Official demonstration of caning of a dummy in Brunei
THE HISTORY OF CANING IN SINGAPORE, MALAYSIA AND BRUNEI
The penal legislation in what used to be "British Malaya" -- the peninsular part of present-day Malaysia, plus Singapore -- has its historical roots in the criminal laws of England and India.
When the Straits Settlements, comprising the three predominantly Chinese-populated port cities of Singapore, Melaka (Malacca) and Penang (George Town), was formed as a British colony in 1826, the criminal law of England applied.
Straits Settlements Penal Code Ordinance IV replaced the common law in 1871. It was based on the Indian Penal Code, enacted in 1860.
Offences punishable by whipping in the Code were robbery, aggravated theft, house trespass or house breaking, assault with intent to outrage modesty, and a second or subsequent offence of rape or living on or trading in prostitution.
This list of "whipping offences" was roughly similar to that of England and Wales at the time.
The remainder of what is now Malaysia consisted of separate Moslem sultanates, nominally independent but increasingly under de facto British control. By the early part of the 20th century, these had coalesced into three groupings:
the Federated Malay States (FMS), a fully-fledged British protectorate with a new federal capital at Kuala Lumpur ("KL"); this comprised the sultanates of Selangor, Perak, Pahang and Negri Sembilan;
the "unfederated Malay states", a more diffuse (and not geographically contiguous) grouping of five states, four of which were ceded in 1909 by Siam (now Thailand), with a somewhat looser relationship with Britain;
and two states on the island of Borneo, British North Borneo (now Sabah) and Sarawak, nowadays together described as East Malaysia.
A separate Malay sultanate on Borneo, the small oil-rich state of Brunei, has, like Singapore, chosen to become independent rather than be part of the new post-1963 Malaysia.
Given all these shifting legal and constitutional complexities, it is not clear exactly how, when or to what extent practice in judicial matters such as CP became unified across the whole territory. However, at least from the First World War onwards, the whole peninsula was in political terms regarded as "British Malaya" and for practical purposes was run as an entity, overseen by a Governor based in Singapore who reported to the Colonial Office in London.
What is clear, anyway, is that the JCP regime as it developed was an outgrowth of British judicial custom and practice. It did not have anything to do with "Islamic justice". The fact that much of the territory (except for the Straits Settlements) had a majority Moslem population was coincidental.
During this period, the instrument used for CP was either a cat-o'-nine tails or a rattan, and "the triangles were of the usual pattern, and the flogging was on the buttock".
The travel writer Bruce Lockhart, visiting Singapore in the early 1930s, was shown round the jail:
"Crossing from one block of buildings to another, we passed a narrow oblong strip of grass surrounded by high windowless walls. [...] There was an atmosphere of cloistered seclusion about the place. [...] And yet there was something uncanny and sinister about these high grey walls which shut out everything except the stretch of sky overhead. The plot is not an architect's whim. It has its uses. Sometimes its walls resound with the dull, heavy sound of the lash and with the screams of prisoners. [...] Since [the 1890s] this plot has been used for floggings and hangings." (R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Return to Malaya, Putnam, London, 1936.)
Most canings in prison are ordered by the courts for offences against the law, but the punishment can also be inflicted for infractions of prison discipline.
In 1938 canings for breaches of the prison rules in the Straits Settlements were:
24 strokes - 2 sentences
20 strokes - 1 sentence
12 strokes - 9 sentences
8 strokes - 2 sentences
6 strokes - 8 sentences
4 strokes - 1 sentence
For the last three years of the Second World War (1942-45), the whole territory was under military occupation by Japan. It is not known to what extent, if at all, the ordinary machinery of justice functioned during this period.
After the war, Britain resumed control on an interim basis with a view to granting independence. The old Straits Settlements colony was not revived. Instead, Singapore was made a separate colony, while a new Federation of Malaya based in KL comprised all the rest of the peninsula -- the former FMS and the former UMS plus Malacca and Penang.
At this point the Singapore Penal Code retained its provisions for whipping, but they were not particularly frequently used. In 1949, 46 offenders (all adult men) were caned by order of the court, and 26 for prison offences. The 1948 Report of the Singapore Prison Enquiry Commission records the rules at that time for prison offences:
"For aggravated offences against prison discipline -
- ordered by Superintendent: not exceeding 12 strokes with a rottan
- ordered by Visiting Justices: not exceeding 24 strokes with a rottan
- for Juveniles under 15 years, by Visiting Justices: not exceeding 6 strokes with a light rottan. Punishment with the rottan shall be inflicted on the buttocks of the offender. In the case of adults the rottan shall be not more than half an inch in diameter, while in the case of juveniles a light rottan shall be used."
In 1953 there were 12 cases of caning for internal prison disciplinary reasons, and in 1954 only two (information from annual prison service reports).
Mention is also still made of the possibility of the cat being used, but in practice it seems to have fallen out of use by this period.
The Criminal Justice (Punishment Amendment) Ordinance 1954 removed the cat-o'-nine tails from the Singapore statute book, and thenceforth corporal punishment could be inflicted only with a rotan (or rottan or rattan -- these are simply different spellings of the Malay word for cane). At the same time, the power to order JCP was restricted to the High Court -- a move later reversed, for nowadays local and subordinate courts all have caning powers. In 1954 there had been a mere 7 canings ordered by the courts.
In 1994 a letter from a former superintendent of Changi Prison during the British colonial period confirmed that canings were inflicted on the bare buttocks. He describes 6 or 12 strokes as the usual punishment, and says he never saw profuse bleeding, only severe bruising. This might suggest that the manner of infliction has become more severe over time.
Corporal punishment as a judicial penalty was abolished in England, Wales and Scotland in 194 |
killers instead of shouted to all of us to make us wake up. We can’t breathe, brothers and sisters. Oscar Grant, Rakia Boyd, Freddie Gray, Ayana Jones, Maya Hall, Megan Hockaday,” Mallory listed the names of those killed by police. “Let us remember the words of Ida B. Wells: ‘The ones who commit the murders write the reports!’”
A string of clergy and civil rights leaders hammered similar points one after another. Despite the injustices that remain, some were also able to point to progress over the past two decades.
“There was a young state senator from Illinois out in the audience 20 years ago. His name is Barack Hussein Obama. Now he’s in the White House. So, we’ve made some progress,” Benjamin Chavis, NNPA president/CEO, told the crowd. “But you and I know we’ve got a lot more progress to make. There’s too much injustice. There’s too much inequality. There’s too much mass incarceration. There’s too much in our communities that needs addressing. That’s why we’re here today.”
The day that started with ecumenical prayers and music at around 7 am, gradually built and culminated with the long-awaited speech by Farrakhan.
In an address that lasted about two hours, Farrakhan castigated white supremacists, state-sanctioned violence, police abuses and the sorry state of race relations in the America. He spared no one, criticizing elected officials, those in the church and others who have stood with hands at their sides while blacks in America endure racial rancor, discrimination and a slate of behaviors designed to keep non-whites at the bottom of the social ladder.
He spoke not only on behalf of African Americans but Latinos, Native Americans, and all of the oppressed.
“Native Americans came in native dress. They’re not here as some mascots. They’re the original inhabitants of this earth and they’ve come seeking justice too,” said Farrakhan, 82. “Their suffering in this land is very great. No crime is greater than those who’ve suffered the most. They are indigenous people not just in this country but throughout the Western Hemisphere.”
Diversity was a major focus of the 20th anniversary. People from varying walks of life, ethnicities, cultures, religions and races were represented, and they appeared unified behind the principled issues.
“An economic boycott is right up my alley,” said Nana Makini Niliwaanbieni, a DC-based Akan priest, educator and activist. “I hope African Americans will heed Farrakhan’s call to action. I made the decision 25-30 years ago about spending money at Christmas,” said the Trenton, New Jersey native.
Elliott Carr, a Cleveland City employee said economic self-sufficiency is a vital way for black people to balance the scales of injustice.
“I’m here for black unity,” said Carr. “I love seeing black people. It’s good to see us all together talking and doing something positive. Black people have to remember that the system is not for us. We’re economic slaves to debt, student debt and other things. A degree doesn’t guarantee anything. They’ll put a case against you and have you caught up in the courts and if you get convicted that will follow you forever.”
The atmosphere veered from somber to festive under the clear blue skies and 70-degree temperatures as speakers like Carmen Perez, a member of the Justice League New York City and executive director of A Gathering for Justice; Native American activist Jay Winter Nighthawk; Baltimore Pastor Jamal Bryant; The Rev. Willie Wilson; Ron Daniels, president of the Black World 21st Century who called for reparations for slavery; Christopher Barry, son of the late DC Mayor Marion S. Barry; and Emma Lozano, executive director of Centro Sin Fronteras, an organization which defends day laborers in Chicago, all electrified the crowd.
“It’s been 50 years since Selma, 20 years since the first march and we’re still fighting,” said Perez. “Twenty years from now, we’ll come back here again proclaiming victory. If we don’t get what we want, shut it down, shut it down!”
Farrakhan, making it clear that economic sanctions are the “or else” of the gathering, promised to unfold a more specific agenda and instructions in days to come. He concluded, “You all with your tender hearts; you never understood what justice is. Justice for Pharaoh is not the same as justice for the children of Israel. Justice for the oppressed is not the same as justice for the oppressor. Mercy is for the oppressed. So Jesus said, ‘God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, the same shall he also reap.’ Oh my God. That’s a horror story for somebody.”
Trice Edney News Wire Editor-Publisher Hazel Trice Edney contributed to this story.He never saw them coming.
It was around midnight when four figures emerged from a white sedan near the Clareview LRT station, faces hidden by their hoodies, the 17-year-old recalled.
His friends scattered. He was surrounded.
"From the back — someone hit me with a hammer," he said.
The teen needed surgery to repair his skull and relieve blood clots in his brain. (CBC) Once. Twice. Skull cracked open, blood pouring out.
"Then I lost consciousness."
His friends called for help. Police, they said, jotted down information, including the phone numbers of the teen's mother.
He was rushed to the University of Alberta Hospital.
Meanwhile at home, a worried Annabelle Bizimana waited up for her child. Her last name is different than her son's, who is not being named for his protection.
It wasn't until 14 hours after the attack that the hospital called, she said.
They told a disbelieving Bizimana her son needed surgery urgently, to repair his skull and relieve a blood clot in his brain.
"I couldn't say anything. I was just shocked," she said.
Police say attack was random
By the time Bizimana made it to hospital, her son was already in surgery. There were tears of relief afterwards, when he opened his eyes, just briefly.
"He just saw me and he said, 'I'm sorry, mommy' and he cried. And I said, 'You know what, now is not the time to cry.Thank God you survived.' "
She was later told her son and his friends were likely on a connecting pathway to the LRT station when the assault occurred. They had just finished a session at their small studio, making music and having some drinks.
The teen said he has "no idea" what provoked the attack and can't remember much from that night. Police said they believe it was random.
"I didn't run with everyone because I didn't understand what was going on," the teen said. "Before I knew it, I was done for."
He said his friends are scared, and so is he, "because I don't know these guys and it was just a random attack."
It's now been a month since the assault, but the trauma lives on.
The boy is back home, stitches out. The scar where his skull was stapled shut starts just above his left ear, snakes up the side of his head, curves around the back, then slices through the top like a giant question mark.
But the headaches and sleeplessness won't go away. And the teen said he can't concentrate on the schoolwork he requested.
He hopes doctors will sign off on his return to school after he undergoes rehabilitation at the Glenrose Hospital.
"I'm very worried because this is my last year and I really want to graduate with the rest of my classmates," he said.
"I might not be able to finish my semester, and it's very important that I finish it."
Other troubling questions
In the aftermath of the attack, another troubling question persists. The family says they want to know why they weren't informed immediately about what happened.
Bizimana still agonizes over those hours her son lay on a stretcher without her. "Maybe he wanted to talk, ask something, say, 'I'm in pain,' " she said.
By the time she made it to hospital, her son was in surgery. Bizimana shudders at the thought that she didn't get to see him beforehand.
"The police didn't contact me. The emergency department didn't contact me. My son was just laying there in that hospital — maybe he could die," she said.
"If my son was dead, they would come that day to my door because he's dead," she said. But being struck with a hammer, "it was like it was nothing."
During his week-long stay in hospital, Bizimana said she kept waiting to hear from police.
Finally, nine days later, she went to the police station to find out about her son's investigation. But she said it took another nine days before a sergeant visited their home.
"What if I didn't go to complain?" she said.
In a written response to CBC, police said a report was filed the day after the attack and they are investigating.
Police said they will respond to additional allegations when the investigator, who is away, returns. But they confirmed officers are expected to contact parents of a minor who is injured and taken to hospital.
Alberta Health Services said emergency room staff do all they can to contact the family of an unconscious patient. But if a patient is awake — even someone underage — consent is required.
For Bizimana, the incident leaves her thinking Canada isn't as safe as she imagined when she and her husband immigrated here 15 years ago from Burundi with their two- year-old son.
"When I moved to this country, I was like, 'Oh, finally, we are coming to a peaceful country, here I will be safe with my kids,' " she said.
Worried about his future
She worries about her son's future, the potential long-term consequences of his injuries and his current setbacks.
He can't play soccer or basketball. He misses reading and his social studies class, where he loves learning about Canada's past and aboriginal history.
He's also worried about how long it will take before he can get back to his biggest passion, making his "own beats" and writing his "own stuff" in his mini-studio at home. The self-taught "trap" musician has dreams of becoming an audio technician and interning in Los Angeles.
Still, he feels fortunate, for the "great service" at the hospital, where everybody was "nice and caring."
And that he survived.
"They just told me that I got very, very lucky, because injuries like that — you either die" or end up with a disability or brain damage, he said.
"I feel very blessed. I feel like this is sort of a lesson for me. It just shows you've got to have faith. Something like this — not a lot of people survive something like that."
Bizimana hopes police will review how the case was handled, and that someone will remember something from that night that leads to justice for her son.
"If we don't speak out, our kids will die. And those kinds of crimes will keep going on."
andrea.huncar@cbc.ca
@andreahuncarThe spiritual father of 1.2 billion people lives in a two-room apartment in Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican City's guesthouse. With its outdated furniture, a 1970s-style sofa, papers scattered on the floor in a work corner, and piles of books that no one dares to tidy, the small and modest abode is a far cry from splendid residence occupied by his predecessors.
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Pope Francis in Israel (Photo: Kobi Gideon, GPO)
And that's not the only difference. During the course of over 10 hours of face-to-face conversations, Pope Francis reveals himself to be warm and friendly, with a good sense of humor and a liking for stories and anecdotes. He's also an avid soccer fan, and the pocket of his robe is never without a picture of his favorite Argentine team, San Lorenzo.
Pope Francis is considered, according to some polls, the most popular figure in the world today, and he seems bent on retaining this title – even if it means breaching the tight security ring that surrounds him in order to come into contact with the masses.
"I know that something could happen to me. It's in God's hands," says the 77-year-old Pope in an exclusive interview – his first with the Israeli media.
"But let's be realistic: At my age, I don't have much to lose. Ahead of my visit to Brazil, my hosts arranged a closed 'Popemobile' for me, with armored glass. I told them I wasn't going to bless the faithful and tell them I love them from inside a sardine can, even if it's made of glass. As far as I'm concerned, it's a wall. I understand those who are responsible for my security; so before visiting any country, I sign a (waiver) in which I assume responsibility for anything that might happen."
Lately, however, with the head of the Catholic Church in the sights of the radical Islamic organizations, he's been forced to listen to his security personnel. Unlike him, they are not willing to take any chances. "On the way back from a visit to South Korea, I wanted to land in Iraq," the Pope reveals, "but my people wouldn't let me."
A war without troops
The visit to Iraq, which didn't materialize, is part of the fight Pope Francis is trying to lead in an effort to stave off the Islamic caliphate. Joseph Stalin once contemptuously asked: "The Pope! How many divisions has he got?" The answer of course is zero – and no fighter aircraft or drones either. But his moral position is important, and he voices it loud and clear.
"The persecution of Christians is more severe today than during the first centuries of the Church," Pope Francis says, referring to the days when Christians were thrown to the lions in Rome's Coliseum. "More Christians are tortured today than they were back then. Unimaginable barbaric and criminal acts are taking place, for example, in Iraq. Thousands of people, including many Christians, are being brutally expelled from their homes. Children are dying of thirst and hunger. Women are being abducted and people are being brutally murdered. In certain places, the faithful aren't allowed to be in possession of the Holy Scriptures, teach the principles of Christianity or wear a cross."
Pope Francis, whose personal secretary is an Egyptian Coptic priest, met last week at the Vatican with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to discuss events in Iraq and Syria, and found an attentive ear.
"The cry of the Christians, of the Yazidis and of other minorities in Iraq requires a clear and bold response from the religious leaders, and the Muslims in particular," the Pope says. "But the political leaders and the leaders of the world powers must also act decisively."
This is not the only front that keeps the Pope awake at nights. We met three times, including in his private apartment at the Vatican, a gesture that few are afforded. We also spoke on the phone on five occasions, with the last call a few days after the massacre at the synagogue in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood. The Pope was shocked by the attack.
Scene of Har Nof attack (Photo: AFP)
"I harshly condemn any kind of violence in the name of God," he said to me in the wake of the incident. "I've been following the worrying escalation in Jerusalem and other communities in the Holy Land with much concern, and I pray for the victims and all those suffering from the unacceptable violence, which doesn't bypass places of worship and ritual. From the depths of my heart, I am urging all the parties involved to put an end to the hatred and violence and work towards reconciliation and peace. It's hard to build peace; but living without peace is an absolute nightmare."
The issue of Jerusalem is one of the main obstacles to peace. How can this be overcome?
Pope at Temple Mount (Photo: Haim Zach, GPO)
"In the eyes of the Catholic Church, the Vatican, Jerusalem should be the capital of the three religions, the city of peace and faith. But this is a religious perspective. Achieving peace requires political negotiations. It's impossible to know in advance where the talks will lead to. The sides may agree that Jerusalem will be the capital of this or the other country, but these are issues that need to be placed on the negotiating table. It's not my place to be telling the parties how to act, but I think the negotiations need to be approached in good faith and with mutual trust. I pray to God that the two leaders will do everything to keep moving forward. That is the only way to achieve peace."
In May this year, you visited Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. It was your first official trip as the Pope, if you don't count the visit to Brazil, which was scheduled during Benedict's term in office. Why did you choose to come to this sensitive region, which is in the eye of the storm?
"Actually, Rio de Janeiro was in the eye of the storm, because of the great excitement ahead of the visit of the head of the Catholic Church. But as you mentioned, it was a visit that was arranged before my time. The visit to Israel was born in June last year, at the initiative of then-president Shimon Peres. I didn't come up with the idea of the trip. But I knew he was coming to the end of his term in office as president at around that time; and as soon as he invited me, I felt an obligation to visit before the end of his term. So I said, 'Yes, I'm going.' It was simple."
Pope Francis embraces Peres upon landing in Israel (Photo: AP)
And how was the visit?
"Excellent. Yes, it was exhausting, because of the tight schedule – or as my Italian friends would say: Massacrante (murderous). But the trip was good for me. I saw things I never knew existed – like in the Jordanian Kingdom, for example, the new projects they are building there now where Jesus was baptized. But I'm also talking about things deep within me.
"When I experience powerful emotions, I become introverted; and it slowly grows until it is evident on the outside. Towards the end of the visit, the spiritual feeling began to express itself. But I protect myself from such feelings because… I don't know … chauvinist modesty."
I was there, and I saw you were very moved.
"Yes."
It must have been very moving for you to be in the land where Jesus was born, lived and died.
"Certainly. It was very emotional."
And what was the most unexpected part of the experience?
"I don't know how to explain it. Everything was new to me. If you had asked me what I was expecting, I wouldn't have known what to say either. I simply went."
You may want to take this opportunity to explain why it is so important for Christians to visit Israel, and Jerusalem in particular.
"Because everything started there, in the Holy Land – the promise made to our Patriarch Abraham, what Moses saw from Mount Nevo, Joshua's entrance into Israel, the Prophets; and then the Baptists, Jesus, His death, the resurrection. It's like a glimpse of what awaits us in the afterlife – Heaven on earth."
Pope at Western Wall (Photo: AFP)
And there's terrible violence in this Heaven on earth, violence in the name of God too – a phenomenon you strongly condemn.
"Yes, it's a contradiction. It's as if someone would say to me: 'This man is a good son; he beats his mother only three times a day.' But violence in the name of God is not a new phenomenon. It has existed since the dawn of history. The essence of religious fundamentalism is violence the name of God. It existed among us, the Christians, too, and there are still extremist groups in Christianity today. The Thirty Years' War, for example, was violence in the name of God. There are extremists in all three religions; but thankfully they are a minority."
An embrace at the Western Wall
For the past two decades, Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis' original name, has maintained close ties with several Jewish figures, one being Rabbi Avraham Skorka from Buenos Aires, the Pope's city of birth, and a mutual friend. Some 18 months ago, shortly after Francis' appointment, Skorka and I visited the Vatican to meet with the new Pope. During our conversation, which lasted five hours, the two spoke of their shared dream to embrace in front of the Western Wall. The dream came true during the Pope's visit to Israel, and present to witness the moving moment was a senior Muslim representative.
"I decided to bring along another one of my friends on my trip to Israel – Imam Omar Abboud, who used to head the Islamic Center of Argentina," Francis says.
"He is a Muslim who prays a lot, a person who is well versed in Islam. Both are my friends; I love them both very much; and there's a very good connection between the two of them too. But because you can't duplicate friends with a photocopying machine, they are very different from one another. It was important for me to bring both of them along on the visit, Rabbi Skorka and Imam Abboud, and the three of us embraced in the Western Wall plaza – a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian. And when Rabbi Skorka said, 'We did it,' we all felt the same. It was like a cry of victory for us.
"But the truth is that in Argentina, the coexistence is not such a strange thing. Why? Because Argentina has a cultural melting pot because of the large waves of immigration. Many Jews came there from Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, and that's why we still call the Jews in Argentina 'Rusos' today. We all had a friend like that, or a few friends like that. We'd say, 'Hey, tell the Russian to give it to me.' He was 'the Russian,' and he didn't care that we called him that. And we lived in coexistence; we played soccer, and all the things that kids do. And we all had Muslim friends too, and we called them 'Turks,' because their ancestors arrived in Argentina with passports of the Ottoman Empire. Yes, there are radical groups, very small ones, in Argentina too, but most Christians, Jews and Muslims live there in coexistence. Thus, my friendship with Skorka and Abboud is perfectly normal, like any friendship between people."
After visiting Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, you organized communal prayers for the three religions at the Vatican. I think you are the first Pope to have made such a gesture. Do you have more plans of this kind for the future?
"You once said to me that I like to surprise. So God, too, likes to surprise, and now we are waiting to see how he will surprise us. I spoke with Rabbi Skorka just today. By the way, this time we didn't talk about soccer because his team, River Plate, beat my team, San Lorenzo, so I didn't say a word. Why rub salt in my wounds myself? Anyway, we agreed in our conversation that God will show us the way. He will guide us on how to proceed from here to bring the religions closer together."
And there's much work to do. A recently published comprehensive survey indicates a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe. How do we deal with that?
"We must make it absolutely clear that anti-Semitism is a sin. One of the reasons I'm here is to remind the Christian world that our roots are in Judaism. In every Christian, there is a Jew; and you can't be a true Christian if you don't recognize your Jewish roots. I don't mean Judaism in the ethnic, origin, sense, but from the religious aspect. And I think interfaith dialogue must place an emphasis on the inseparable connection between the religions, on the fact that Christianity grew from within Judaism. That is our challenge."
Pope Francis, as is his custom, conveys this message through a story. In conversations with other religious figures, he likes to tell a tale about a group of anti-Semitic priests who were sitting together in a room and badmouthing the Jews, with a picture of Jesus and Mary hanging on the wall above their heads. "And then, suddenly," Pope Francis says, "Jesus steps out of the picture and says, 'Mom, let's go, they don’t like us here either."
How do you explain the anti-Semitism that still exists among Christians?
"Well, you are more familiar with the interpretations that justify anti-Semitism than I am – the dark myths, the theory of the 'lone Jew.'"
Christ's murderer?
"Christ's murderers – that's one of the most difficult things. The Second Vatican Council, which convened in the 1960s, unequivocally rejected the claim that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. But anti-Semitism is a very complex problem, far beyond the religious dimension. It also has a political dimension. After all, anti-Semitism is more prevalent on the right than on the left. And it doesn't stop there. There are people who deny the Holocaust – still today. It's madness, but it happens. And it's incomprehensible."
Yad Vashem with Netanyahu and Peres (Photo: Ido Erez)
When you visited Yad Vashem, you kissed the hands of six Holocaust survivors. You wrote in your book about the possibility of opening the Vatican archives from the period of the Holocaust. Are you still planning to do so?
"There is an agreement between the Vatican and Italy from 1929 that prevents us from opening the archives to researchers at this point in time. But because of the time that has passed since World War II, I see no problem with opening the archives the moment we sort out the legal and bureaucratic matters. One thing worries me, and I'll be honest with you – the image of Pope Pius XII (the Pope at the time of World War II).
"Ever since Rolf Hochhuth wrote the play, The Deputy, in 1963, poor Pope Pius XII has been accused of all sorts of things (including having been aware of the extermination of the Jews and doing nothing). I'm not saying he didn't make mistakes. He made a few. I get things wrong often too. But prior to the release of the play, he was considered a big defender of the Jews. During the Holocaust, Pius gave refuge to many Jews in monasteries in Italy. In the Pope's bed at Castel Gandolfo, 42 small children were born to couples who found refuge there from the Nazis. These are things that people don't know. When Pius XII died, Golda Meir sent a letter that read: 'We share in the pain of humanity. When the Holocaust befell our people, the Pope spoke out for the victims.' But then along came this theater performance, and everyone turned their backs on Pius XII.
"And again, I'm not saying that he didn't make mistakes. But when you interpret history, you need to do so from the way of thinking of the time in question. I can't judge historical events in modern-day terms. It doesn't work. I'll never get to the truth like that. Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once gave me a copy of the book he wrote about the Inquisition. I read it studiously. I'm not saying we should justify the actions of the Inquisition, but we need to investigate this period with the right tools and only then pass judgment.
"Did Pius XII remain silent in the face of the extermination of the Jews? Did he say all he should have said? We will have to open the archives to know exactly what happened. But to judge the actions, we will also need to understand the circumstances under which he was acting: Perhaps it was better for him to remain silent because had he spoken, more Jews would have been murdered? Or maybe the other way around? I don't want to sound petty, but it really gets my goat when I see that everyone is against the Church, against Pius XII – all those detractors. And what about the Allies during the war? After all, they were well aware of what was going on in the death camps and they were very familiar with the railroad tracks that led Jews to Auschwitz. They had aerial photographs. And they didn't bomb those tracks. I'll leave that question hanging in the air, and say only that one needs to be very fair in these things."
Padre Jorge
Pope for just 18 months, Francis has already been dubbed by many "the revolutionary." Others argue that he's actually going back to the roots. Francis doesn't see a contradiction between the two. "For me, the real revolution is to go back to the roots, to recognize them and to understand their significance in relation to the present and the future," he says. "I don't know if I'm a revolutionary, but I like to go back to the roots – the roots of our Christian identity, and also our Jewish roots, which I spoke of earlier. The vessel for affecting real changes is identity; and in order to discover my identity, I need to know where I come from, and what my cultural and religious surname is."
You still sign letters to friends and acquaintances as Pastor Jorge. When we were here a year ago, you said to us, "I have to give you something to eat," and explained that this is the "habit of priests."
"And all I gave you was a sandwich?"
No, we ate very well – at your table if I may add. My question is: Do you still sometimes feel like a simple priest, or have you become accustomed by now to the fact that you hold the highest position in the Catholic Church?
"The role of priest best reflects my aspirations. Serving people comes naturally to me. Turning off the light to avoid wasting electricity. These are the habits of a priest. But I definitely feel like the Pope, and it helps me to take things seriously. My assistants are very serious, thorough and professional; my secretary prepares everything I need, so I can fulfill my obligations. I'm not trying to play the role of the-Pope-the-priest. That would be childish of me. A priest's approach is first and foremost something internal, and sometimes it is expressed in gestures you make. Ultimately, however, I have responsibilities as the Pope, and there are commitments I need to fulfill. When the president of a country comes on a visit to the Vatican, I have to welcome him in keeping with protocol. Perhaps I have reservations about the protocol, but I need to respect it. Do you know what the difference is between terrorism and protocol? You can negotiate with terrorism."
The protocol may be difficult to change, but you've already managed to change a few things in the Vatican, in the atmosphere at least, and there seems to be more to come. What are your plans for the future?
"It's important for me to clarify at this point that I am not some kind of a prodigy. I didn't come to the job with a list of personal plans and projects, if only because I never thought I'd find myself here. I came to the selection process of the Conclave with a small suitcase in order to return immediately to Argentina. Every morning, before the secret gathering to select the Pope, and sometimes in the afternoon, we'd meet to discuss the problems of the Church, what things need to be fixed, what should be focused on. Various proposals were raised, and I said: 'It must be done like so; that has to be done differently; and we'll have to say so to the new Pope.' These discussions gave rise to a series of recommendations for the new Pope; and since I was the one elected in the end, I am implementing these recommendations."
For example?
"For example, for the Pope to have an external advisor, someone who doesn't live in the Vatican; so we formally established an advisory council comprising eight cardinals – one from each continent, an additional cardinal to coordinate among them, and the Pope himself – who meet once every two or three months for four days to slowly and gradually put into practice the changes the cardinals have asked us to make. My plan is to implement these recommendations. Yes, I could ignore them and promote other things, but that wouldn't be wise. You need to listen to the voices of those who know."
You've mentioned in the past that you are very concerned about the gap between rich and poor in the world. What can you as the Pope, and the Catholic Church in general, do to shrink this divide?
"It's already been proven that with the amount of surplus food in the world, we could feed everyone who suffers from hunger. I don't recall the figures by heart, but there are so many children who are starving to death. When you see pictures of children suffering from malnutrition in numerous parts of the world, it's shocking. It's incomprehensible. I think that the problem lies with the global economic system. The individual should be focal point of every economic system – the man and the woman, the boy and the girl. Unfortunately, however, money is the focal point.
Money is the god and we are guilty of worshiping idols, the idols of wealth, and we provide them with human sacrifices: On the one hand, young people who are dumped into the cycle of unemployment – 75 million in Europe alone according to figures I've been shown; and on the other hand, the elderly who are tossed aside because they're no longer useful, aren't productive."
Do you share the dark predictions about the future of Europe?
"I'm definitely concerned. Look at what is happening in Europe: The birth rates are very low – 1, 1.2 children per family. No one can survive with a birth rate like that."
Pope Emeritus
A Pope is elected for life. When Benedict XVI announced his retirement and became the first Pope Emeritus in 600 years, the world was stunned. Will his successor, the first Pope to come from the Americas, make a similar move? Francis certainly doesn't rule out the possibility.
"I think Pope Benedict made a great gesture," Francis says. "He set a precedent and opened a door for those who follow him. Perhaps it's the beginning of a new institution – retired Popes. Life expectancy today is much higher than before, and a person reaches an age where he can no longer go on. I will act in the same way my predecessor did: I will ask God to light my way when the time comes and tell me what to do. And I'm sure He will tell me."
If, as he puts it, God instructs him to retire, he may replace his modest room at the Vatican with another modest room in Buenos Aires, in a home for retired priests. "At the age of 75, I decided to quit my position as archbishop of Buenos Aires (the head of the Catholic Church in Argentina) and work as a regular priest, help the communities," he says. "That was my future. I submitted my resignation to Pope Benedict, and they had already set aside a room for me in that hostel for priests."
The bombshell Pope Benedict dropped when he announced his retirement did nothing to alter the plans of Francis either. "On February 26, 2013," he says, "when I went to the Vatican to participate in the election of the next Pope, I told the Pope's diplomatic representative in Argentina: 'When I return here on Easter Sunday, we'll begin the process of finding a replacement for me, so I can end my role as archbishop and become a rank-and-file priest."
And one day, how would you like history to remember you?
"I haven't thought about it," he says. "But I'd be happy if people were to say of me: 'He was a good guy. He did his best. And he wasn't that bad.'"Almost a year after being diagnosed, Benat Intxausti’s battle with mononucleosis continues. The Spaniard has spent nine months without a race - his last race was the Tour de Pologne in July 2016 - and there is no end in sight for him. Related Articles Intxausti: This was a special year but it has fallen apart
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Team Sky told Cyclingnews that Inxtausti is able to train but he is not able to push himself too hard and no return date has been decided. Last month, Intxausti wrote on his personal website, “I don’t know if it will be May or in June, if everything goes well. For now, there are no dates nor objectives.”
Intxausti had a strong start to last season with third at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in February, but things quickly began unravelling. He was forced to miss his following races and a month later, it was confirmed that he had mononucleosis. His main goal of the Giro d’Italia fell by the wayside and he would remain out of action until the Tour de Slovenie in June. He completed that and went on to the Tour de Pologne in July but abandoned on stage 3. That would be the last he raced in 2016, as the virus had returned.
In November, believing that he was through the worst, Intxausti was looking to the future with a more positive outlook. He embarked upon his training programme, with the hope that he could put his annus horribilis behind him. Intxausti rode a couple of cyclo-cross races in Spain in order to get some competition under his belt but he would find himself sidelined once again as the mononucleosis hit him for the third time.
Intxausti is working with the team’s doctors to try and bring himself back to full health. Mononucleosis generally clears up within a month or two but some cases can drag on much longer, with symptoms recurring after it is believed the initial illness has gone. There is no predetermined treatment for mononucleosis, but bed rest is generally advised and medication can be given to treat the symptoms.
Four months into the 2017 season, Intxausti is playing the waiting game. His frustration will be made all the more acute with the knowledge that his contract is up for renewal at the end of the season and with just 15 days of competition so far during his time with Team Sky he will want to put in some good results before the year is up.
Team Sky declined to comment on Intxausti’s contract but said that they are giving him their full support while he makes his recovery.Trial By Combat between a Man and a Woman
Trial by combat (or, more formally, judicial duels) were increasingly unusual by the end of the middle ages, but they were still an accepted |
, are 100 percent subsidies to a government or nongovernmental organization to provide some service or transfer. In the middle of the spectrum are investments that aim to generate a social return above and beyond their private return—in the form of loans to governments or equity or loans to private firms. Such social net benefits may arise through positive externalities such as a smaller carbon footprint or a reduction in contagious diseases. At the other end of the spectrum is private investment that generates strictly private returns, benefiting the investor, the firm, and the clients of the firm. Falling nowhere on the spectrum are investments that cause negative externalities, with a social return lower than private returns.
Giving trends
The total flow of financial resources to developing economies has been rising. The absolute level of global foreign aid (also known as official development assistance), private investment, and philanthropic grants to developing economies combined has increased since 1960 (see Chart 1). However, total bilateral and multilateral foreign aid has fallen as a percent of global GDP over the past half-century.
Consistent with global trends, foreign assistance from the United States, which is the largest single contributor worldwide in nominal terms (but not nearly the largest as a share of GDP) has fallen as a proportion of GDP over the past 50 years. Much of this decline was driven by a drop in assistance from 1980 to 2000—aid actually increased percentagewise from 2000 to 2010.
The U.S. government now contributes about 0.2 percent of its gross national income to foreign assistance; the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all give close to 1 percent (United Nations Millennium Development Goals Indicators database). In absolute amounts, the United States contributed $31 billion in 2011, while France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined—with two-thirds the population of the United States—contributed $58 billion. On a per capita basis, the United States contributed $99 in official aid, while these three European countries combined gave $280.
Some aid is direct budget support, whereas other aid takes on particular forms, such as technical assistance (e.g., Japan) or investment in infrastructure and industry (e.g., China). All these approaches ultimately aim to improve the quality of life in developing economies, while often also serving the donor country’s interests.
Shifts in public opinion
U.S. views on foreign aid can seem paradoxical. A 2010 survey showed that most people in the United States vastly overestimate how much federal spending goes to foreign aid, pegging it at 25 percent on average. The actual figure is less than 1 percent. Ironically, most Americans would like to “reduce” the foreign aid budget to 10 percent of overall spending—a sum that would actually represent a tenfold increase in aid (WorldPublicOpinion.org, 2010).
Attitudes toward aid are changing, however. In the United States, the share of people who would like to cut back on aid has declined steadily over the past 40 years, from a high of 79 percent in 1974 to a low of 60 percent in 2010, with a comparable increase in those who consider aid levels about right or even too low (General Social Survey, 2010). But even though they mistakenly believe that aid is quite high, Americans are on average more likely to say it should be higher still. They are also increasingly likely to commit their charitable dollars abroad: private donations to international causes began rising steadily as a percent of GDP beginning in the early 1980s (see Chart 2).
The growth of private philanthropy may be driven by Americans’ perception that nongovernmental assistance is more effective than government aid in promoting development (KFF, 2012). The accuracy of this perception is subject to debate, but new approaches, such as microcredit, led by nongovernmental organizations are certainly getting more media attention than reliable-yet-stodgy aid standbys like budget support.
Microcredit is in fact a particularly apt example of this phenomenon. A recipient of both private philanthropy and investment, it has risen to prominence on the back of tremendous fanfare, including a Nobel Peace Prize to the Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus in 2006. Web 2.0 services like Kiva also helped bring an already popular approach to a large retail audience, by promoting personal connectedness to aid recipients. Kiva allows donors to read the stories of individual clients and track their loan repayment, and it offers donors social recognition by featuring their stories and giving histories on its website. These are the Facebook generation’s equivalent of sponsor-a-child programs. New approaches, such as GiveDirectly, take the idea of direct connection to the next level and allow individual donations to flow directly to beneficiaries without an intermediary.
Thinking about sustainability
A major question for today’s philanthropists involves that alluring yet vaguely defined term “sustainability.” Charitable donations often play an important role in supporting the vulnerable in times of need when markets or governments can’t or won’t do so. But nonprofits’ dependence on donations makes them vulnerable to fluctuations in their funding, which can threaten their ability to achieve their goals—in other words, they’re not financially sustainable. Given the shortfalls of the nonprofit approach, some potential charitable donors have shifted from the grant-based end of the spectrum toward the middle—investments with social returns higher than private returns—and even off the spectrum, to investments with no social benefit beyond the private benefits.
The primary advantage for-profit firms have over nonprofits is that their revenues are tied directly to their products and services, providing financial feedback when the goods on offer are rejected by the market and ensuring financial sustainability when they’re in demand.
For donors concerned about financial sustainability, investment in developing countries offers the chance to better align revenues with beneficiaries’ outcomes and to create more financially sustainable organizations in the process, because demand from beneficiaries keeps successful programs afloat. Microcredit was one of the first major development industries to shift from a donation-dependent model to one that provides services at market rates to low-income clients.
In fact, it took some creativity to figure out how to lower market rates from moneylender levels to rates closer to those offered by commercial banks to wealthier individuals. For-profit microcredit banks have been criticized for valuing revenues over poverty alleviation, but often the product delivered to the client is more or less the same, and the few randomized trials to date do show more of an impact on poverty compared with the nonprofit model. Few programs have been tested rigorously, but the burden of proof is shifting, and proponents of the nonprofit model must show just how it is more effective than one driven by profit.
Of course, other factors may also influence investment levels. Donors likely turned their interest to financial sustainability because they were disillusioned by the ability of traditional aid to produce lasting change in developing economies. Although the impact of donor disenchantment is hard to gauge and perhaps plays a smaller role than other factors, it is likely no less real. Among the other influences on investment flows are technological innovation, trade barriers, international tax policy, U.S. monetary policy, and the policy environment in the recipient country.
Despite good reasons for enthusiasm about investment, a basic conundrum persists: many ideas indeed require and deserve a subsidy to make up for a market failure. And some level of redistribution makes good policy sense for reasons both positive (improved welfare of the poor helps society function better) and normative (ethics dictates some level of altruism and charity to those less fortunate). We cannot rely on investors to solve all the world’s problems.
An understanding of the structural shifts from aid and philanthropy to investment and a grasp of the appropriate levers for specific problems call for a good look at markets and when and why they work or fail. When market failures do exist, innovations can help solve them. Sometimes the answer lies in technology, such as cell phones or better bed nets to ward off disease-carrying mosquitoes, or in medicine. Sometimes it is about a business process, such as microcredit. When the problem is solvable without subsidy, market forces pull in investment.
The belief that the developing world’s problems are increasingly solvable without subsidies motivates many to focus on investment. Microcredit, for example, began as a nonprofit idea, blossomed, and is now dominated by for-profit investors seizing profit-making opportunities. This is akin to supporting basic growth theory: low-income countries should grow faster than their high-income counterparts because of expected higher marginal returns to capital, which is likely to attract investment.
Investment on the upswing
Investment in developing countries has been on a variable but generally upward path in the past half-century.
Such countries saw a large upswing during the global boom after World War II, an even larger drop during the political and economic turmoil of the 1980s, and a rebound from the 1990s to today (aside from temporary drops in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the 2008 financial crisis).
Two shifts in policy and the economic environment in developing economies deserve particular credit for higher investment: lower transaction costs and better information—concepts straight out of Economics 101. Market efficiency requires perfect information and zero transaction costs. The world may not work that way, but it is a good starting point for analysis and a way to figure out where things went wrong.
First, take “information,” which to economists has a particular meaning. Beyond mere data, information means the ability to complete transactions, to trust that a contract will be fulfilled, to ensure that all parties have symmetric information about the risks and rewards of a transaction. Improvements in institutional quality, in the spirit of Douglass North and, more recently, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, are all about removing information asymmetries.
Improved information can lead to the creation and improvement of actual markets. For example, Robert Jensen’s seminal work on information and markets in Kerala, India, found that the introduction of cell phone towers allowed fishermen to call or text colleagues on shore about market prices before choosing a port. Access to this information led to a dramatic reduction in price differences across villages, higher incomes, more transactions, and less wasted fish (Jensen, 2007).
Transaction costs have fallen considerably over the past half-century. In the aftermath of the Cold War, as it became clear that state management of the economy was bad for growth, many developing economies adopted market-oriented economic policies with an eye toward removing information asymmetries for investors and reducing transaction costs.
To promote domestic investment, developing economies found it increasingly necessary to compete for international funds on the open market, which sparked additional rounds of reform to outdated tax codes and regulations for investor protection. Improved roads, less-restricted capital markets, lower trade barriers, faster and more reliable telecommunications, and of course the Internet have all helped lower the everyday cost of doing business. The result has been a steady reduction in the cost of starting a business. Data from the World Bank’s Doing Business index show a steady decline in the number of days it takes to start a business or register property in the average low-income country since 2005, when such data were first collected. And as institutions improve, investment flows.
Making an impact
What is investment’s impact on poverty reduction in the developing world? Where on the philanthropic spectrum does a given type of investment fall? And does it really matter?
“Impact investment” is a term many people use to describe investment in developing economies that carries considerable societal benefits, meaning that citizens in these countries are better off receiving “impact investment” funds than mere investment funds. But all investment should leave people better off than they were before, even in developing economies, as long as it doesn’t have negative consequences—“externalities” (and assuming away behavioral irrationalities that lead people to addictions, for example, to tobacco or alcohol, that they prefer not to have). Impact investment suggests causality, but rarely do the investors or firms produce rigorous research that convincingly demonstrates a program or investment produced a change in people’s lives that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Economists agree that not all investments are equal. Investments that produce negative externalities—pollution, for example—may actually leave people worse off than before. And in some cases, an investment may merely shift wealth from one place to another. Investing in a firm that offers products already available in a community but whose advertising is more persuasive does not improve the lot of the poor; it simply shifts profits from one firm to another. But in the aggregate, any investment that improves competition and efficiency without causing negative externalities is likely to make people better off.
If impact investing is to be anything more than a marketing slogan, it must be more than an ordinary beneficial market transaction.
The question is, does the gain in societal welfare benefit third parties? In other words, are the social returns higher than the private returns? For example, a firm may come up with clean cookstove technology that uses less firewood than ordinary stoves. Customers save time and money when they need to collect less wood, other household members enjoy better indoor air quality, and the entire population benefits from reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Unfortunately, the rigorous evidence we have doesn’t support this picture perfect story for the cookstoves.
Similarly, the production of insecticide-treated bed nets doesn’t just protect customers from malaria, it also lowers the prevalence of the disease in the neighborhood. Investors who choose projects with the potential for both profits and positive externalities could claim to be more impact oriented than traditional investors.
Still, the belief that an investment will generate positive externalities doesn’t absolve firms from the ethical responsibility and pragmatic need to evaluate the actual benefits, just as charities must take a realistic look at the effects of their programs.
Impact investors can point to profit as an indication that their bed nets or cookstoves are in demand, but sales and participation rates alone do not prove that an investment has improved customers’ lives. After all, some of the most profitable products sold in the developing world are alcohol and tobacco (or local substitutes like khat), hardly known for their widespread societal benefits.
Microcredit is a case in point. For decades, microcredit practitioners made grand claims about poverty reduction based on assumptions rather than evidence and quantified their so-called success simply by tallying the number of participants. But stories appeared in the media that warned of overindebtedness, and people began to worry that microcredit was actually harming its participants. To make things more complicated, the negative stories suffered from as little analysis and data as the positive ones. Half a dozen recent randomized controlled trials have taught us that despite some positive impact from access to microcredit, it is not lifting millions out of poverty.
Philanthropist investors start out with a desire to generate broad social benefits, believing investment is the way to get there. But good cost-benefit analysis has a high price tag, and it is naïve to expect for-profit investors to pay for it if it doesn’t improve their bottom line. So who should pay? It needs to be a philanthropist who wants to measure whether the social returns exceed the private returns. This philanthropist could also be the investor. Not all investments (or aid projects for that matter) should be rigorously evaluated; that would be an unethically high allocation of resources to research. But we need more evidence than we have now.
Money flows will continue through foreign aid, private philanthropy, and investment. Each has its purpose, its merits, its drawbacks. But if our goal is to make a dent in societal problems, we owe it to our future selves and to future generations to make the time and effort to sort out what is good from what only sounds good. ■
Dean Karlan is Professor of Economics at Yale University and President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action.The pro-Nazi core of the Ukrainian government that was installed by the U.S. in February 2014 is too well-documented to be denied, and so the West’s major propaganda media (self-styled as being ‘news’ media) instead simply hide it — most don’t report any of it, but a few report snippets along with excuses to make individual events seem like aberrations, not the core, which they actually are.
Here is a photo from Russia’s “Life News” on May 13th, headlining “Soldiers of ‘Azov’ Teach Students to Shoot a Grenade Launcher and Throw Grenades”:
That “wolfsangel” insignia on their T-shirts is Ukraine’s version of the German Nazis’ original, which is shown here from the ADL:
http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/wolfsangel-3a.jpg
And here it is in an ad for a wolfsangel T-shirt:
And here it is in a flag at a rally by the Right Sector organization, which is the gang that goes back to Ukraine’s Nazis during World War II and that actually constituted the foot-soldiers the Obama Administration hired to bring the present, racist-fascist, Ukrainian Government, into power February 2014:
And here is the video from which that still-photo was taken:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-NzhHv6AAo&list=UUtvrV_ifhx0EDhmPPRl7adQ
And here is a video that gives the Hitlerite history of the Right Sector:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5EkV_PhPI
And here is how Obama’s team used the violent Right Sector to bring down Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Yanukovych government in what the West insists upon calling “peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations at the Maidan Square in Kiev”; here they’ve set fire to police who were defending a government building:
And here is the video from which that still-photo was taken:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h22oHs3eiLg
And here is the Right Sector’s leader, the man who actually organized the overthrow:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/meet-ukraines-master-mass-murderer-dmitriy-yarosh/
And here are the Azov Battalion displaying a photo of their hero Hitler:
http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150131/1017591477.html
And here they are dancing and shouting “White Power!”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMNdXbP_oNU
And here is a video showing how Obama brought Ukraine’s far-right into power:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-RyOaFwcEw
And here is Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland telling her flunky Geoffrey Pyatt whom to choose to be the leader of the new Ukraine that would become installed 22 days later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM
And here’s the shock when the EU’s officials found that the overthrow of Yanukovych was a coup, nothing legitimate, which had brought to power the new government, this pro-EU junta:
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-paet-ashton-transcript.html
And here’s the ethnic-cleansing campaign that Obama’s Ukrainian regime subsequently carried out, bombing whole regions that resisted the Obama junta’s legitimacy to rule over them:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/enemies-ukraine-speak/
And here’s more shown of that (and you see troops from both Azov and Right Sector, plus some plain military conscripts, doing the killing in these scenes):
http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/obamas-ukrainian-stooges/
How much of this, which has been shown in Russia and in other countries that aren’t yet controlled by the U.S., has been shown also on the nightly ’news’ in the West, and reported in ‘news’papers such as The New York Times, and the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung — ‘news’ organizations that deny these realities, whenever they’re brought up, but that can provide no counter-evidence and therefore prefer to ignore altogether these realities, even while claiming to ‘report the news’?
But how else can democracy be killed, than by such a coordinated campaign to hide reality and deceive the masses? After all, what you’ve just now seen documented here is “Leftist.” But it’s also reality. So: fascist regimes need to hide it.
And, similarly, how much coverage, and how much public discussion and debate, occurred about the Obama regime’s having made the U.S. one of only three nations in the entire world that voted in the U.N.’s General Assembly against a resolution condemning the recent rise (in unnamed nations) of racist fascism and ethnic cleansing, and of Holocaust-denial? (Ukraine and Canada were the other two nations.)
News-cleansing fits well with ethnic-cleansing.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.CLOSE President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, a key figure in investigations about alleged campaign ties to Russia, has volunteered to be questioned by the House intelligence committee as part of its probe of the Kremlin's meddling in the 2016 election. (March 24) AP
In this July 17, 2016 file photo, Paul Manafort talks to reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (Photo: Matt Rourke, AP)
WASHINGTON – Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman who reportedly received millions from a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago, has volunteered to speak with the House intelligence committee, its chairman said Friday.
Chairman Devin Nunes, a California Republican, told reporters the committee was contacted by Manafort’s lawyer with the offer Thursday.
“We thank Mr. Manafort for volunteering and encourage others with knowledge of these issues to voluntarily interview with the committee,” he said.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the committee, claimed in a separate news conference that announcing the Manafort offer was simply an excuse by Nunes to cancel a public committee hearing scheduled for next week featuring members of former President Obama's intelligence team.
Nunes also announced that the committee has requested FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency director Admiral Michael S. Rogers, who testified in an open session Monday, to return to testify in a closed session.
“It’s necessary to get both of them down here before we can move on,” he said.
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In testimony Monday, Comey revealed that the Trump campaign is the subject of an FBI investigation into whether it coordinated with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton.
The developments follow a week of dramatic events in which Nunes briefed Trump at the White House after seeing documents that he says identified U.S. citizens in the Trump transition being caught up in incidental surveillance of intelligence agency targets. On Friday, he made a point of noting that he had known of what is referred to as the “unmasking” of those people before he saw documents proving it. He said he doesn’t know who authorized the unmasking or whether there was a legitimate reason for it.
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes responds to a question from the news media during a press conference March 24, 2017. (Photo: Shawn Thew, European Pressphoto Agency)
American citizens caught up incidentally when speaking with surveillance targets are not supposed to be identified except under a strict set of exceptions. Democrats say Nunes’ trip to the White House has compromised the investigations the intelligence committee and the FBI are conducting.
Nunes said Manafort can testify at a public hearing or in a closed setting and it was unclear when it might occur.
“We want more people to come forward, and the good thing is that we have continued to have people come forward voluntarily to the committee,” Nunes said, “and I will tell you that will not happen if we tell you who our sources are.” He vowed to “protect the identity of those people at all costs.”
Schiff of California said during his press conference that he would prefer Manafort's testimony be offered in open session and, if necessary, a later closed session can be arranged. He said he had no objection to hearing from Comey and Rogers again in a closed session.
"But as much of this investigation we can do in public, I think we should do," Schiff said.
Schiff said committee Democrats "strongly object" to Nunes' decision to cancel a hearing scheduled for Tuesday with former NSA Director James Clapper, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former CIA director John Brennan. He said the cancellation was an effort to "choke off" information the White House doesn't want the public to hear. Clapper was the first in the intelligence community to say Trump's accusation that his predecessor had wire tapped Trump Tower prior to the November election had no basis.
"We still urge the majority to reconsider, The witnesses have made clear they're still available," Schiff said.
"There must have been a really strong push-back from the White House about the nature" of the now-postponed hearing," Schiff said. "What other explanation can there be?" He said he hoped constituents would contact committee members, especially its Republicans, and urge them to hold the hearing as previously scheduled.
Regarding the briefing of the White House and the documents regarding unmasked Trump associates that only Nunes on the committee has seen, Schiff said he is "concerned that the chairman has been unwilling to rule out that the documents came either from the White House or in coordination with the White House."
With Democrats saying they have lost confidence that Nunes can direct a credible investigation, Schiff was asked if he should be removed as chairman, Schiff said that's Speaker Paul Ryan's call.
"The events of this week are not encouraging," he added..
"One of the profound take-aways of the last couple of days is we really need an independent commission here because the public at the end of the day needs to have confidence that someone has done a thorough investigation," he said.
"The public is discouraged by this week's events," he said, and wants an investigation "unhampered by political pressures and un-interfered with by the White House."
Schiff repeated that it is "abundantly clear" that Trump's wire tap allegations are "pure nonsense." He said that allowing Press Secretary Sean Spicer to claim British intelligence could have had Trump under surveillance harmed relations with Britain.
"To further justify the unjustifiable," Schiff said of the president, "he is now interfering with this investigation."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2nMvYnrOpinions are like rear ends; everyone’s got one. But when it comes to city politics, the opinion of local merchants can — occasionally — carry hefty weight.
So how much does the opinion of San Francisco’s small merchants cost?
Apparently $100,000 bucks, straight from the coffers of tech giant Airbnb.
That’s chump change for the billion-dollar tech behemoth, which is apparently mulling the six-figure donation to the San Francisco Council of District Merchant Associations.
But Airbnb, as you can imagine, is not planning on donating this money strictly out of the goodness of its app-based heart.
An email shared with me — which was sent from Henry Karnilowicz, president of the council of district merchants associations, to his members — shows Airbnb’s agreement includes the stipulation to advocate on Airbnb’s behalf.
“They will ask us to assist in advocacy in matters as they arise that pertain to our mutual interests,” Karnilowicz wrote to his members, adding, “The Executive Board has asked Airbnb to be our premier sponsor, they have accepted.”
The Council of District Merchants Associations plan to use the money to hire its first executive director in 10 years. Fundraising, Karnilowicz said, has been tough.
That’s 28 merchants associations, which from the Bayview to Geary Boulevard, all over The City, which themselves represent merchants by the dozens, an army of potential Airbnb allies at their beck and call, whenever the Board of Supervisors try to rein in their bad behavior.
This is the same Airbnb that reportedly has taken more than 2,000 rental units off the market during our housing crisis, exacerbating our rents and leading to evictions. Yes, there are mom-and-pop Airbnb users who follow the law, but the supervisors’ legislation to regulate short-term rentals largely doesn’t go after them. Instead, politicians have targeted the bad actors in the Airbnb system.
Now Airbnb may have political cover from local merchants.
The deal, however, has not yet been inked. “We wanted to reach out to the delegates for their input and approval of this substantial opportunity,” the email reads, so merchants can still let their grievances be heard.
Karnilowicz doesn’t agree that Airbnb needs to be reined in.
“Look, Craigslist was doing the same thing,” he told me. “I know people in the housing industry keeping their places vacant. They don’t want to rent anyway.”
Karnilowicz also argued that gentrification isn’t really a thing, and most who left San Francisco did so voluntarily through buy-outs. He said his members are just trying to survive in the face of behemoths like Amazon, which are crushing local businesses.
Airbnb travelers, he said, spend beaucoup-bucks in local shops.
“People are saying, ‘Are we shills for Airbnb?’” he said. “I don’t buy that, myself. It’s a mutual agreement.”
Hey, Henry, no one mentioned the word “shill” until you did. Just sayin’.
* * *
When the marching stops, what’s the next step to achieve political change? That’s the answer the new book “Saving San Francisco’s Heart” takes on, written by Jon Golinger, the man behind the scenes on many a progressive political tussle.
I’ve been on an SF book-binge lately, dog-earing “The Blind Boss of San Francisco” and “Building Community, Chinatown Style,” which both have been captivating. So Golinger’s new screed piqued my interest.
His book is a political how-to, from Golinger’s experience winning the “No Wall on the Waterfront” campaign to his role in regaining progressive control of the San Francisco Democratic Party, to show how local change can be achieved.
The neatest part? His publisher is the now-not-so-defunct SF Bay Guardian. Si se puede!
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My column has thumped Mayor Ed Lee on the head more than once over the years, but holy hell, nothing could make me more sympathetic to the man than an article I spotted last week after the would-be Patriot Prayer rally stirred up trouble.
Breitbart, the right-wing propagandist hub, took a potshot at our mustachioed mayor, writing, “San Francisco Congratulates Itself on Shutting Down Free Speech,” after Patriot Prayer canceled its own event at Crissy Field on Aug. 26.
The article calls out Lee specifically for labeling the rally “violent in advance,” despite the fact that Patriot Prayer rallies have seen violence over and over.
Breitbart boasts absolutely winning headlines like “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy” and “Gay rights have made us dumber, it’s time to get back in the closet.”
Our usual disagreements aside, I think Lee should wear their ire as a badge of honor.
On Guard prints the news and raises hell each week. Email Fitz at joe@sfexaminer.com, follow him on Twitter and Instagram @FitztheReporter, and Facebook at facebook.com/FitztheReporter.
Click here or scroll down to commentRailing against rising electricity prices under the Liberal government, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak admitted a Tory government could not promise lower rates. “The answer is no on that,” he told reporters Tuesday, a day after Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli unveiled a new energy plan for the province that will see residential hydro bills rise 42 per cent in five years.
PC Leader Tim Hudak, left, says the energy policty of a government run by him would be a matter of "limiting the damage" caused by the Liberals. ( Richard J. Brennan / Toronto Star )
“It’s a matter of limiting the damage that these failed policies are costing our province,” Hudak added, taking a shot at the blueprint that suspends plans for two new nuclear reactors, boosts conservation and adds wind and solar power. Chiarelli predicted Monday that electricity prices will actually be lower than the Liberal government promised in its last energy plan in 2010, with average rate hikes of 2.8 per cent over the next 20 years, down from the previous 3.4 per cent forecast. That was accomplished by shelving plans to spend $15 billion on two new reactors at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington station and by cutting green energy payouts by roughly $5 billion.
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Under the Liberal changes, the average residential electricity bill will go up $12 monthly next year to $137, and hit $178 a month by 2016. Hudak said Ontario would be better off avoiding more wind and solar power, for which the Liberals pay higher prices to producers, and building two new reactors at Darlington. “If you actually make sensible investments on energy that you’re going to have lower rates than you would if you doubled down on failed green energy experiments,” Hudak added, charging that more wind turbines would make rural areas resemble “a giant pin cushion.” Premier Kathleen Wynne insisted Ontario’s energy prices are “competitive” given that the province had to bring on new supply after taking power from the Conservatives in 2003 following a massive blackout. “When we came into office there was not a stable supply of electricity in this province... so we made those investments,” she said during the legislature’s question period, where she also came under attack on electricity prices from NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
“Does the premier have any relief to offer people?” Horwath was asked Monday if she could promise frozen or lower electricity prices if the NDP wins the next election, which could come as early as next spring. Like Hudak, Horwath would not make such a promise.Physics boffins have discovered a dying galaxy whose black hole core has emitted the biggest burst of energy ever to be found by scientists.
Researchers at Virginia Tech in the US examined the record-breaking quasar, dubbed SDSS J1106+1939, using a colossal telescope in Paranal, Chile to observe what they described as a "monster outflow".
They explained that the rate at which energy was carried away by the lusty mass of material ejected was equivalent to two trillion times the power output of the sun.
"This is about 100 times higher than the total power output of the Milky Way galaxy," said associate physics professor Nahum Arav.
In other words, while our Milky Way galaxy has a relatively piddly black hole at its heart, the one found in quasar SDSS J1106+1939 is whopping.
The findings were released on Wednesday by the European Southern Observatory, whose telescope was used during the study.
Before now, galaxy hunters could merely gossip about the possibility of such humongous energy flows being generated from the light phenomenon produced by material falling into a black hole.
"For the last 15 years many theorists have said that if there were such powerful outflows it would help answer many questions on the formation of galaxies, on the behavior of black holes, and on the enrichment of the intergalactic medium with elements other than hydrogen and helium," said Arav.
"This discovery means we can better explain the formation of galaxies. There are hundreds of people doing the theoretical side of the work. They hypothesise outflows in their simulations, and now we've found an outflow in the magnitude that has only been theorised in the past. Now they can refine their already impressive models and base them on empirical data."
Artist’s impression of the huge outflow ejected from the quasar SDSS J1106+1939.
Pic credit: European Southern Observatory
Scientists have known about quasars for 40 years now, allowing physicists to calculate things like the mass of mechanical energy the black hole was emitting by measuring its outflow.
Arav's discovery of SDSS J1106+1939's outflow makes it five times more powerful than the previous record-holder that was also first spotted by the prof.
He enthused: "I've been looking for something like this for a decade, so it's thrilling to finally find one of the monster outflows that have been predicted."
Researchers said that, according to the Virginia Tech's analysis, a mass of more than 400 times that of the sun is streaming away from the quasar at a speed of 8,000 kilometers per second.
What a blast.As I watch the education "debate" in America I wonder if we have simply lost our minds. In the cacophony of reform chatter -- online programs, charter schools, vouchers, testing, more testing, accountability, Common Core, value-added assessments, blaming teachers, blaming tenure, blaming unions, blaming parents -- one can barely hear the children crying out: "Pay attention to us!"
None of the things on the partial list above will have the slightest effect on the so-called achievement gap or the supposed decline in America's international education rankings. Every bit of education reform -- every think tank remedy proposed by wet-behind-the-ears MBAs, every piece of legislation, every one of these things -- is an excuse to continue the unconscionable neglect of our children.
As Pogo wisely noted, "We have met the enemy and he is us." We did this to our children and our schools.
We did this by choosing to see schools as instructional factories, beginning in the early 20th century.
We did this by swallowing the obscene notion that schools and colleges are businesses and children are consumers.
We did this by believing in the infallibility of free enterprise, by pretending America is a meritocracy, and by ignoring the pernicious effects of unrelenting racism.
We did this by believing that children are widgets and economy of scale is both possible and desirable.
We did this by acting as though reality and the digital representation of reality are the same thing.
We did this by demeaning the teaching profession.
We did this by allowing poverty and despair to shatter families.
We did this by blaming these families for the poverty and despair we inflicted on them.
We did this by allowing school buildings to deteriorate, by removing the most enlivening parts of the school day, by feeding our children junk food.
We did this by failing to properly fund schools, making them dependent on shrinking property taxes and by shifting the costs of federal mandates to resource-strapped states and local communities.
We did this by handcuffing teachers with idiotic policies, constant test preparation and professional insecurity.
America's children need our attention, not Pearson's lousy tests or charter schools' colorful banners and cute little uniforms that make kids look like management trainees.
America's teachers need our support, our admiration, and the freedom to teach and love children.
The truth is that our children need our attention, not political platitudes and more TED talks.
The deterioration began in earnest with the dangerously affable Ronald Reagan, whose "aw shucks" dismantling of the social contract has triggered 30 years of social decline, except for the most privileged among us. The verdict is in. The consequence of trickle down economics has been tens of millions of American families having some pretty nasty stuff dripping on them.
Education was already in trouble and then, beginning in 2001 with the ironically named No Child Left Behind Act (which has left almost all |
. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
Slovakia has a tiny Muslim community of several thousand.
Fico's government filed a legal challenge last month to a mandatory plan by the European Union to distribute migrants among members of the bloc.
Fico said Thursday his government sees what he calls a "clear link" between the waves of refugees and the Paris attacks and the sexual assaults and robberies during the New Year's Eve festivities in Germany.
He says: "We don't want what happened in Germany to happen here."
Fico says "the idea of multicultural Europe has failed" and that "the migrants cannot be integrated, it's simply impossible."
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2:30 p.m.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is telling European allies the continent's open-borders system can only work if others share responsibility for the migrant crisis.
Germany registered nearly 1.1 million people as asylum-seekers last year and Sweden also took in large numbers. But Merkel has made little headway in persuading many other European Union members to share the burden of people seeking safety and a better life.
Merkel said after meeting her Romanian counterpart Thursday: "I don't want to make any concrete threats here... but I would like to say that a Schengen (border-free travel) system can only work if joint responsibility is taken for refugees and joint responsibility is taken for protecting external borders."
Germany is among several countries that have introduced temporary checks on borders with other EU nations.
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2:20 p.m.
Finnish officials say the number of asylum-seekers arriving in the country last year was nearly 10 times greater than in 2014.
Immigration officials said Thursday 32,478 people sought shelter in the Nordic nation in 2015 in comparison to 3,651 in 2014.
More than 20,000 people were Iraqis, followed by migrants from Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.
Spokeswoman Verna Leinonen from The Finnish Migration Service says the number of asylum-seekers arriving in the country of 5.5 million had hovered between 3,000 and 5,000 in the previous decade.
Finnish immigration officials said earlier this week that recent measures by neighboring Sweden and Denmark to tighten border controls have substantially decreased the number of arrivals.
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12:45 p.m.
The Swedish government has extended temporary border controls by a month until Feb. 8.
Sweden reintroduced the border controls in November and has extended them several times in a bid to stem the flow of migrants entering the country from Denmark and Germany. Sweden received more than 160,000 asylum-seekers last year.
The countries of the visa-free Schengen Zone aren't supposed to have any internal border controls but member states can temporarily reintroduce them if they face threats to public order or security.
The government said Thursday that "the conditions on which the earlier decisions were taken still apply."
As of this week, the government is also requiring companies providing ferry, train or bus service from neighboring countries to check the IDs of all passengers heading to Sweden.
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12:40 p.m.
The European Union says Turkey is not doing enough to halt the flow of migrants as countries in northern Europe tighten border controls in an effort to manage the arrivals.
European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans said on Thursday that arrivals into Europe from Turkey "have remained relatively high, so there is still a lot of work to do there."
He told reporters in Amsterdam that "we are a long way from being satisfied."
Turkey agreed in November to do more to stem the flow of migrants into Greece in exchange for billions of euros in refugee aid money, an easing of visa restrictions and the fast-tracking of its EU membership process.
A top German interior ministry official said Wednesday that some 3,200 people are arriving in Germany each day and that numbers have not declined.
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11:55 a.m.
A spokeswoman for Poland's border guards says 30 Polish guards have left for Slovenia to help tighten its border with Croatia.
Agnieszka Golias told The Associated Press on Thursday that the guards are being sent at Slovenia's request. Together with Slovenian police they will be patrolling the border in the Brezice region, connected by major road and railway routes with Croatia's capital, Zagreb.
Their mission will run through Feb. 4 and their task will be to prevent migrants from making illegal crossings, surveying spots where such crossings occur, and they will support local police in maintaining order in the area.
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11:45 a.m.
Norwegian immigration officials say 31,145 people applied for asylum in the country last year, almost three times as many as in 2014.
Presenting the statistics on Thursday, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration said one-third of the asylum-seekers were Syrians. The second biggest group was Afghans, followed by Iraqis and Eritreans.
The agency said just over half of the asylum-seekers were adult men, 15 percent were adult women and 33 percent were minors.
About 5,300 of the minors were unaccompanied, most of them from Afghanistan.
Officials project that up to 60,000 people could apply for asylum in Norway, one of Europe's richest countries, in 2016.
Neighboring Sweden received nearly 163,000 asylum-seekers last year.
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The item timed at 12:45 p.m. has been corrected to note that that the removal of border controls relates to the Schengen Zone, not the European Union.High protein diets are increasingly popularized in lay media as a promising strategy for weight loss by providing the twin benefits of improving satiety and decreasing fat mass. Some of the potential mechanisms that account for weight loss associated with high-protein diets involve increased secretion of satiety hormones (GIP, GLP-1), reduced orexigenic hormone secretion (ghrelin), the increased thermic effect of food and protein-induced alterations in gluconeogenesis to improve glucose homeostasis. There are, however, also possible caveats that have to be considered when choosing to consume a high-protein diet. A high intake of branched-chain amino acids in combination with a western diet might exacerbate the development of metabolic disease. A diet high in protein can also pose a significant acid load to the kidneys. Finally, when energy demand is low, excess protein can be converted to glucose (via gluconeogenesis) or ketone bodies and contribute to a positive energy balance, which is undesirable if weight loss is the goal. In this review, we will therefore explore the mechanisms whereby a high-protein diet may exert beneficial effects on whole body metabolism while we also want to present possible caveats associated with the consumption of a high-protein diet.Budget airline tells disabled man he must pay extra - for his false legs
Mick Skee is furious after being told his prosthetic legs will count as excess baggage
A disabled man has condemned a budget airline that told him he must pay to take his spare prosthetic legs on holiday.
Double amputee Mick Skee is angry that airline Jet2 will not waive the excess baggage charge when he travels to Majorca next May.
He lost both his legs after contracting meningococcal septicaemia in 2006.
The 47-year-old said today: 'In my opinion, the prosthetic legs are a disability aid. A wheelchair is classed as that and can be transported free of charge.
'It is ridiculous. The legs weigh less than a wheelchair, but I have been told that Jet2 are not prepared to budge.
'If I wanted to take a spare pair of prosthetics, I will have to pay an extra £10 for each way.'
Mr Skee, a father-of-four from Wardley, Gateshead, plans to write to Jet2 to protest and to highlight the problem with his local MP.
The catering manager for Tyne-and-Wear Fire Services and his wife Sandra, 40, booked their trip through a holiday website called On The Beach.
Mr Skee said: 'After getting confirmation details, I contacted them to say I needed special assistance for transportation of prosthetic limbs.
'They emailed me for my medication condition and contacted Jet2, who in turn told them they were not prepared to transport the legs for free.
'On The Beach have said they will pay the extra baggage charge, but that is not the point.
'It's the principle. This is something that could affect other people in the same situation and it is an issue that needs to be dealt with.'
Jet2 told Mr Skee it would charge him £10 each to transport his spare legs
He had a pair of limbs specially made and fitted with training shoes. He is having another pair made at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital so he can wear dress shoes.
He said: 'I wanted to take a spare pair on holiday because if one pair gets damaged I could use the other pair. But also if I want to take my wife out for dinner and get dressed up, I can put the other pair on.'
A spokesman for Jet2 said the airline would not comment on individual cases.
But the company advised Mr Skee to make a formal complaint to its customer services department and said it would endeavour to provide a response within 21 days.Encountering the Spirit: The Charismatic Tradition
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006; 152 pp.)
by
Mark Cartledge
This volume is the twenty-second installment in an extended series that explores the variety of ways in which people pursue and express their hunger for spirituality. Additional volumes are devoted to such themes as the Carmelite Tradition, Ignatian Spirituality, the Anabaptist Tradition, the Medieval English Mystics, the Celtic Tradition, the Orthodox Tradition, the Anglican Spiritual Tradition, as well as Benedictine, Quaker, Byzantine, Lutheran and a host of other expressions in the pursuit of wisdom and relationship with God.
That a volume should be devoted to The Charismatic Tradition is certainly appropriate, if for no other reason than that in excess of 500 million people worldwide would identify with some expression of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Mark Cartledge, who identifies himself as “a charismatic Anglican” (136), is himself eminently qualified to write this book, having contributed several volumes to an analysis of charismatic life, with particular focus on the spiritual gifts of prophecy and tongues. He currently serves as Senior Lecturer in Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology at the University of Birmingham in England.
Cartledge contends that “the central motif of the charismatic tradition is the ‘encounter with the Spirit’ both corporately within the worshipping life of the Church and individually through personal devotion and ongoing work and witness in the world” (16). One of his primary points of emphasis is that charismatic spirituality is not new or recent but has been a staple feature of Christianity from its earliest days, “even if aspects of it have been marginalized and ignored at various points in history” (16).
One of the more helpful features of this book is the way Cartledge labors to provide a historical context for his discussion of charismatic spirituality. He does this both in the early pages of the first chapter and all of the second. But before noting his conclusions, a word is in order about the “theological context” in which he casts this tradition.
Cartledge believes that “every expression of Christian spirituality [charismatic and non-charismatic] is an indication of a process of searching for God, who once encountered effects change within the life of the searcher, who is then transformed or renewed in order to continue the journey” (25). In a Roman Catholic church the “encounter” with the divine is located in the altar where the Eucharist is celebrated; in a Protestant Evangelical church it is in the pulpit where the Word is proclaimed; and in a charismatic church it is on the platform where a worship team leads in corporate praise and prayer ministry. In a typical charismatic worship service, “participants are taken through a search-encounter-transformation cycle. This begins with praise, moves to prayer and the ministry of reading and hearing the Scriptures preached, followed by prayer over and for the people via ‘altar calls’ or ministry times. The outcome of such encounters with the Spirit is transformation of the person in some way (edification, healing, cleansing, empowerment” (26). Of course, Pentecostals and Charismatics “would also see that God is encountered in the preaching of Scripture, in the community of the Church as people have fellowship together and in many events within the life of the worshipping and witnessing Church because the Spirit can and does ‘enliven’ all things within the kingdom of God” (27).
Thus the charismatic tradition anticipates continual encounters with the Spirit as part of the on-going life of the believer. Charismatics “expect God to reveal his glory in worship, to answer prayer, to perform miracles, to speak directly by means of dreams and visions and prophecy” (28-29). Cartledge sums it up best in saying that at the core of charismatic spirituality is the conviction that “God is not absent but deeply present.... God loves to give himself to his people!” (29).
Within this broader framework in which God is met, charismatics typically focus on four key themes: praise and worship, inspired speech, holiness, and empowered witness in the kingdom of God. But before looking at each of these, Cartledge turns his attention to tracing the presence of charismatic spirituality from the early church to the present day.
In the second chapter Cartledge focuses on “The Charismatic Tradition in Church History.” He acknowledges that “in certain periods of church history it is extremely evident, while at other times it is almost if not totally hidden” (33).
In the early church and early middle ages he cites a number of individuals who either mention the presence or themselves practiced some form of charismatic spirituality. These include Clement of Rome, Ignatius, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus of Rome, Tertullian, the Montanists, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Athanasius. Chrysostom (347-407) was “the first major figure to deny the continuing existence of signs and wonders in the Church, especially speaking in tongues” (36). Others who refer to the operation of spiritual gifts in this period include John Cassian, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, and of course Augustine (354-430). In the early middle ages, Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede (673-735) are noted as among those who acknowledge the on-going validity of spiritual phenomena.
In the high middle ages, Cartledge mentions Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Richard St. Victor (d. 1173), Joachim of Fiore, Bonaventure, Aquinas (1225-74), and Gregory Palamas. Cartledge acknowledges the cessationist tendencies of Luther, Zwingli, and especially Calvin. In the post-reformation period, charismatic spirituality had its advocates among the Quakers and the Jansenists. John Wesley (1703-91), says Cartledge, “although to some extent tolerant of followers claiming dramatic spiritual experiences, including dreams, visions, healings, revelations and prophecies,... regarded such phenomena as rare and seemed to have little time for ‘enthusiasts’” (48). Earlier in chapter one he provides a very brief overview of developments from Azusa Street (in the early twentieth century) to the present.
Cartledge’s primary concern is with identifying what he sees as the four themes that constitute the heart of charismatic spirituality. The first is worship, which is most often characterized by informality, contemporary music, freedom, full participation (rather than the performance orientation of more liturgical traditions), “an energetic engagement with praise” (58), prayer ministry, and spontaneity that allows for contributions from the congregation that may include “the use of spiritual gifts such as prophecy or speaking in tongues, or... the opportunity to give a testimony for the encouragement of those present” (58).
It might even be said that a form of liturgy exists within charismatic spirituality, one that “is not written down but memorized. That is, the sequence of anticipated events is internalized by the members of the group. In this way there is a combination of an understood format and the opportunity for spontaneity to occur. The liturgy is continually in the making and it is a corporate event requiring participation by all those present” (60). Cartledge, building on the insights of Victoria Cooke, provides a brief analysis of the genre of music employed in this tradition. One may expect to encounter songs of praise, love and commitment, intercession, ministry, and songs of awe and glory. All such songs “display a conviction that God himself is the primary agent in worship and that through them he is establishing and sustaining a personal relationship with the worshippers” (67). Thus the goal of worship is “intimacy with God” (61).
A second consistent theme is what Cartledge calls “inspired speech” (69), such as “reception of revelation through ‘words’, pictures, visions and dreams; the relay of that revelation through prophetic messages, words of wisdom and words of knowledge; as well as the inspiration in prayer, testimony and preaching” (69). He is quick to point out, however, “that most Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders, following the injunctions of Paul, take seriously the need to discern the nature of inspired speech” (84). All inspired speech, therefore, is “relativised” and does not “give a platform for claims to new revelation” (85).
The third dimension of charismatic spirituality noted by Cartledge is what he calls “the sanctified life.” It is certainly the case that modern Pentecostalism can trace its theological roots, at least in part, to John Wesley and the National Holiness movement, but I struggle to see this feature as being essential to the contemporary charismatic movement. Whereas charismatic believers are assuredly committed to the principles and practice of holiness and pursuit of a life consecrated to God, there is nothing especially unique in their approach that would set them apart from the mainstream of evangelical Protestantism.
Cartledge argues that “although charismatic spirituality does not necessarily make purity a prerequisite for the reception of power, as many Pentecostals would do, especially in the Holiness Pentecostal traditions, there is an inevitable relation between the two. It is believed that for the dynamism of the Spirit to be continued in the person’s life, there must be an ongoing ‘infilling’ of the Spirit, and the Spirit would by his nature as holy bring to mind those things which require cleansing and restoration” (98).
Fourth, and finally, “charismatic spiritually has often been associated with forms of apocalypticism: end-time expectations about the consummation of the kingdom of God. To some extent this is still prevalent but cannot be said to permeate every expression of the tradition” (101). What is pervasive among charismatics is the recognition of the “already / not yet” dimension of the kingdom’s presence, due in large measure to the influence of George Ladd and the way his perspective was embraced and articulated by the late John Wimber.
This eschatological tension accounts for why the charismatic tradition emphasizes the current blessings of power that are available to the believer. If anything, among charismatics “the ‘now’ is stressed at the expense of the ‘not yet’” (107), which accounts for the over-realized eschatology and triumphalism that one often sees in the more extreme versions of the health/wealth gospel and the Word of Faith movement.
Cartledge rightly acknowledges that “Pentecostal theology has generally been premillennialist”(113) and that “baptism in the Spirit as an empowerment for Christian witness is associated with an expectation of a ‘harvest of souls’ indicating the imminence of the End” (113).
However, I must take exception with his comment that “the broader Charismatic movement can be classified as amillennialist” (114). That may be the case in the U.K., but in America most charismatics are decidedly pretribulational and premillennial in their convictions and almost entirely given to an unqualified endorsement of Christian Zionism.
This review has gone on much too long, so let me conclude. Cartledge has a final chapter in which he quite helpfully summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of charismatic spirituality. Among the strengths, he cites:
First is “the ability to give a full expression to the importance of experience.... As such it is holistic, uniting the affective and the cognitive dimensions together in purposeful action. It overcomes the old dualisms in Western thought (e.g., body and spirit) and allows people once again to connect their faith to all areas of their existence” (134).
Second, “there is the openness to the empowering of all of God’s people, whatever the socio-economic and educational differences” (134). Thus there is “a radical egalitarianism in the Spirit” in which “ministry is no longer limited to the professional and the elite” (134).
Third, “in theological terms, the Cinderella of theology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, has finally been allowed to attend the ball” (134).
Among the weaknesses, Cartledge mentions the following:
First, “with the emphasis on power and the immediacy of the transcendent within the immanent, the charismatic tradition can err on the side of expecting too much now” (135). Thus “the power of the resurrection can eclipse the weakness of the cross... [and] success and celebrity status can be sought as signs of power and blessing rather than a commitment to suffering and weakness in the ordinary of everyday life” (135).
Second, “the category of creation or nature can be lost in a worldview that sees reality in the dichotomous terms of light and darkness, or the spiritual kingdom of God versus the spiritual kingdom of Satan. This cosmological dualism can fuel spiritual warfare, but it also misses the important category of creation as good but fallen” (135).
Third, “in some places the impact of mature and wise theological thinking is distinctly lacking” (135). The result is that “popular preachers in the charismatic tradition can exhibit enormous influence and yet lack any sense of responsibility to the broader theological tradition and the universal Church” (136).
In sum, this is a very helpful book for those generally unacquainted with the charismatic tradition, but will probably prove a bit frustrating for those wanting a more theologically rigorous analysis.
My primary criticism is that I’m not convinced the four themes cited by Cartledge as indicative of charismatic spirituality are the most accurate way of portraying this tradition. I agree that worship and inspired speech are essential distinctives, but the notion of holiness of life and “empowered kingdom witness” are less evident, at least here in the U.S. Even when they are present among charismatics, they are no more prominent than one would find in many Baptist denominations or even among the Nazarenes.
I think it would be more accurate to emphasize the concept of power in Christian experience and ministry as a distinctive feature of the charismatic tradition (whether in signs and wonders, healing, or the more routine exercise of the charismata in corporate church life). In addition, the concept of divine immanence and the relational intimacy that it produces is far more a factor in the typical charismatic church than either of the other two emphases noted by Cartledge. But aside from these minor quibbles I found his analysis to be accurate and quite helpful.Kaivon Blake Noah Hicks runs a makeshift bike-repair school out of a shed in an open lot.
About 15 years ago, a wide-eyed entrepreneur opened a premium ice cream shop on Bowdoin Street in Dorchester, a neighborhood known more at the time for gangs than gourmands. The store didn’t last long. Now comes a push by local residents and a business revitalization group for a bicycle shop on Bowdoin Street, an area that serves as a bellwether of change in Boston’s low-income neighborhoods.
A bike shop would be a better fit on Bowdoin Street than fancy frozen treats. But it will be an uphill fight. The hipsters, activists, and downtown business commuters behind the surge in cycling don’t live, for the most part, in the 68-block Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood. And the neighborhood’s residents aren’t rolling in money.
City Hall looks serious about expanding ridership in low-income areas. Its “Roll it Forward” program collects and repairs used and abandoned bikes for distribution to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them. Yet there are no bike lanes along Bowdoin Street, Geneva Avenue, and other key thoroughfares. City officials proudly offer subsidized memberships to Boston’s bike-share program. Yet there are no bike-share docking stations in Bowdoin-Geneva or other neighborhoods where many people of modest means would qualify for reduced user fees. One reason might be that official counts of riders used to determine interest in biking generally take place along the city’s major commuter routes during peak business hours. Many neighborhoods operate on a different schedule.
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So how great is the demand for bicycles in Bowdoin-Geneva?
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On Tuesday, Noah Hicks, bike mechanic and local resident, held court at his makeshift Bowdoin Bike School in an 8-feet-by-10-feet shed on an open lot at the corner of Bowdoin and Topliff streets. About 15 bikes — in various states of disrepair — filled much of the shed, including English and Dutch models. Boxes of grips, shifters, stems, and brake pads lined the shelves. Neighborhood kids, mostly in their early teens, descended on the space as Hicks pulled the donated and abandoned bikes from the pile and set them up on repair stands.
Hicks, 28, seems to know as much about kids as he does about bikes. He soon had his charges hard at work changing gears, adjusting brakes, and replacing broken chains. Adults started to arrive with their own two-wheeled wrecks, including an anxious man whose gearing mechanism had been bent into his spokes. Hicks would have been overwhelmed with work if he hadn’t been reinforced by a half dozen young mechanics from the Jamaica Plain-based Bikes Not Bombs, whose mission statement is to use bicycles as a “vehicle for social change.”
Hicks said that much of the cycling interest in the neighborhood falls into the category of “subsistence biking.” It’s common, he said, to see older residents balancing groceries on their bikes. Biking in Bowdoin-Geneva is not so much a lifestyle choice as an essential form of transportation.
Not a dime changed hands during several hours of bike repairs. Hicks manages to keep the bike clinic rolling with a combination of donations and crowd funding via the Internet. It’s not, however, an entirely selfless venture. Eight years ago, Hicks was broke and addicted to alcohol. Repairing and riding bikes, he said, put him on the path to recovery.
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“This is my definition of mindfulness,” said Hicks as he surveyed the swirl of people and bike parts.
Gene Gorman, the director of the Bowdoin-Geneva Main Streets revitalization group, believes that the neighborhood is ready for a bike shop and that Hicks has “demonstrated to investors that this can work.” Hicks certainly has exposed the need. But it’s not clear that residents in the neighborhood can afford to support a commercial bike shop.
One possible solution might be for Hicks to join forces with neighborhood leaders who are trying to create a member-owned food co-op on Bowdoin Street. They are out to prove that fresh food doesn’t need to be the exclusive domain of the well-to-do. Much depends on loans, grants, and the sale of equity shares. But the prospect of a bike shop attached to a food co-op could only attract more customers and greater interest from foundations and philanthropists.
Hicks is a natural teacher. He could use those skills to raise funds by expanding a pilot program in the Boston schools that provides students with an opportunity to build and customize their own bikes.
The opening of a bricks-and-mortar bike shop in Bowdoin-Geneva may be a longshot. But access to bikes and bike repair is a key part of moving this neighborhood forward. And Hicks can’t make this journey alone.
Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.comBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
May 16, 2016, 10:51 PM GMT / Updated May 16, 2016, 10:51 PM GMT By Alex Johnson
The openly gay Texas pastor who accused Whole Foods Markets of having sold him a cake decorated with an anti-gay slur apologized Monday and said he was dropping his lawsuit against the grocer.
Whole Foods welcomed the apology and said it was dropping its countersuit.
Jordan Brown, pastor of the nondenominational Church of Open Doors in Austin, filed his suit last month after he drew national attention for a photo he shared of the cake, which was decorated with the inscription "LOVE WINS" — followed by an anti-gay epithet — in blue icing.
Austin, Texas, pastor Jordan Brown tweeted this photo of a cake he said he'd ordered at Whole Foods. NBC News has blurred out a section of the cake that contains a gay slur. @PasJordan
"That's not the cake I ordered, @WholeFoods and I am offended for myself & the entire #LGBT community," Brown tweeted.
Brown's Twitter account was no longer live Monday afternoon.
In response, Whole Foods Market Rocky Mountains/Southwest filed a countersuit seeking $100,000 in damages for what it strongly insisted was a false accusation.
It said the bakery team member who decorated the cake was also "part of the LGBTQ community," and it even posted store video showing Brown, in an orange T-shirt and jeans, routinely paying for the cake at the register, even though the alleged slur should have been easily visible through the box's clear plastic window.
Related: Whole Foods Says It Will Sue Man Who Claimed Cake Had Gay Slur On It
On Monday, Brown released a statement apologizing not only to Whole Foods and the bakery worker, but also to "the LGBT community for diverting attention from real issues," the media, his partner, his family, his church and his attorney, Austin Kaplan.
Kaplan wasn't immediately available for comment Monday afternoon, and an extensive section of his law firm's website that had chronicled the suit, filed last month in Travis County District Court, had been taken down.
"Today I am dismissing my lawsuit against Whole Foods Market," Brown said. The statement didn't explicitly say Brown was personally responsible for having perpetuated a hoax, but it said, "The company did nothing wrong."
Whole Foods said in a statement that it was "very pleased," adding: "Given Mr. Brown's apology and public admission that his story was a complete fabrication, we see no reason to move forward with our counter suit to defend the integrity of our brand and team members."THIS is the moment Islamic State militants shot down a helicopter flying over Syria, killing all on board.
The video, alleging to show ISIS militants downing the chopper east of Palmyra, Homs yesterday evening was published by its affiliated news agency, Amaaq. Russia's Ministry of Defence today confirmed the attack. It said that two helicopter instructors were killed.
AMAAQ FIRE: ISIS have released a video they claim shows the downing of a Russian chopper
A statement read: "On July 8, Russian military pilot-instructors Evgeny Dolgin and Ryafagat Khabibulin, were conducting a calibration flight on a Syrian Mi-25 (export version of the Mi-24) helicopter loaded with ammunition in the province of Homs. "The crew received a request from the Syrian command group to help defeat the advancing terrorists and fire for effect. "The captain of the aircraft, Ryafagat Khabibulin, made a decision to attack."
#Palmyra: "Destroyed #Russia|n helicopter as it attempted to raid #ISIS locations, which led to destroying it and killing those onboard" — WorldOnAlert (@worldonalert) July 8, 2016
The Islamic State claims to have shot down a Russian helicopter pic.twitter.com/viuMeuHsO0 — Isaac Cohen (@IHWCo) July 8, 2016
BREAKING: ISIS release footage of the shooting down of a helicopter near Palmyra that killed 2 Russian pilots. pic.twitter.com/JsOl1oquiP — Conflict News (@Conflicts) July 9, 2016
It added that they had thwarted an attack, but helicopter was shot down by terrorists as it headed back to the base. ISIS – also known as Daesh – yesterday broke the news it had shot down the aircraft just east of Tadmur, through Amaaq. The attack came as Russian president Vladimir Putin vowed to send his deadliest warship to the Med to fight the terrorist regime.
Air strikes in Syria leave waves of destruction Air strikes in Syria leave behind devastating consequences in the war against Daesh militants. 1 / 53 AFP/Getty Images A man stands on the rubble of a destroyed building following reported air strikes by government forces in the rebel-held Shaar neighbourhood of the northern city AleppoResponding to an Orange County Register story that named the Raiders as one of five teams in the mix to be sold to billionaire Philip Anschutz and moved to a new stadium in Los Angeles, Raiders CEO Amy Trask said no sale.
“The team is not for sale. It will remain with the Davis family,” Trask said in a statement issued through senior executive John Herrera.
In the Register story, Anschutz Entertainment Group president Tim Leiweke talked of Anschutz’s wish to acquire majority ownership and bring a team to Farmers Field, a proposed downtown stadium.
“St. Louis, Jacksonville, not extensively, certainly Oakland, San Diego, Minnesota are still in the mix,” Leiweke said. “We’re not packing any (moving) vans right now.”
The Raiders negotiated a three-year extension on their lease agreement in November 2009 to remain at the Coliseum through 2013.
Trask has stated publicly the Raiders’ wish is for a new stadium at its current site.
San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos, 87, is no longer looking to sell part of his 36 percent stake in the team, an official said. Area college Cal’s Michael Morrison won the national title in the decathlon at the NCAA Outdoor championships in Des Moines, Iowa, after a day’s delay because of heavy storms. Morrison pulled ahead of Clemson’s Miller Moss with a throw of 198 feet, 4 inches in the javelin and won with 8,118 points. College Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, homered and drove in four runs, and Vanderbilt beat Oregon State 11-1 in the opener of a best-of-three NCAA super regional series in Nashville, Tenn. Vandy ace Sonny Gray (12-3), four days after he was drafted 18th overall by the A’s, allowed one run on four hits in 62/3 innings.
Arizona State’s Brady Rogers pitched into the seventh inning, and Texas committed two errors in the third as ASU won the opener of the super regional 3-1 in Austin, Texas.
Auburn’s Gene Chizik received a new contract nearly doubling his salary, to $3.5 million a year through 2015, and making him one of college football’s highest paid coaches following a 14-0 season and the Tigers’ first national title since 1957.
Dana Holgorsen was introduced as West Virginia’s head football coach hours after Bill Stewart resigned. Motor sports Ron Hornaday Jr. got his record 48th career NASCAR Trucks Series victory in the caution-filled race in Fort Worth, Texas, despite crossing the finish line in second. Johnny Sauter took the lead off the final restart with two laps left but was black-flagged for jumping in front of Hornaday too soon.
IndyCar drivers will stage the first dual races in major open-wheel racing in 30 years Saturday night in Fort Worth. Rick Mears won the last dual races at Atlanta in June 1981. Soccer The Mexican government said its beef doesn’t contain clenbuterol, hurting the defense of five players on Mexico’s national team suspended during the Gold Cup after testing positive for the banned substance.It’s been a tumultuous year for many reasons, and when we delved into Berkeleyside’s page analytics to compile this list of biggest stories, it was apparent that our city has been touched by tragedy many times in 2016 — from murders, through accidents, and even terrorist attacks.
Of course, bad news always rises to the top, and there have been many happy moments to report on this year too, not least two remarkable stories of recovery: that of Meg Schwarzman, who survived a horrific bike crash to run a half marathon ten months later, and that of 9-year-old Lillia Bartlow, who bounced back from serious injuries sustained when she was hit by a taxi on a crosswalk, to be escorted to her first day back at school by the firefighter paramedics who had attended to her at the scene of the collision in March.
Since Jan. 1, 2016, Berkeleyside, with its tiny reporting staff and small roster of contributing writers, has produced just shy of 2,000 stories which drew a total 8.6 million page views from a total of 2.2 million users. And that’s not counting our hundreds of Facebook posts, many of which generate lively community conversation; and our thousands of tweets. We have 40,000 Twitter followers, and regularly receive tips and photos about what’s going on from many of them. Twitter is also where we often break news and bring you alerts about public safety incidents such as outages, traffic snarl-ups, and crime.
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Here, then, are the biggest stories of the year, measured mostly by page views.
In number one position is our story about a three-alarm fire that broke out on Friday Sept. 30.at the First Congregational Church on Channing Way. The conflagration brought down the roof and caused extensive damage to Pilgrim Hall, part of the church’s property used for offices and an assembly area, and spread to its sanctuary. The billowing smoke caused by the fire was spotted by people across the bay, and many turned to Berkeleyside to find out what was going on. They shared photographs with us, which we included in our coverage. This is the sort of story that illustrates what Berkeleyside is all about: a community news site that is considerably enhanced by the contribution and support of its community. We followed |
©Magica Quartet／Aniplex・Madoka Movie Project RebellionA Queensland ambulance spokesman said the boy was taken to St Vincent's Hospital at Toowoomba this morning after falling ill, and would be transported to the Mater hospital this afternoon. His symptoms and condition are not known.
The boy's grandfather told ABC Radio in Sydney his grandson fell unconscious after swallowing some of the beads. "We've just heard from my daughter in Toowoomba that her two-year-old son has just swallowed some of those beads - just recently, I don't know whether it was today or yesterday,'' said the man, identified only as Nick. He said his grandson was being taken to Brisbane for treatment.
"Apparently he's unconscious,'' he said. Authorities in NSW placed an immediate ban on the toy, which took out the 2007 Toy of the Year award at the Melbourne Toy and Hobby fair and contains hundreds of beads.
The beads can induce seizures, drowsiness or coma, if eaten. All Bindeez goods would be removed from sale, Minister for Fair Trading Linda Burney said today, and households with the toy were urged to remove it from any area where it could be accessed by children. "This Bindeez product is Australian Toy of the Year; it is extraordinarily popular," the minister told reporters today.
"We issuing right now a total banning order right across NSW." The beads should contain a non-toxic glue but instead they contain a different chemical which the body metabolises into gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), also known as fantasy or Grievous Bodily Harm.
The sole distributor of the toy was the Melbourne-based company Moose Enterprises, a spokeswoman for Ms Burney said. The company was working closely with the department, she said.
Ms Burney said an investigation into the toy, which is manufactured in Hong Kong, would also look at whether the substitution was deliberate.
Two children in NSW, a two-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, have been admitted to hospital in the past 10 days after eating the beads. The hospital contacted the Department of Fair Trading after its tests revealed the beads contained GHB, the spokeswoman for Ms Burney said.
According to Moose Enterprises' website, Bindeez "are bright, colourful beads that magically join together with water to create fun designs".
AAP and Arjun RamachandranA pilot program testing the first ever malaria vaccine will begin in Africa in 2018, the World Health Organization has said. Children and babies in high-risk areas in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi will receive the RTS,S vaccine, which is also known as Mosquirix.
"Information gathered in the pilot will help us make decisions on the wider use of the vaccine," Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's African regional director, said. "Combined with existing malaria interventions, such a vaccine would have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives in Africa."
Watch video 03:38 Share Fighting malaria in western Kenya Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2bqna Fighting malaria in western Kenya
Positive results
RTS,S is an injectable vaccine administered in four doses. It aims to trigger the body's own immune system to defend against malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum - the most deadly species of the malaria parasite, which is the most prevalent in Africa.
Large clinical trials in seven African countries between 2009 and 2014 showed that the vaccine helped protect children and infants from clinical malaria for at least three years after first vaccination.
According to the WHO's World Malaria Report, published at the end of last year, the number of cases of malaria worldwide decreased by 21 percent between 2010 and 2015. However, Pedro Alonso, the director of the WHO's Global Malaria Program, explains that there is a long way to go in tackling the disease: "It still takes the lives of over 400,000 people every year - mostly African children."
In fact, 90 percent of malaria cases and 92 percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa. The long lifespan of mosquitoes in Africa, as well as their tendency to bite humans, is thought to be one of the main reasons for the high prevalence of malaria in Africa.
By the year 2020, the WHO wants to see malaria incidence and mortality reduced by 40 percent and the disease eliminated completely in at least 10 countries. Seven countries, including Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and the Maldives, have been certified by the WHO Director-General as having eliminated malaria in recent years.
Mosquito nets and insecticides
Preventative measures being promoted in sub-Saharan Africa include using insecticide-treated nets, spraying indoor walls with insecticides, and administering preventive medicines to the most vulnerable groups - pregnant women and young children or babies.
Mothers in Sierra Leone sit with their children, who have contracted malaria
In 2015 it was estimated that half of people designated as "at-risk" of contracting the disease were sleeping under a treated net, compared with just 30 percent in 2010. But, as Alonso explains, preventative measures are not reaching everyone.
"It's about having the health systems that can get those commodities to all those that need them," he says. "It's about the financial resources to ensure that happens, and it's about the political commitment.
"We are very encouraged by the political commitment and leadership we see in the affected countries themselves. But the fight against malaria is going to be a long and hard one."Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters during a rally for the upcoming referendum in the Black Sea city of Rize, Turkey, April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday called on Turkish voters in Europe to defy the "grandchildren of Nazism" and back a referendum this month on changing the constitution, comments likely to cause further ire in Europe.
Erdogan has repeatedly lashed out at European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, in campaigning for the referendum, accusing them of "Nazi-like" tactics for banning his ministers from speaking to rallies of Turkish voters abroad.
Both the Germans and Dutch have been incensed by the comparisons to Nazism and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the references must stop.
"With this determination, we will never allow three or four European fascists... from harming this country's honor and pride," Erdogan told a packed crowd of flag-waving supporters in the Black Sea city of Rize, where his family comes from.
"I call on my brothers and sisters voting in Europe...give the appropriate answer to those imposing this fascist oppression and the grandchildren of Nazism."
Erdogan is counting on the support of expatriates in Europe, including the 1.4 million Turks eligible to vote in Germany, to pass constitutional changes that would give him sweeping presidential powers.
But ties with Europe have deteriorated in the run-up to the campaign. Erdogan last month said Turkey would reevaluate its relationship with the bloc, and may even hold a second referendum on whether to continue accession talks.
On Monday, he said he could take the issue of whether Turkey should restore the death penalty to referendum if necessary.
"The European Union will not like this. But I don't care what Hans, George or Helga say, I care what Hasan, Ahmet, Mehmet, Ayse and Fatma say. I care what God says... If necessary, we will take this issue to another referendum as well," he told the rally.
Turkey abandoned capital punishment more than a decade ago as part of its bid to join the European Union, but Erdogan has repeatedly told crowds calling for it following the July 15 failed coup that he would approve its restoration if parliament passed it.
Restoring capital punishment would all but end Turkey's bid to join the EU, officials from the bloc have said.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk)(Barry Yanowitz / Flickr)
The first time it dawned on Micah that he was attracted to boys, he was in the 5th grade. Twenty years later, he still recalls the feeling vividly. The boy in question was a classmate, and they were friends.
“I remember thinking ‘Oh, I really, really like this boy. And I think he really, really likes me,’ Micah told me over the phone one afternoon last fall. He was hiding out in his car outside the university where he’s in grad school—the only place he felt he could speak frankly about his situation. He certainly couldn’t have at his New Jersey home, where he lives with his wife and two kids. Nor, as a strictly Orthodox Jewish man, could he talk about it in the vicinity of anyone he knows at all.
Micah—who asked that I change his name to protect his identity—didn’t fully realize it at the time, but it’s clear to him now that he had a crush on his classmate. “I used to wake up early in the morning and shower, and I used a specific shampoo that smelled really good,” he said. “And I was thinking, like, ‘Oh, maybe he’ll like this smell.’”
Now in his late 20s, Micah is at a crossroads. His wife is eager for more children. Birth control is allowed, at least nominally, but large families are common in ultra-Orthodox culture, and Micah sees himself on the path to having at least six kids. “I really, really don’t want that to happen,” he said. “I can’t bring more kids into this situation.”
The situation, of course, is that Micah is gay—or at least he suspects he might be. Like nearly everyone else in his community, Micah was married young. His only sexual experience prior to his wife was an encounter with a boy—the same boy he had a crush on—at camp, when they were both very young. But age has done nothing to dampen his feelings toward men, and Micah is now faced with a decision: Have more kids, remain with his wife and stay the course, or upend everything he knows in pursuit of a life totally alien to him.
In secular society, coming out as gay or trans can be painful, but it can also be seamless, increasingly accepted as it is in American culture. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, instating a basic framework of protection across the states. All of this could, of course, be reversed in a Trump administration, but by and large, America is shuffling toward a future ever more hospitable of its LGBTQ citizens.
But in the deeply insular world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, few such advances are being made. Chani Getter, a program coordinator at Footsteps, a nonprofit that helps people transition away from the ultra-Orthodox community, said that “coming out” has a twinned meaning for the people she works with. Because of its strictly implemented gender roles, there is no room in the ultra-Orthodox world to be queer or trans. This means that coming out marks a person’s departure from the religion altogether, usually at the expense of family, friends, and one’s entire life as they previously knew it. “Coming out” as being non-religious is every bit as significant to a person’s life as coming out as gay or trans.
“Coming out as not religious is an excruciating journey,” Getter said. Coming out as queer in the secular world is complicated, but for someone leaving Orthodoxy, some people find that “once they’ve broken that boundary—as coming out as not religious—that boundary isn’t as complicated.”
Getter says the majority of people she works with can be broken into three groups, with most people falling into the first two: People who leave Orthodoxy and then come out as gay, and those who leave Orthodoxy while coming out simultaneously. The third group is people who come out and attempt to remain in the community, but are essentially forced out.
“Inevitably they find themselves without a community, or ostracized in one way or another,” she said, adding that in most cases, people tended to swap their Orthodox communities for more modern ones. I asked if it was impossible to be both gay and a thriving member of the strictly Orthodox world.
“Nothing is impossible,” she said. “It’s highly improbable.”
In 2015, the profound difficulties faced by many who leave the ultra-Orthodox world received increased media attention with the suicide of Faigy Mayer, a 29-year-old tech entrepreneur who left the Belz Hasidic community only to jump to her death off the 20th floor of a flatiron building five years later.
Author Shulem Deen, who published a memoir, All Who Go Do Not Return, about leaving the ultra-Orthodox community, wrote in Haaretz, "There can no longer be any doubt: Members of our ex-Haredi community are at an elevated risk for suicide." Deen’s five children no longer speak to him.
Abby Stein (Scott Heins / Gothamist)
No one’s more aware of the difficulties that come with leaving the community than Abby Stein. At 25, Stein is now living a life virtually unrecognizable from the one she led just a few years ago.
Stein, who was born male, was raised in one of Williamsburg’s most prominent Hasidic families. She said she never experienced any sort of identity epiphany—no precise moment where she suddenly understood she was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. She remembers a lingering feeling of bewilderment as a child. "Why does everyone think I’m a boy?” she recalls wondering. But growing up in her extremely insular society, she had no idea there existed a concept like “trans.” She eventually concluded that her identity struggles must simply have been borne from something else.
“I thought that it can’t be gender, because I’d have to be stupid or crazy,” she said she reasoned at the time. She thought about leaving religion. But through an Israeli rabbi, she began studying Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, where she learned about the idea of gender flexibility.
Stein continued to explore the idea of gender dysphoria through a religious lens, though she was forced to suspend her research when her then-wife became pregnant. The question of the child’s sex inevitably came up, which Stein knew would dictate everything in his life from the day he was born, from clothes to room decorations. Stein had never mentioned her struggles with gender to anyone, and worried for her future son: “What if it’s genetic?” she wondered. “What if he feels the same way that I feel? I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
Despite the urging of her rabbis to stay away from the Internet, Stein eventually found her way there anyway. “The first thing that I ever googled was about being transgender,” she said. It was from her forays online that she learned about Footsteps, and from there, she said, she began the process of leaving.
Always an excellent student, Stein got her high school diploma and in 2014, enrolled in her dream school, Columbia University. She assumed that leaving the community would solve her problems, but the process was grueling. “Even while I was doing it, I was still hoping that everything was just going to go away,” she said.
In November of 2015, she came out to her father, who told her on the spot that he would never speak to her again. “I haven’t spoken to my parents since,” she said. Stein is still in contact with some of her siblings, and has found a new community through school and organizations like Footsteps. She is in touch with her ex-wife and son, but declined to go into detail on the extent of their relationship. When asked about the emotional difficulty of the situation, she was steadfast. “I don’t regret literally anything,” she said.
Leaving is anything but simple or straightforward, but through the work and advocacy of people like Stein, it has become more commonplace in recent years. When she left almost five years ago, Stein said most people in her position were shunned by their families. While leaving still causes a rift, it less frequently results in total ostracism.
“I think it’s because there’s so many of us,” Stein said. “It got to the point where every extended family has a few people. A big part of why I agreed to be so public when I left was because I wanted people to talk about it, so hopefully the next person who goes out, it wouldn’t be such a big deal.”
Mordechai Levovitz, the executive director of JQY, an organization that helps at-risk LGBTQ Jewish youth in New York, has observed this critical mass.
“So many people are coming out, it’s undeniable,” he said. In the past, “there was a certain luxury of plausible deniability.” Now, as gay and trans people are increasingly included in the Jewish experience, and as more people are coming out, they’re becoming harder to ignore.
“Like anything else, power is never given, it’s taken,” he said. “I don’t think there was any great enlightenment. I think they could not keep this power anymore, so they had to change.”
Micah, for his part, remains in the throes of indecision. Endowed with a mathematical mind, he’s long since stopped believing in religion, a fact which he has only recently told his wife.
“I’m not that type of person. I’m a rationalist. I don’t believe in all that junk,” he said. “It’s not for me.”
Micah counts himself as extremely lucky. His wife, who is very much invested in the ultra-Orthodox community, was understanding of his decision to leave religion, and is aware that he’s questioning his sexuality.
“There was very little anger, but a lot of pain,” he said. Now, they must both face a litany of unpleasant questions, like whether their marriage will last, and whether either of them even want it to. And their children—what’s best for them? These are the huge, unwieldy quandaries with which Micah is wrestling as we speak, sitting in his car as though he’s in hiding.
“Everything I know—everyone I love and everyone who loves me—is gonna get thrown in the garbage,” he said. “It’s a major life choice. Everything you know is turned upside down.”
As Chani Getter, the program coordinator at Footsteps, put it: “You not only ‘might’ lose your family, or your community. You will lose your entire family and community.”
I asked Micah where he sees himself in five years and his answers were so expansive it seemed he hadn’t given the question much thought. Maybe they could move somewhere closer to his wife’s family, where he could get a little more space. Maybe they could reach a compromise on his involvement with religion. But that wouldn’t account for the issue of his attraction to men. Maybe they’ll get divorced and he can share custody over his children? Maybe he’ll move to New York City, living fully out? “It’s scary,” he said finally. “But maybe it’s what I want.”
For Micah, and many others, the loss of community yields an opportunity for a new life, one that will presumably fit better than the original. Micah heard of Footsteps through an article he found online, and met with a staff member around a month before we spoke.
Walking in to meet with a counsellor there for the first time was a revelation. Until that moment, Micah says, he’d never felt like he truly belonged anywhere. His friends and family loved him, of course, but he never felt they really knew him—the real him. Walking into Footsteps, everything changed.
“I immediately burst out crying, and I just sat in her office, sobbing,” he said. “It was just so overwhelming. It was like, I made it. I’m safe. It was just the strangest feeling.”
Micah had experienced this sensation—the awareness that his people were out there—just once before. He’d been flipping through the radio, and stopped on a program, he’s not sure which one, that gripped him completely. He learned later it was on NPR. He remembers at the time thinking how much he wanted to find these people, but was hit simultaneously by the realization that he never would. Now, Micah realizes they—his people—are within reach.
“I knew that gay people exist, I was aware of the world, but people who are literally like me? Who grew up ultra-Orthodox, they’re in exactly the same situation?,” he said. “And they’re happy. It was amazing to feel welcomed for who I am.”This Lifetime GOP Voter Is With Her
Every four years since 1988, I have voted for the Republican presidential candidate. That streak will now be broken. For the first time in my life I will vote for the Democratic nominee. I have previously laid out the reasons why I am a #NeverTrumper. You can read my latest rundown here. But while it’s easy to say who I’m against — Trump is the least qualified and most dangerous presidential candidate in American history — it’s been more of a struggle to figure out who I’m for.
I can’t vote for Gary Johnson, a candidate who has never heard of Aleppo; I don’t want to reward cluelessness. I can’t vote for Jill Stein, who is as pro-Putin as Trump. I could easily vote for Evan McMullin, the only conservative in the race — and I would if I lived in Utah where he has a decent shot at winning. But he’s not on the ballot in New York state. In any case, if my primary goal is to stop Trump from getting his hands on the nuclear codes, the most effective way to do that is to support the only other candidate who has any chance of winning.
A lot of my Republican friends are incredulous to learn that #ImWithHer. In truth, I’m more than a little surprised myself. If a sane Republican like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or Marco Rubio had been nominated I wouldn’t be voting for Clinton. But the GOP instead chose to nominate a malevolent carnival barker. So I will cast a ballot for the sane alternative.
“But … but … but …” sputter Trump voters, “how can you support a woman who belongs in jail and wants to impose a radical left-wing agenda?” If I thought these things were true, I wouldn’t vote for Clinton. But they’re simply not true.
I got to spend a little time with Clinton when she was a U.S. senator and we both served on an advisory board at the now-defunct U.S. Joint Forces Command. Given the harsh logic of the alphabet — C comes after B — I found myself seated next to her on several occasions. I found her to be a charming conversationalist with a lot of interest in learning about defense issues. I did not detect her peddling any ideological agenda; she simply wanted to figure out the best course of action. The Hillary I met doesn’t match the ogre of Republican myth.
I am not alone in reaching that conclusion — many Republican senators were surprised to find how easily Clinton was to get along with and work with. She always does her homework so she is always prepared for any situation — whether it’s a Senate hearing or a presidential debate. And she usually tackles issues in a pragmatic rather, than ideological, fashion. There’s a good reason why partisans of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are so suspicious of her: They know that she’s not really one of them.
The WikiLeaks revelations showed that, in private, Clinton praises free trade (“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders”) and the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan (“We have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues and we have to incentivize growth”). These are the kinds of things that Republicans used to stand for before they sold their souls to Trump. As Tom Friedman notes, “WikiHillary” is “a smart, pragmatic, center-left politician who will be inclined to work with both the business community and Republicans to keep America tilted toward trade expansion, entrepreneurship and global integration.”
In fairness, there is good reason to doubt how hard Clinton would fight for any of these ideas in the face of a Congress controlled by Democrats who are to her left (which is most of them). During the campaign, she has tacked left on domestic policy to appease the Sanders-Warren wing. That’s why it’s important to keep at least one house in Republican hands to foster the kind of bipartisan cooperation that was a hallmark of the 1990s when President Bill Clinton worked with Newt Gingrich and a Republican Congress to reform welfare and eliminate the deficit. The very fact that Clinton is no ideologue means that she is someone that Republicans can work with.
From my vantage point as a foreign-policy wonk, Clinton’s biggest selling point is that she is tough-minded on national security policy — more so than President Obama or most Democrats, to say nothing of the troop-withdrawing, nuclear-proliferating, ally-bashing, Putin-loving Republican nominee. She supported sending 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2009 (Obama sent 30,000), she supported leaving behind 10,000 to 20,000 American troops in Iraq (Obama pulled them all), and she pressed for an ambitious plan to train and arm the Syrian rebels in 2012 (Obama refused). Today, Clinton favors a tougher policy on Syria — she wants a no-fly zone — than either Obama or Trump. Yet she does not recklessly propose bombing “the s—” out of anyone, stealing another country’s oil, or killing terrorists’ relatives as Trump does.
Even though Clinton was associated with the Obama administration’s failed “reset” with Russia, she was always skeptical of Russian intentions. As Mark Landler of the New York Times writes: “In the administration’s first high-level meeting on Russia in February 2009, aides to Obama proposed that the United States make some symbolic concessions to Russia as a gesture of its good will in resetting the relationship. Clinton, the last to speak, brusquely rejected the idea, saying, ‘I’m not giving up anything for nothing.’ Her hardheadedness made an impression on Robert Gates, the defense secretary and George W. Bush holdover who was wary of a changed Russia. He decided there and then that she was someone he could do business with. ‘I thought, This is a tough lady,’ he told me.” Trump, by contrast, has been described by former acting CIA Director Michael Morell and former Director Michael Hayden as an “unwitting agent” or “useful idiot” of Vladimir Putin.
I don’t always agree with Clinton on foreign policy — especially when it comes to her support for the Iran nuclear deal or her current (and, one hopes, only temporary) opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But I respect her deep knowledge of international affairs. She would come into office knowing more on that subject than any new president since George H.W. Bush. Trump, by contrast, knows less than any previous nominee.
The strongest objection to Clinton is on ethical grounds. She was, at the very least, “extremely careless” in her handling of emails, as FBI Director James Comey said this summer. But now that Trumpkins revere Comey for investigating more emails which have come to light, will they accept his July finding, reaffirmed this Sunday, that she did nothing that is worthy of criminal prosecution? There have also been allegations of “pay to play” regarding the Clinton Foundation and a general air of suspicion around the Clintons that predates Bill’s impeachment.
Those would be huge problems if Clinton were running against a squeaky-clean Republican like Mitt Romney. But she’s running against an opponent who, after the election, will face civil trials for fraud and rape — and who has boasted of sexually assaulting women, not paying income taxes, and stiffing contractors. PolitiFact rates 50 percent of her statements “true” or “mostly true,” compared to only 15 percent for him. In contrast, 51 percent of Trump’s statements are either “false” or “pants on fire,” whereas just 12 percent of Clinton’s statements have been similarly dishonest. Clinton may be ethically challenged, but Trump is an ethics-free zone.
In the final analysis, the strongest case for Clinton is what she is not. She is not racist, sexist, or xenophobic. She is not cruel, erratic, or volatile. She is not a bully or an authoritarian personality. She is not ignorant or unhinged. Those may be insufficient recommendations against a more formidable opponent. But when she’s running against Donald Trump it’s more than enough.
Update: This article has been updated to take account of FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress on Nov. 6.
Photo credit: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/Getty ImagesUNCERTAIN FUTURE: Will Ricketts has lived in New Zealand since he was 2 but has been told his application for citizenship is likely to be turned down because of the time he has spent out of the country.
The government has flown him around the world to promote Kiwi culture but Phoenix Foundation's Will Ricketts may be denied New Zealand citizenship.
The popular Wellington band's co-writer, percussionist and keyboardist moved with his family from London to Wellington when he was aged 2. But he was told by the Internal Affairs Department last week that it would recommend that its minister, Chris Tremain, deny his application for citizenship because he had spent too much time out of New Zealand.
Each time Ricketts has spent significant time outside New Zealand in the past five years, it has been to play with Phoenix Foundation. This has included gigs on the popular British television show, Later With Jools Holland, and the Glastonbury Festival.
The department's stance has been labelled by friend and Phoenix Foundation collaborator Taiki Waititi as "classic NZ hospitality".
Phoenix Foundation vocalist and guitarist Samuel Scott said time spent out of New Zealand was often with support from the New Zealand Music Commission, to showcase Kiwi music.
"I have known Will more than half my life and to think of him as anything other than a New Zealander seems absurd."
Ricketts has had New Zealand residency since emigrating from England in 1981.
"When I go to London, I miss Wellington. I miss the landscape. I miss my friends. I miss everything about being here and I feel like I'm an outsider when I go to London.
"The whole thing of being a New Zealander and not really being a New Zealander is upsetting."
Citizenship would make him legally a New Zealander and although he has residency status, his ability to live here depended on the whims of politics, he said.
When he visited the department on Thursday he was told he could pay $470 to put a case to the minister in favour of his application but the department would still fight it. He could reapply in another five years but would probably be in the same situation, as New Zealand bands were forced to work overseas to survive and Phoenix Foundation had a growing fan base in Europe.
His parents, Victoria University literature professor Harry Ricketts and Rita Ricketts, who now teaches economics at Cambridge University in England, have New Zealand citizenship.
A department spokesman could not comment but said recommendations were made to the minister on set criteria, including that applicants had to have spent 240 days in New Zealand for each of the past five years.When struggling through a classic novel, many have found honour in persevering to the end.
But it appears it might be better just to give up quickly.
Nick Hornby, the bestselling novelist, has argued readers should put down difficult books immediately if they are not enjoying them.
Battling through them, he said, would only condition people to believe reading is a chore, leaving a "sense of duty" about something you "should do".
Instead, Hornby argued, reading should be seen more like television or the cinema, and only undertaken as something people "want to do".
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, about his new novel Funny Girl, Hornby argued even children should not be compelled to read books they do not want to, saying setting targets of books they "should" read is counterproductive.
Hornby, the author of Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About A Boy, said: "I'm passionate about reading and what reading can do for you, but I don't want anyone to tell you what you should read.
Nick Hornby
"I could go on about this at some length.
"My real campaign is to get everybody - adult, kids, everybody - to read something that they're loving.
"And if they're not loving it, stop reading it."
He added: "Every time we pick up a book for a sense of duty and we find that we're struggling to get through it, we're reinforcing the notion that reading is something you should do but telly is something you want to do.
"It shouldn't be like that. Novels should be like TV. It shouldn't be hard work and we should do ourselves a favour.
"It doesn't mean you have to read easy books, because you can have very complicated connections to very difficult books, but as long as you're racing through it, that's the thing."
From book to screen: Gone Girl premieres in New YorkA South African military general has been accused of facilitating an illegal prison break from a local police station using two armoured personnel carriers and at least 120 soldiers.
The general is alleged have flown into a drunken rage when he learnt that a group of his men had been arrested outside their base in the South African town of Oudtshoorn.
The arrested soldiers - alleged to include at least one senior officer - had been found by police at an illegal drinking den, where they were celebrating a change of command at the training base.
According to an official complaint filed by South Africa's military union, the general - whom it did not name - mobilised his troops when he heard of his men's fate.
"A certain Army general who, whilst allegedly intoxicated, unlawfully mobilised armed soldiers and armoured infantry fighting vehicles in order to free a senior ranking officer and several other soldiers", the statement read.
According to local media, the troops surrounded Oudtshoorn's Bongolethu police station. The police locked their station door and armed themselves.
After negotiation, they agreed to release the arrested soldiers.
The South African National Defence Union said it was "utterly dismayed" by the incident, which it described as a "military backed armed insurrection against the police".
The SANDU union claimed that its members had been banned from speaking out about last Saturday's incident.
"Soldiers in Oudtshoorn were warned by military authorities to remain silent about this incident or face disciplinary measures," SANDU's national secretary Pikkie Greeff said in a statement.
"We demand that the South African National Defence Force immediately suspends the general involved and investigate charges of intimidation and sedition against him.
"Clearly his conduct displays utter abuse of rank and the belief that he is above the law.
"In addition, his conduct illustrates that he cannot be trusted in a position of military authority and that he is irresponsible and dangerous, being in command of military personnel and equipment."
A spokesman for South Africa's police service confirmed only that 31 people were arrested at an unlicensed liquor premises in Oudtshoorn on Friday during a search operation.
The spokesman said he could not confirm whether soldiers were among the arrested people, but said the police "are investigating a case of intimidation against three individuals whose employment can also not be verified".In August, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle ruled on Grimsley and Albu v. Scott that Florida's ban on marriage for same-sex couples was unconstitutional and, despite a stay on his ruling, ordered the State of Florida to issue a new death certificate for Carol Goldwasser, naming Arlene Goldberg, her partner of 47 years, as her wife.
Today, Arlene received that newly issued death certificate, making her and her late spouse among the first same-sex couples to have their marriage recognized in Florida and the first to receive an amended death certificate that reflects their marriage.
See also: Supreme Court Rejects Gay Marriage Appeals: What Does That Mean for Florida?
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"It's hard to put into words how meaningful this is to me," said Goldberg in a public statement. "For 47 years, Carol and I made our lives together, all the while being treated like strangers in the eyes of the law in Florida. It's bittersweet that Carol isn't here to share this joy with me, but for the first time in 47 years, our marriage was respected. Our relationship and commitment to each other is finally recognized."
Today's news comes just after Monday's groundbreaking decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that brought marriage equality to thousands of couples across the nation and indirectly helped set into motion a countdown to bring marriage equality to all Floridians.
See also: Marriage Equality in Florida: The Various Ways It Could Play Out
The amended death certificate comes with mixed feelings, not just for Goldberg but for many LGBT supporters. In South Florida, Aaron Huntsman and his partner William "Lee" Jones feel excited that progress has been made but feel bitter that the state only recognized Goldberg's marriage now that her wife is dead.
"It's the first up in a long battle. It's unfortunate that one had to have passed away in order to be recognized," said Huntsman who is challenging the state's ban with Lee. "We [the LGBT community] need to be treated equally now! Otherwise cases like Goldberg's will persist and the state will be held liable for the couples it not only denies dignity to, but also for the denied social security benefits of a deceased spouse."
For Huntsman today's news comes at a particularly heartbreaking time, one of his close friends died a few weeks ago from liver cancer before she could marry her girlfriend.
"My friend's partner is so devastated right now that she's not taking any phone calls," said Huntsman, beginning to sob. "They went through the state required pre-marital course and even had the certificate for completing the course ready to go."
According to Nadine Smith, CEO of Equality Florida, one of the state's leading LGBT rights' organizations, "Couples shouldn't have to wait until one spouse dies to receive the recognition and dignity that they deserve. We share in Arlene's joy that her marriage to Carol is now recognized, even if only posthumously, but we are more committed than ever to seeing the day when all Florida couples and families are treated fairly and equally."
Smith went on to say, "The Supreme Court has sent a clear message this week that there is no good reason to continue excluding same-sex couples from marriage. It's time for Governor Scott and Attorney General Bondi to use their power as top elected officials in our state for the good of all Floridians. Families in Florida should not have to wait another day, and we renew our call on them to drop their appeals and let marriage for all couples move forward in the Sunshine State."
Though Goldberg has received the first Florida death certificate to recognize a same-sex marriage, in August Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Diana Lewis recognized the out of state marriage of W. Jason Simpson and his late husband Frank Bangor, making the Palm Beach County case the first to have a judge recognize a same-sex marriage. Despite Judge Lewis ruling narrowly |
Holdbrooks said. “It’s simply an instruction manual for living.”
The faith lives of the detainees seemed to be proof that the instruction manual could work.
Holdbrooks took the leap in December 2003. In the presence of the prisoners, he read out a statement of faith that confirmed him as a Muslim.
The Guantanamo Bay detention center is located on the southeastern coast of Cuba. (BOB STRONG/REUTERS)
His life changed drastically when he came back to America. He said he spent years trying to drink away memories of Guantanamo. He was honorably discharged from the Army in October 2005 for “generalized personality disorder.”
Then, Holdbrooks decided to renew his commitment to Islam. He stopped drinking, smoking, and doing drugs. He put a stop to promiscuity and profanity. He found discipline in prayer.
And he started speaking out.
“Islam teaches you that if you see an injustice in the world, you should do anything within your power to stop it,” Holdbrooks said.
Wary of misinterpretation, Holdbrooks makes sure to speak to reporters and his lecture audiences with precision. He clarifies everything he says, knowing all the while every public appearance will result in some sort of condemnation. Still, he pores through the hundreds of crude Internet comments to see if someone has heard his message.
“The people who write these negative comments think they’re Islamic scholars,” Holdbrooks said. “But they’re actually making massive generalized statements about something they have no idea about.”
The Guantanamo Bay detention center is located on the southeastern coast of Cuba. (Terry Holdbrooks)
His agenda isn’t to promote religion, he said. Instead, he’s thinking about the human rights of people like Shaker Aamer, a detainees who turned into his mentor. Aamer, the last British resident at Guantanamo, has been detained for 11 years. He has never been charged for a crime and has been cleared for release twice, the BBC reports.
Aamer is now one of the prisoners participating in a massive hunger strike behind bars.
“These things aren’t America,” Holdbrooks said. “It would be wrong if I sat by and let Gitmo continue to exist or let people think that Islam is America’s greatest enemy.”
Terry Holdbrooks wrote about his experiences at Guantanamo Bay in the self-published book "Traitor?"which was released this month.
@carolkuruvilla
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Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing!Walt Disney Animation Studios revealed plans today for Moana, a sweeping, CG-animated comedy-adventure about a spirited teenager on an impossible mission to fulfill her ancestors’ quest. In theaters in late 2016, the film is directed by the renowned filmmaking team of Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, Aladdin).
“John and I have partnered on so many films – from ‘The Little Mermaid’ to ‘Aladdin’ to ‘The Princess and the Frog,'” said Clements. “Creating ‘Moana’ is one of the great thrills of our career. It’s a big adventure set in this beautiful world of Oceania.”
In the ancient South Pacific world of Oceania, Moana, a born navigator, sets sail in search of a fabled island. During her incredible journey, she teams up with her hero, the legendary demi-god Maui, to traverse the open ocean on an action-packed voyage, encountering enormous sea creatures, breathtaking underworlds and ancient folklore.
“Moana is indomitable, passionate and a dreamer with a unique connection to the ocean itself,” Musker said. “She’s the kind of character we all root for, and we can’t wait to introduce her to audiences.”
Click the concept art for a bigger version!We propose a communication analogue to Allport's (1954 Allport GW 1954 The nature of prejudice Cambridge, MA Perseus Books ) Contact Hypothesis called the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis (PCH). If people process mass-mediated parasocial interaction in a manner similar to interpersonal interaction, then the socially beneficial functions of intergroup contact may result from parasocial contact. We describe and test the PCH with respect to majority group members' level of prejudice in three studies, two involving parasocial contact with gay men (Six Feet Under and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) and one involving parasocial contact with comedian and male transvestite Eddie Izzard. In all three studies, parasocial contact was associated with lower levels of prejudice. Moreover, tests of the underlying mechanisms of PCH were generally supported, suggesting that parasocial contact facilitates positive parasocial responses and changes in beliefs about the attributes of minority group categories.One of the inconvenient truths of being a creative person, whether you’re an artist, filmmaker, musician, or writer, is that non-creative types rarely appreciate the fact that you’ve spent years developing and refining your skills in the same way that doctors, lawyers, and scientists do.
As a result, you’ll be asked to create plenty of free work — sometimes by people who simply don’t know any better, but also by legitimate companies that know exactly what they’re doing and will never pass up an opportunity to save a dime on a project.
So, what’s the best way to explain to all of these people that you don’t work for free? Lily Williams, a visual development artist at Sony Pictures Animation, came up with this simple template that lets artists deliver the message in a good-humored way, while educating others about why your creativity has value:"My son scored three goals this weekend with a move I've never seen him do. I asked, 'Where did you get the move?' He responded NHL11, when he practiced it on screen in the shootout." -- Craig Wilson, youth hockey coach
Not too long ago, the Kamloops Blazers of the Western Hockey League received a bit of attention for a post-game celebration that mimicked something from a 1994 hockey video game.The stiff movements in that game from more than 15 years ago are laughable and kitschy today, especially when compared to today's video games, which look and play as real as the game on the ice.So realistic, in fact, that some players and coaches have started using video games as teaching tools.Younger players have gone from trying to imitate the moves they see Sidney Crosby Alex Ovechkin or Pavel Datsyuk make in highlight videos to trying to create them on games like NHL2K11."My son scored three goals this weekend with a move I've never seen him do," said Craig Wilson, a youth hockey coach in Maine who operates Maine Blizzard Hockey. "I asked, 'Where did you get the move?' He responded NHL11, when he practiced it on screen in the shootout."The usefulness of video games as a true teaching tool is limited. It won't help a young player skate faster, pass better or shoot harder. However, vision, understanding of the game and creativity are among some of the things it absolutely can improve."I don't think it's something (a video game) has anything to do with skills," Bob Nielsen, a long-time Philadelphia-area youth and high school hockey coach and operator of the coaching website IceHockeyDrills.info, told NHL.com. "If it has a benefit, it's maybe teaching systems and defensive-zone coverages, from looking at things from a higher perspective."The default view for most video games is vertical, from a high perspective. It allows the player to see the entire width of the ice, as well as from above the blue line down to the end boards. Seeing more of the ice can allow a young player to see how action develops away from the puck-carrier."Maybe if they're running the power play on the game, you can see how the game goes for the four guys you're not controlling and see how the flow of some plays work," Nielsen said.Nielsen also said the ages of the players changed what level of information they took from the games."The older players seemed to feel that they learned things about how the spacing on a power play works because they see the action from a high perspective," he said. "They had a better idea of the way a forecheck works and things of that nature."My surprise came with the younger players. A few of them told me that they learned moves from playing the video games. One player even discussed a specific move he makes often and said he picked it up playing one of the NHL2K-type of games. A few others said they have tried things on the ice in practice that they learned on a video game."That level of creativity is one that should be cultivated, says Brian Yandle, a youth coach who operates Global Hockey in the Boston area. His brother, Keith Yandle, is an All-Star defenseman for the Phoenix Coyotes "I encourage it and tell them to be creative," Brian Yandle told NHL.com. "We'll be doing a shootout at the end of practice, and I'll say where'd you learn that, and they'll say I did with it a certain player in a shootout, picked it up on my stick or went between my legs."It's all about finding another way to keep kids having fun and staying interested in the real game of hockey on the ice."Our players play against each other on NHL11 on PS3," Wilson said. "They play in between tournament games at the hotel. They play as a team and talk about the game as it's occurring on screen as if they were actually on the ice. The kids yell cycle, get on the post, behind the net, D-to-D pass and more.""People once they play the game, watch the game of hockey, they gain respect for what these guys do," Yandle added. "I've heard from a lot of different kids, the one cool thing with the video games is they can go online and play against their friends. You might have somebody that's not that big as a player or somebody who plays it for fun and isn't that serious into it, but they're playing their buddies and finding competitiveness. They're gaining a knowledge of the game and it excites them a lot."Capturing content in Django templates
28 February 2009 — As a template designer there are times when you have structural code surrounding a block which is waiting on content from a child template. It may look something like:
< div class = "content_title" > {% block content_title %}{% endblock %} </ div >
Sometimes this block is never filled so ideally I want the DIV element in this case gone. This isn’t easy because there’s no way to know whether content is headed towards the block so one solution that I’ve used is:
{% block content_title_wrapper %} < div class = "content_title" > {% block content_title %}{% endblock %} </ div > {% endblock %}
This requires me to make an empty call to a wrapper block in a child template to clear out the div element. It’s obviously gross because I end up with empty block calls all over child templates. Yuk!
Django community to the rescue! After asking around and some help from Alex, Eric, and Travis we stumbled upon Django Capture, a django snippet created by kcarnold (Kenneth Arnold). Capture essentially takes a blob of content and makes it into a variable for you like so:
{% capture as content_title %} {% block content_title %}{% endblock %} {% endcapture %} {% if content_title %} < div class = "content_title" >{{ content_title }}</ div > {% endif %}
This eliminates the need for all those crufty wrappers in child templates. I’m sure there are other uses for this too, one being the ability to print content multiple times on the page like pagination before and after lists. Kenneth originally used the example of capturing content for translations.In search of a "magic bullet" for climate change that will simultaneously help with the growing problem of feeding the world, gurus from James Lovelock downwards have praised the potential of biochar.
"I said in my recent book that perhaps the only tool we had to bring carbon dioxide back to pre-industrial levels was to let the biosphere pump it from the air for us," the originator of the Gaia concept told The Guardian newspaper last year.
"We don't need plantations or crops planted for biochar, what we need is a charcoal maker on every farm so the farmer can turn his waste into carbon."
But will farmers want to? Will it be worth their while?
Dr Lovelock would presumably be encouraged by developments at Stonelaws Farm in Scotland, whose owner Colin Hunter is taking a close look at the potential and pitfalls of biochar, in conjunction with researchers from the UK Biochar Research Centre at nearby Edinburgh University.
The project is helping to answer some of the big outstanding questions: for how long does biochar lock carbon into the soil, how much benefit does it produce for crops, how does it stack up against other uses for waste, and how can it be tailored to produce maximum benefits?
And those answers in turn could help determine whether biochar does turn into a worldwide phenomenon, or whether it eventually finds its way into the bin marked "Good Idea - But..."
Winning ways
At first sight, the case for biochar seems unanswerable; a win-win-win-win-win situation.
Image caption Modern biochar production is a more efficient variant of tradition charcoal making
Plant waste is heated to temperatures of several hundred Celsius in a pyroliser, a vessel from which oxygen is excluded; so it does not burn.
Instead, gases and liquids are driven off, which can potentially be used as fuel or agricultural treatments.
The remainder turns into a dry, carbon-rich solid similar to charcoal.
Scattered on fields, biochar helps raise crop yields; and the carbon it contains is locked away for thousands of years.
As that carbon had been absorbed from the atmosphere as the plants grew, what we have is a net removal of carbon from the atmosphere and storage in soil.
So we have improved crop yields, carbon storage, virtually free fuel, waste disposal and potentially extra earnings for the farmer as well; what is not to like?
Last year we spread 10 tonnes per hectare on spring barley, and got a statistically significant yield increase of 7% Jason Cook, Edinburgh University
Academic backing emerged a few months ago with the publication of a study showing that biochar could absorb 12% of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions - not a complete bullet, perhaps, but certainly a valuable weapon for the anti-climate change armoury.
On the other hand, bad experiences from the "race to biofuels" and the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) mean there are concerns that biochar could be practised, or rewarded, inappropriately, with "perverse incentives" emerging that could reward logging for biochar or the indiscriminate spreading of char on crops that would not benefit.
Hence the need for more research.
The technique is being adopted on a small scale in many countries, but many of the basic questions remain unresolved - hence the importance of the Stonelaws Farm site.
"I was brought up on a farm and we had an 'ash field' where we used to take ash from houses in the village and put it on the field," Mr Hunter recalls.
"That was a much more fertile part of the field than the rest, and there was some charcoal in the ash and obviously it was having an effect. So I wanted to see if that could be replicated."
Hence his enthusiasm for hosting the biochar project, run by Jason Cook.
Machine head
The char is made in what looks at first sight like a boiler - a machine about as tall as a person, adorned with pipes, a bucket hanging from one of them.
Image caption Left hand fuel, right hand biochar... Jason Cook at Stonelaws Farm near Edinburgh
It is a pyroliser - Indian-made - a fairly low-tech item designed for practical use rather than fancy laboratory experimentation.
Jason shows me the raw material - fragments of Scots pine or willow - and the blackened, dry residue it turns into during its voyage through the pyroliser.
Then he dumps a sackful of wood into it, locks down the lid to keep the air out, and fires the beast up.
For the next 20 minutes or so we see the temperature rise to several hundred Celsius - he has taken it as far as 650C.
Gradually, puffs of something appear from the pipe. Not smoke, because the wood is not burning - rather, the first of the gases that are being driven off, mostly water vapour with a cargo of brown stuff.
Meanwhile, the first liquid emerges from the consenser pipe - a pungent, oily brew that can be used as a herbicide.
Jason then holds a match to the gas pipe and it struggles into a flame, becoming more stable as the proportion of methane and hydrogen rises with the temperature.
"The next stage is to collect the gas and get it analysed back in the lab, and get the calorific value," Jason explains.
"We want to see if there's an optimal temperature where we're getting the most valuable flammable gas coming off."
Colin Hunter spends about £20,000 per year on gas that is burned to dry grain - and one of the benefits of pyrolysis could be to produce enough gas that he can keep this money in his pocket.
On fertile ground
We have the concept of 'bespoke biochar', which is an idea of producing the char that's going to have the exact properties you'll need Pete Brownsort, Edinburgh University
The solid left at the end of the pyrolysis process is spread on fields to see whether biochar does boost crop yields as claimed.
"I'm harvesting with a combine harvester that combines GPS tracking with very accurate yield measurement, so we can get a very good view on this," Jason relates.
"Last year we spread 10 tonnes per hectare on spring barley, and got a statistically significant yield increase of 7%."
More recent results indicate that higher yield increases are possible, but also that there is a threshold; spread too much, and the yield goes down again.
What complicates the analyses of these effects is that it is not entirely clear what biochar does in the soil.
"It's largely carbon and very porous, so maybe it's creating a home for microbial communities," Jason says.
"It may also aerate the soil and assist with water-logging.
"The carbon has got a nutrient value itself, and it's been shown to stop some other nutrients like nitrates leaching away, which suggests using it is going to allow you to reduce the amount of fertiliser you need."
Bespoke biochar
The labs at Edinburgh University hold a cache of samples that may, in time, show how to make biochar for maximum impact: how hot to run the pyroliser, how long to leave the wood inside, and what sort of soils and crops will benefit the most.
"The higher the temperature, the more of the volatile liquids and gases you drive off, so the lower yield of char you get," explains researcher Pete Brownsort.
"But it may be more stable char - or it might not be - that's a big question at this time.
Image caption The pyroliser produces flammable liquid and gas, which could be used as fuels on the farm
"At this centre we have the concept of 'bespoke biochar', which is an idea of producing the char that's going to have the exact properties you'll need in the field where you're going to use it."
According to this vision - developed by Edinburgh soil scientist Saran Sohi - you could give farmers a recipe book allowing them to make precisely what char they need, bearing in mind that they may be looking for a balance of yield increases from the char and fuel from the gas and liquid.
Potentially this could also allow authorities to reward farmers for capturing and storing carbon - and to know how much they should pay the farmers.
In the case of Stonelaws Farm, the economics are as yet unclear, according to Colin Hunter - and complicated by the fact that farm waste going into the pyroliser could instead be burned, producing a greater dividend in heat and potentially in electricity generation too.
"You'd have to be seeing fairly dramatic increases in crop yields, otherwise you'd say 'well we'll just chop up the straw and put it back on the fields instead of bringing it in, heating it and taking it back out again'," he says.
"The other aspect to this though is carbon credits.
"If we could earn carbon credits for this, it would transform the viability; and if we generate electricity, do we qualify for the feed-in tarriff?"
Research at Edinburgh and elsewhere has shown that the carbon economics of biochar can stack up rather well.
In contrast to burning, about half of the carbon in the waste is captured and stored; meanwhile, the liquids and gases yield easily enough energy to power the pyroliser, with some left over for other uses around the farm.
But you sense biochar will take off only if and when farmers believe they have something to gain from it economically as well; and on a global scale, that case remains complex and unproven.
You can find out more about the potential of biochar and other technological "climate fixes" in this week's edition of One Planet on the BBC World Service.Unified Identity is the holy grail of website authentication. Allowing your users to log into your website through any mechanism they want, while always having the same account details, provides a really smooth and convenient user experience.
Unfortunately, unified identity can be tricky to implement properly! How many times have you logged into a website with Google Login, for instance, then come back to the site later and created an account with email / password only to discover you now have two separate accounts! This happens to me all the time and is really frustrating.
In a perfect world, a user should be able to log into your website with:
Google
Facebook
Twitter
Email or Username and Password
Any other OAuth provider
And always have the same account / account data — regardless of how they choose to log in at any particular point in time.
Unified Identity Management
Over the past few months we’ve been collaborating with our good friends over at OAuth.io to build a unified identity management system that combines OAuth.io’s broad support for social login providers with Stormpath’s powerful user management, authorization and data security service.
Here’s how it works:
You’ll use OAuth.io’s service to connect your Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social login services.
You’ll then use Stormpath to store your user accounts and link them together to give you a single, unified identity for every user.
It’s really simple to do and works very well!
And because OAuth.io supports over 100 separate OAuth providers, you can allow your website visitors to log in with just about any service imaginable!
User Registration & Unification Demo
To see how it works, I’ve created a small demo app you can check out here: https://unified-identity-demo.herokuapp.com/
Everything is working in plain old Javascript — account registration, unified identity linking, etc.
Go ahead and give it a try! It looks something like this:
If you’d like to dig into the code yourself, or play around with the demo app on your own, you can visit our project repository on Github here: https://github.com/stormpath/unified-identity-demo
If you’re a Heroku user, you can even deploy it directly to your own account by clicking the button below!
Configure Stormpath + OAuth.io Integration
Let’s take a look at how simple it is to add unified identity to your own web apps now.
Firstly, you’ll need to go and create an
Don’t worry — both are totally free to use.
Next, you’ll need to create a Stormpath Application.
Next, you’ll need to log into your OAuth.io Dashboard, visit the “Users Overview” tab, and enter your Stormpath Application name and credentials.
Finally, you need to visit the “Integrated APIs” tab in your OAuth.io Dashboard and add in your Google app, Facebook app, and Twitter app credentials. This makes it possible for OAuth.io to easily handle social login for your web app:
Show Me the Code!
Now that we’ve got the setup stuff all ready to go, let’s take a look at some code.
The first thing you’ll need to do is activate the OAuth.io Javascript library in your HTML pages:
<script src="/static/js/oauth.min.js"></script> <script> OAuth.initialize("YOUR_OAUTHIO_PUBLIC_KEY"); </script> 1 2 3 4 5 <script src = "/static/js/oauth.min.js" > </script> <script> OAuth. initialize ( "YOUR_OAUTHIO_PUBLIC_KEY" ) ; </script>
You’ll most likely want to include this at the bottom of the <head> section in your HTML page(s). This will initialize the OAuth.io library.
Next, in order to register a new user via email / password you can use the following HTML / Javascript snippet:
<form onsubmit="return register()"> <input id="firstName", placeholder="First Name", required> <input id="lastName", placeholder="Last Name", required> <input id="email", placeholder="Email", required, type="email"> <input id="password", placeholder="Password", required, type="password"> <button type="submit"> Register </form> <script> function register() { User.signup({ firstname: document.getElementById('firstName').value, lastname: document.getElementById('lastName').value, email: document.getElementById('email').value, password: document.getElementById('password').value }).done(function(user) { // Redirect the user to the dashboard if the registration was // successful. window.location = '/dashboard'; }).fail(function(err) { alert(err); }); return false; } </script> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 < form onsubmit = "return register()" > < input id = "firstName", placeholder = "First Name", required > < input id = "lastName", placeholder = "Last Name", required > < input id = "email", placeholder = "Email", required, type = "email" > < input id = "password", placeholder = "Password", required, type = "password" > < button type = "submit" > Register < / form > <script> function register ( ) { User. signup ( { firstname : document. getElementById ( 'firstName' ). value, lastname : document. getElementById ( 'lastName' ). value, email : document. getElementById ( 'email' ). value, password : document. getElementById ( 'password' ). value } ). done ( function ( user ) { // Redirect the user to the dashboard if the registration was // successful. window. location = '/dashboard' ; } ). fail ( function ( err ) { alert ( err ) ; } ) ; return false ; } </script>
This will create a new user account for you, with the user account stored in Stormpath.
Now, in order to log a user in via a social provider (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) — you can do something like this:
<script> function link(provider) { var user = User.getIdentity(); OAuth.popup(provider).then(function(p) { return user.addProvider(p); }).done(function() { // User identity has been linked! }); } </script> <button type="button" onclick="link('facebook')">Link Facebook</button> <button type="button" onclick="link('google')">Link Google</button> <button type="button" onclick="link('twitter')">Link Twitter</button> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 <script> function link ( provider ) { var user = User. getIdentity ( ) ; OAuth. popup ( provider ). then ( function ( p ) { return user. addProvider ( p ) ; } ). done ( function ( ) { // User identity has been linked! } ) ; } </script> < button type = "button" onclick = "link('facebook')" > Link Facebook < / button > < button type = "button" onclick = "link('google')" > Link Google < / button > < button type = "button" onclick = "link('twitter')" > Link Twitter < / button >
If a user clicks any of the three defined buttons above, they’ll be prompted to log into their social account and accept permissions — and once they’ve done this, they’ll then have their social account ‘linked’ to their normal user account that was previously created.
Once a user’s account has been ‘linked’, the user can log into any of their accounts and will always have the same account profile returned.
Nice, right?!
Simple Identity Management
Hopefully this quick guide has shown you how easy it can be to build unified identity into your next web application. With Stormpath and OAuth.io, it can take just minutes to get a robust, secure, user authentication system up and running.
To dive in, check out the demo project on github: https://github.com/stormpath/unified-identity-demo
Happy Hacking!Both Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations and the standalone expansion Northern Inferno have been updated to version v1.091 (Build 757.10)!
This update to the v1.09 major release fixes all critical bugs reported by the community, improves simulation performance on large scenarios and includes a host of small but important improvements!
This update is the stepping stone to next forthcoming major release, v1.10, whose early features are already dropping jaws on the internal beta-testing group!
Make sure to upgrade to 1.09 before installing this patch!
You can download the patch from here
IMPORTANT! We are encountering some difficulties in making the update automatically downloadable (with the exception for Steam, which is perfectly working). For the moment to download the patch you need to use this link.
Command: Modern Air / Naval Operationand Command: Northern Infernoare available on Steam too
You can check the entire changelog here!Design
Content
In a discussion with @alexbono about my last blog post, Budgeting for Social Media, I realized that I missed out on mentioning several important things to budget for, so I'd thought I'd add them here in this post.When budgeting it's also important to recognize the skill level needed to set up and operate social media tools. While many social media tools seem fairly easy to create, if you want to add a personal touch, it will take certain skills. There are two main areas to examine:Most social media sites come with a typical design (or if it's a blog, a series of templates). If you want to modify them to include your logo and design, then you will need someone with graphic design/CSS abilities. A perfect example is this blog. While, currently I'm using a template, eventually I will be moving to a design of my choosing. As I don't have the skill for that, I'm relying on my business partner. If you have someone in your office who has the skills to make the changes, then that is great. If not, you will have to outsource. And of course, there are costs associated with that.Another important issue is content. As mentioned in Ten Things a Nonprofit Should Do Before Setting up Social Media, it's important to determine who's writing the content you put up before you start any social media tool. If this is something you can do internally, remember to weigh out the costs of that person taking the time to write it. Content also doesn't just mean the written word. If you have videos or photos, you need to assess who has the ability to create/post these and what the costs associated with them are.Putting together a budget for social media will definitely save you some time in the long run and give you a better idea of whether social media tools are viable for your organization.Australian sprinter only loses one place but 30-point fine means advantage Peter Sagan
The disqualification of Matt Goss (Orica-GreenEdge) from the stage 12 sprint did not appear at first to have particularly disastrous consequences, but the point penalty handed to the Australian later on has effectively ended his quest for the green jersey. Goss was leading jersey incumbent Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) toward the line in Annonay Davézieux as they raced for sixth place on the stage. The Orica-GreenEdge rider switched slightly as Sagan was shaping to come past, which blocked the Slovakian champion from launching a proper sprint.
Sagan raised his arm in protest, and the race jury agreed with him, and reversed the result.
"We can see in the video what [Matt] Goss did,” said Sagan to letour.fr at the time. “It's up to the race jury to decide, not me but I think that it's obvious in the video. He did that because we are two riders who are going for the green jersey. He's the one who is doing battle with me but I hope I'm going to win that fight.”
As is usual in this situation, Goss was relegated to back of the group that he was in. Luckily for him, the two sprinters had pulled clear of the rest, which meant that he only lost one place and still collected 13 points in the green jersey race. Perhaps because of this minimal penalty, the race jury also decided to impose the additional punishment of a 30-point deduction.
[He was also fined 200 Swiss Francs (~203USD, ~167EUR, ~131GBP) and penalised 30 seconds in the general classification, neither of which he will be bothered by nearly so much - ed]
This extra penalty means that although Goss picked up 23 points in the stage [including ten at the intermediate sprint - ed], he ended the day with seven less than he started with. Sagan meanwhile picked up 22 points on the day - which, even after the relegation would have meant that Goss had closed the gap slightly - and the 22-year-old now leads Goss by 254 points to 198.
“Ah. It was a bit over the top – a bit too much of a penalty but... whatever," said Goss to letour.fr before this morning’s stage, "I’ve got to deal with it and move on. I’ve seen the video because they showed it plenty of times on TV but there was plenty of road there, I think. [Sagan] was coming at me, he had his head down and I had my head down and I think there was a bit more of an overcompensation than was needed and a bit more acting than was needed but I can’t change anything, so – whatever.”
With a 56 point deficit to Sagan, and only four of the eight remaining stages to make it up in, Goss now concedes that the battle for the jersey is now over, which may mean that he will no longer chase points at the intermediate sprints.
“I don’t know, to be honest," he said. "We’ll have a meeting this morning before the race and see what we think.”
As Orica-GreenEdge’s sprinter however, Goss is obviously still aiming at taking a victory in one of those four remaining flat stages, with today’s seaside finish at Cap d’Agde likely to be windy.
“We haven’t really discussed today’s plan yet. We’re on our way to the start and once we get there we’ll have more of an idea. We’ll see what the wind is doing and I’ll find out what we decide to do today.
“We’ll have a few guys reporting in from the finish during the stage. Robbie [McEwen] should be there early and he’ll call through with a bit of info. I’m sure the wind will pick up later this afternoon.”"DHL" redirects here. For other uses, see DHL (disambiguation)
DHL Express[N 1] is a division of the German logistics company Deutsche Post DHL providing international courier, parcel, and express mail services. Deutsche Post DHL is the world's largest logistics company operating around the world,[3] particularly in sea and air mail.[4][5]
The company was founded in the United States in 1969 and expanded its service throughout the world by the late 1970s. The company was primarily interested in offshore and intercontinental deliveries, but the success of FedEx prompted their own intra-US expansion starting in 1983.
In 1998, Deutsche Post began to acquire shares in DHL. It reached controlling interest in 2001, and acquired all outstanding shares by December 2002.[6] The company then absorbed DHL into its Express division, while expanding the use of the DHL brand to other Deutsche Post divisions, business units, and subsidiaries. Today, DHL Express shares its DHL brand with business units such as DHL Global Forwarding and DHL Supply Chain.[7] It gained a foothold in the United States when it acquired Airborne Express.
The DHL Express financial results are published in the Deutsche Post AG annual report.[7] In 2016, this division's revenue increased by 2.7 per cent to €14 billion.[8] The earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) increased by 11.3% over 2015 to €1.5 billion.[9]
History [ edit ]
Old DHL logo before its purchase by Deutsche Post AG
Traditional DHL subsidiary in Steinfurt (Germany) sharing premises and logistics with Deutsche Post
DHL boat in Amsterdam, carrying DHL delivery bicycles on board
DHL semitrailer truck
Origins [ edit ]
While Larry Hillblom was studying law at University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in the late 1960s, he accepted a job as a courier for the insurance company Michael's, Poe & Associates (MPA). He started running courier duty between Oakland International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport, picking up packages for the last flight of the day, and returning on the first flight the next morning, up to five times a week.[10]:12
After he graduated, Hillblom met with MPA salesman Adrian Dalsey and they planned to expand MPA's concept of fast delivery to other business enterprises. They flew between Honolulu and Los Angeles, transporting bills of lading for their first client, Seatrain Lines.[10]:17
The initials [ edit ]
Hillblom put up a portion of his student loans to start the company, bringing in his two friends Adrian Dalsey and Robert Lynn as partners, with their combined initials of their surnames as the company name (DHL).[11] They shared a Plymouth Duster that they drove around San Francisco to pick up the documents in suitcases, then rushed to the airport to book flights using another relatively new invention, the corporate credit card. As the business took off, they started hiring new couriers to join the company. Their first hires were Max and Blanche Kroll, whose apartment in Hawaii often became a makeshift flophouse for their couriers.
Domestic expansion [ edit ]
In the 1970s, DHL was an international delivery company, and the only one offering overnight |
, I thought.
“There’s still time,” Fray said, echoing my thought. “But you’re right, there isn’t a lot of it. If everyone agrees, we should move.”
“You actually trust them,” Mauer said. “I don’t.”
“I don’t either,” Percy said. “Even if one of them is mine. I’m sorry, Mary.”
His eyes met Mary’s.
Not quite so harsh as Mary’s request that Percy be put down, but it did suggest he was stepping away, cutting ties to a similar extent. I had little doubt the apology was genuine, but he’d made a decision that if it came down to it, he’d sacrifice Mary to save his own hide.
A gulf stood between them.
“If I may,” Fray said. She approached Mauer.
He tensed as she drew near, then in the moment she took another step, he pointed his pistol against her side.
She raised her hands back and out of the way. “Dolores is on the table back there.”
I turned my head. The air-breathing octopus-thing was on the table a bit beside me. Helen was poking at it, letting its tentacles coil around her finger in response.
Mauer watched Helen and Dolores for a moment. He didn’t speak or move a muscle.
Hands still held back out of the way, Fray leaned close.
She said something.
Seven or eight words.
Then she stepped back, slowly lowering her hands, until they were clasped in front of her.
What’s she saying?
I want to know what she’s saying.
“What did she say?” Percy asked.
“It’s sufficient,” Mauer said. “I’ll tell you later.”
Percy frowned, but he nodded.
“Helen,” I murmured. “What did she say?”
“I didn’t hear.”
“Were you listening?” Gordon asked.
“Yes, and I didn’t hear,” Helen said. She put on an annoyed expression.
Fray approached us.
What did she say?
“Coordinating an attack on us?” Gordon asked.
“No,” Fray said. “We accept your terms.”
Gordon glanced at me, and I nodded. He glanced at Mary, and Mary nodded.
Gordon indicated the door. Fray stepped away from the group, heading toward the octopus. Helen was faster, snatching it up.
“Got it,” Helen said. “I’ll bring Dolores.”
Fray didn’t say anything, apparently content to leave that situation be.
As one, we headed out into the hallway. Soldiers were standing at attention on either side of the hall, no longer waiting tensely for things to get underway. Less disciplined than Academy soldiers and cadets might be, they let concern show on their faces.
They weren’t convinced this situation was entirely in control, and they hadn’t seen any of Fray’s doubts or the arguing over options.
Lillian had taken out her pocket watch. She showed Gordon, who checked, then gestured.
Good.
The second message we’d written had acknowledged the tight time limit and we’d left a request to drop additional shots after the fighting started. Things were a touch more chaotic than I had anticipated, however. I was really hoping that things weren’t so bad that we didn’t have an escape route, or that the soldiers we were counting on to drop the bombs and provide cover of smoke and dust weren’t on Fray’s side, disobeying because they had switched sides.
It sounded worse than it was. For them to disobey and effectively sabotage us, they had to be on Fray’s side and simultaneously aware we weren’t. The commander who we’d talked to had sent us to go talk to Dog and Catcher and the other experiments. He’d heard the horn, and would have drawn the connection to the experiments.
To be on Fray’s side, know we weren’t, yet be unaware of the fact the horn had helped us?
Questionable.
That a bomb had obliterated them or the infighting was distracting them too much?
Less questionable.
I couldn’t let my nervousness show. Eyes forward, walk with confidence, pretend everything was going according to plan.
There were gaps in this plan, but Fray’s plan was still intact. She had believed she would have a course she could walk to freedom, with the forces on the perimeter sufficiently occupied.
A variant on that plan, how much more dangerous could it be?
It was so annoying, being a child. We had soldiers behind us, Warren to the left of us, and to the right and a little in front of us, we had Percy and Mauer. Visibility was limited by the fact that people were taller, and I couldn’t help but feel surrounded. It didn’t help my growing feeling of anxiety.
This would either be marvelous or it would fail marvelously.
“The men from the other room?” Fray asked. “If they aren’t ready now, then-
“They’ll be ready. Get them,” Mauer said.
One of his lieutenants broke away, opening a door.
More soldiers filed into the hallway alongside the soldiers at our back. These ones wore uniforms, but they weren’t the uniforms of the rebellion.
Cadet uniforms, military ones.
To add an element of confusion? Or to achieve a certain goal?
It didn’t matter.
We reached the doorway. The final group of soldiers was there, one man crouched by the door. It was cracked open, and he peered outside.
“The situation?” Mauer asked.
“Cynthia’s group took drugs,” the man said. “They started grinning, mad smiles, wide-eyed, veins sticking out on their faces. No combat drug like I’ve ever seen before.”
“I know the one,” Fray said. “Rictus grins, a full body rush. Enhanced strength, reflexes, adrenaline. It also demolishes the mind’s ability to manage inhibitions. The Academy discontinued it, and it saw use in the black market for a time. People liked how confident and invincible it made them feel.”
“It shaves off years of your life with every use,” Lillian said. “It isn’t very sustainable to sell on the streets when four or five uses can ruin a thirty year old’s organs so badly he looks ninety inside. Even the Academy can’t fix the kind of damage it causes.”
I gave her a curious look.
“I know stuff!”
“The cost in lifespan isn’t something Cynthia cares about,” Fray said, looking at our group’s medic. “Nor was it the reason the Academy stopped using it. They didn’t like the fact that less disciplined soldiers fired at friendlies, and how bad the crime rate became. Cynthia is liable to shoot at us if we cross paths.”
“Hmm,” Mauer said. When he spoke, it was to the assembled army of sixty-some soldiers, forty in rebellion uniforms and twenty who weren’t. “From here on out, we shoot at her or her men on sight.”
There were one or two cheers, which drew quiet the moment Mauer shot a sharp look back.
Not much lost love.
We waited by the door.
Gordon met my eye. He wasn’t gesturing, but I got the impression he was trying to communicate something.
Something hit, close by, the force of it making Fray and the soldier on watch work to keep the door from flying open. Gordon had taken Lillian’s pocket watch, and the moment he was done covering his head and ear, he checked it. He shook his head.
He met my eyes with purpose.
What are you doing? I thought.
Mary was looking between Gordon and me. Lillian looked terrified, very small while surrounded by opposing forces, shrinking down. Helen stroked the octopus she was carrying as if it were a dog.
Gordon didn’t break eye contact.
I looked at the open watch in his hand, checking the time while it was upside down, and then looked back up at him.
Not a flicker in his expression.
“Through the door, two by two,” Mauer was addressing his men. “Don’t press, keep one pace behind the pair in front of you. If you rush, you’ll get stuck in the doorway or you’ll start pushing the people in front of you, and you won’t be following them, you’ll be directing their movements.”
I saw Warren place a hand on the shoulder of the stitched girl. He pointed at Avis.
He’s too big to pass through with someone else, I realized.
“I’ll lead the way,” Gordon said. He finally broke eye contact with me. “Listen to my instructions.”
An explosion sounded, a mortar shell, very close by. The door was only open a crack, but the smell and taste of smoke and gunpowder in my mouth was enough to gag me. I imagined my spit was a brownish-black.
Gordon watched the pocketwatch. Then he closed it. His lips moved slightly.
He made eye contact with me again.
I can’t read your mind, however you’d like me to.
“Sy,” Mary said. She reached back and touched my hand. She smiled.
“No codes, no gestures, if you please,” Fray said, sternly.
Code? Gesture? She’d caught something I hadn’t.
Not a gesture. In fact, Gordon had been avoiding gestures since the beginning, except when Fray was very clearly occupied.
Code?
Before I could reach the end of the train of thought, more shells came down. A trio, blasting into road and sending rock and mud cascading into the air, an earthen geyser.
“Now!” Gordon shouted.
The door was heaved open. Two by two, we passed through. Fray in the lead with the man who’d been watching the front door, Gordon and Mary, me and Lillian, Helen with Hubris and the octopus-thing, then Fray’s group, with Percy and Mauer.
The smoke had darkened the sky, the smoke was thick, and I couldn’t see ten feet in front of me.
The code.
In a way, it was like the gestures. Our signs were abstract. We’d started with the basic directions and six very general signs that encompassed a very wide variety of things. The closed fist for aggression, violence, force, attack, impulse, anger. Then we’d expanded that, adding new signs, modifying old ones. There’d been too much need to communicate silently.
This was very similar.
Sy. He’d been focused on me. Not trying to read my mind or make me read his.
My mind. My strategy, my way of thinking.
A ploy, one he couldn’t easily share in the midst of things.
I exhaled as slowly as I could, as I ran forward, blind. I could extend that trust to him. He’d done it often enough for me.
“Reverse direction!” Gordon called out.
I stopped before Lillian did, but I’d been expecting something. My shoe slipped on the cobblestone road, but I caught myself. I tugged Lillian, reached out, and prodded Helen’s side. Giving her a nudge.
The order was called out, passed down the line.
We stood in smoke and in the line of fire, while the order for the forward charge was called out, passed down.
It took twenty seconds before we were back inside. I was surprised it was even possible. Humans were so naturally disorganized, and even with Mauer’s warning, I’d expected a jam.
They listened to him like nothing else, it seemed.
The door slammed closed as Fray returned inside. The man on watch cracked it open a moment later, peering through. The rest of us knelt or crouched on the floor. More explosions sounded outside. There was a warbeast on the loose on the rooftops, by the sound of it, smaller than the Brechwell Beast, larger than the cat.
“What the hell was that?” Mauer asked. “A test?”
“Yes,” Gordon said.
“This isn’t a joking matter. Every second we spend out there is a second we could get shot.”
“If you happened to kill us the moment you thought you had a way out, then you would have been stranded,” Gordon said. “Now that we’ve done that, you know you’re reliant on us. At least until we get to the perimeter.”
“Games,” the doctor with the cat warbeast said.
“Strategy,” I said. “I assume you’ve given thought to what happens when we actually reach the perimeter? I was working on the assumption that they wouldn’t have time to waste, or that they wouldn’t be willing to risk attacking us if we could call for an alert.”
“Lillian,” Gordon said. “Your bag?”
Lillian shrugged off the strap for her satchel, then slid it across the floor to Gordon.
He opened it, reaching inside, and grabbed a canister.
Mauer reached for his gun. Several others did too.
Fray reached out, extending a hand, a signal to wait, holding back.
It was a grenade, like the ones we’d used to set fires, back when I’d set Cynthia on fire, as a matter of fact. A long lever ran down the side, and a pin was jammed in the top.
Gordon handed it to Helen, who had to disengage from the octopus. “Hold it tight.”
She nodded.
He pulled the pin. Nine out of ten people flinched.
“There,” he said. “Don’t drop it, unless all is lost, okay? That’s our insurance. If you loosen your grip on the lever, then we all go up in flame a second or two later.”
“I have a good grip,” Helen said.
I could tell at a glance that a large number of the more important people here, Mauer, Percy, and Avis included, did not like us having insurance to this degree.
Gordon opened the pocket watch.
“Is the next one going to be a ruse too?” Percy asked.
“We’ll see,” Gordon said.
I nodded slowly.
The smoke outside was a problem in that it limited visibility and increased the chances of us making a mistake, but it was a problem that had small benefits. Fray couldn’t look outside to clearly see the damage from her bombs or the troop movements on the roof, and the people up there couldn’t see us clearly. Fray having people wearing Crown uniforms helped muddy the waters.
Fray liked having nine of ten degrees of control, with that tenth part being something she was free to manipulate and control.
This didn’t feel like a nine of ten. A solid two out of ten factors in play were outside factors, the chaos of battle, the fighting atop the rooftops, and an environment I did not feel comfortable navigating. But Gordon’s trick here had bumped us from a solid five or six to a seven.
Seven was fairly comfortable territory.
So was our seven running headlong into a wall and dipping into the twos and threes.
Gordon looked up. He met Mary’s eyes, one hand going to his ear, protecting it.
Seconds passed.
An explosion. Close, but not as close as the last had been.
“Go!”
We were out. Running.
This was the one.
If I was the indicator he looked to to signal trickery the index and middle finger extended, together, Mary was the straightforward one. The extended thumb with the hand left more open or closed. The thumb didn’t necessarily indicate the target, but the opposite direction to the target. One of the earlier signs, the execution, the job, the focus. It meant to watch, prioritize.
I found myself unconsciously making the sign with my right hand, as I ran blindly through smoke, my other hand on Lillian’s upper arm.
“Stop!” Gordon called. His voice was almost drowned out in the sound of rain, the irregular staccato of gunfire, and the distant roar of the Brechwell Beast.
We stopped.
My eyes were wide open, and I couldn’t see much of anything past Fray and the soldier at the front of the line. There was too much smoke and rain, and the vague shapes I did register were impossible to make out at first glance.
I realized why Gordon had called the stop and I shut my eyes, turning my head away, my hand losing the gesture to cover my ear. My forehead touched Lillian’s as I bade her to turn.
I really hoped the shock of the hit wouldn’t cause Helen to drop the incendiary canister.
I also really hoped there was a second hit.
A bullet struck cobblestone not far from where we stood. I saw the flash of light or a spark as it bounced off.
A moment later, as if the bullet had been prophetic, the shell hit ground.
We ran through the debris, and I saw Gordon and Mary stumble on the irregular ground, where cobblestone street had been thoroughly shattered. I was more balanced, expecting it, and helped steady Lillian. The ground was particularly hot in one spot I stepped, and I wondered if I’d burned or melted my shoe.
Going from being unable to see through the smoke ten feet ahead of me to having the building there was a shock, as if it was lunging forward at us, rather than the other way around.
We passed through the window, Gordon perching in it to help me and Lillian up. I let Lillian go first, looking up at the fighting on the roof. Discrete groups, shouts, ongoing fighting, and a ape-like Warbeast standing between two groups, threatening both.
We really weren’t on their radar.
I took Gordon’s hand, and he hauled me inside.
Fray’s group, Mauer, and Percy made their way inside. The soldiers gathered with their backs to the wall. There wasn’t enough room immediately inside.
“I’ll take that,” Fray said, to Helen.
“Aw.”
Fray took the octopus. It crawled up to her shoulder and wrapped itself loosely around her neck like a scarf.
“The books,” I said.
Fray looked at the stitched girl. “I suppose it’s time. Give the books back, Wendy.”
Wendy approached. She handed me the backpack.
“As to the other part of our deal,” Fray said.
“What’s this?” Mauer asked.
Fray set her eyes on Percy.
Boots tramped on the floor above us. Everyone looked, worrying we were about to face soldiers. A gun fired, a body fell.
More boots stomped on floorboards. Nobody came downstairs.
Mary was staring at Percy, her jaw set.
The other part of the deal.
It would be an advantage, a win for the Academy, for us, a hit to the enemy, a benefit to Mary in a way, even.
All I had to do was let the lie to Mary continue.
Less than an hour ago, Lillian had suggested I was like an abusive husband. Manipulating, coddling, baiting people closer and then pushing them away.
I wasn’t sure if this was bait or a push.
My finger touched the ring at my thumb. There was a faint ‘x’ on the knuckle. I’d written it to remind myself of something. Damn it.
“It’s awkward to admit, and I know this will cause friction,” Fray said, “But-”
Right, had to focus on the matter at hand.
“Wait,” I said.
Fray stopped short.
The Lambs looked at me.
My breath was frozen in my throat. I couldn’t bring myself to breathe, let alone speak.
But…
When I swallowed, it was a difficult swallow.
“I lied to you, Mary,” I said, my voice soft. I stared down Percy. “About Percy. There was no command phrase, he didn’t abandon you, he did intend you to lead. When he confessed his sins to you earlier, he was lying too.”
Mary stared at me, then looked at Percy.
“He cares, Mary. I know we might lose you by me admitting it, but- he cares enough to let you hate him, if it means you’re happier in the end, with us. Assuming I understood that right.”
Percy straightened a little, as if he’d withered in the time since he’d been rejected by ‘his girl’. He lowered his head in a short nod. “You did.”
“Okay,” Mary said.
I glanced at her.
Her expression was flat.
“You were going to sell out my acquaintance?” Mauer asked Fray.
“We never formally agreed on that. It came up, and I planned to discuss it here, before we parted ways. Keeping in mind they don’t have much leverage anymore, beyond Helen’s promise of mutually assured destruction.”
Helen held up the canister.
The Brechwell Beast roared outside. It was closer than it had been.
The two were talking, but all of my focus was on Mary.
I’d confessed a grave lie that I’d kept for a year and a half, and she wasn’t giving me anything at all.
No anger, no tears, no outrage.
Was she stepping away? Figuring out how to leave? Or, worse, was she staying, while attacking me in the worst way possible, by shutting me out and denying any and all connection between us?
“Gordon’s right, Sy,” Mary said. “You’re really terrible at being honest.”
I don’t know what that means! I screamed, internally.
Externally, I didn’t move an inch or make a sound.
Mauer drew his gun. Percy reached for one as well.
“This doesn’t need to go this far,” Fray said. “Sylvester confessed the lie, there’s no reason to hold to that part of the deal, am I right?”
“Kill him,” Mary said. “Percy.”
“What?” Percy asked. “You heard what he said, he-”
“I heard,” Mary said, voice cold. “What he just said makes more sense than what you both were saying, back in the meeting room back there, the story I heard in the past.”
“Then- this is about the children? The work I do? It bothers you so much?”
Mary shook her head. “No. You shaped me, honed me into a tool, a weapon. You could kill a thousand children a year and it wouldn’t bother me.”
“Then why?” he asked. There was a note of anguish in his voice. “You want me to die?”
“It bothers her,” Mary said, pointing at Lillian. “And she’s important to me.”
“I’m assuming you can’t be convinced otherwise?” Mauer asked.
“No,” Mary said.
Mauer nodded. His sonorous voice carried, even as he spoke to himself, “That’s problematic.”
“Mary,” Percy said. “You’re important to me.”
Mauer turned, and with the crack of a pistol shot, he put a bullet through an anguished Percy’s head.
Percy’s body crumpled to the floor.
“We could have found another option,” Fray said, looking down.
“I’d like to go,” Mauer said. “It’s a loss, but one I’m willing to live with if it means leaving the city before a small army closes in on us. You’ll owe me something in compensation for expediting matters.”
“As you wish,” Fray said. She turned to the rest of us. “Another day.”
“Another day,” I said.
She turned her back to us, taking Warren’s hand as help to make it through the broken window.
Letting them go…
Helen held the grenade, making motions as if she was gauging her ability to accurately throw it through the window at the small army massed outside.
Gordon reached out, putting a hand on her wrist.
“No?” she asked, sounding mournful.
“Cats and cockroaches,” he said. “Some would survive, and it would be the most exceptional ones. Not worth it. Besides, they could have done the same to us.”
He held her wrist firm while he took the pin from his pocket and put it through the slot. He took the weapon from Helen.
“Doesn’t stop us from sending everything we can after them,” I said. “For all the good it’ll do.”
“We can try,” Gordon said, nodding. He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled. “We’ll have to see how-”
Mary, standing beside Gordon, tilted her head to one side, until it rested against Gordon’s shoulder. Her arm reached around his waist. Her eyes were fixed on Percy.
“…How bad it is up there. Are you wanting to stay?”
“No,” Mary said. “I like being like this, but the mission comes first.”
“Mary,” Lillian said. “You doing that for me, you didn’t-”
“You’re my friend,” Mary said. She smiled a little. “It’s okay. I feel better than I have in a long time.”
“If you’re sure-”
“Mm-hmm,” Mary said, nodding, her head rubbing against Gordon’s shoulder. Just being like this, she was closer than she’d been getting to him for a while. Gordon seemed to be taking it in stride. She spoke, “Thank you, everyone. Sy especially. I appreciate this.”
“If you’re absolutely sure you’re okay-” Gordon said.
“I will stab the next person to ask if I’m okay,” Mary said.
“Are you okay?” I asked, without missing a beat.
She moved her head off of Gordon’s shoulder, turning my way.
“Wait,” I said, “hold on.”
She approached me, drawing a knife.
She was a few feet away when she stopped.
Looking up at the stairs.
My first thought was that the enemy had circled back or come down and found us.
Worse.
Two young individuals stood on the staircase, twelve and thirteen, going by appearance alone. I knew better.
One had red hair, parted to one side, wearing a white collared shirt only, despite the cold weather, with dark brown slacks. He had a folded umbrella in one hand. He had freckles on his face, and his eyes- the eyes were intense, amber colored, more like that of a wolf than a person.
Those eyes were the most alive part of him. Helen, even in the earliest days, was better at looking like a proper human than he was.
Beside Ashton was a familiar face, dressed wrong. The hair was still long, but it was combed straight back. The glasses had changed, and were oval, slender, more like reading glasses than anything else. His shirt had a high collar, not folded, with a ribbon around it, and he wore a coat with a hood, but carried no bag and held no book. He held himself differently.
His eyes, as he looked at us, showed no glimmer of familiarity. Recognition, yes, but not in the way it counted.
“You let them go?” he asked.
Previous NextThe Bradley effect is a theory that may explain why certain politicians do better in polling than in the actual election. The theory was named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American. Bradley was running to be the California governor in the 1982 election. Although Bradley led his white opponent in pre-election polling, he ended up losing the actual election. The Bradley effect tried to explain this by arguing that Bradley had an edge in polling because people has public pressure to be politically correct. The main difference here is that polling is done publically and voting is done privately. Therefore, while people may not actually support certain candidates, they may say they do in polling to appear politically correct.
Many people think that this effect may play a role in the 2016 elections. On the republican side, many suspect there may be a reverse Bradley effect with Donald Trump. People may be hesitant to publically support him due to heavy criticism but want to vote for him in primaries. Although Trump did worse than expected in Iowa, Iowa uses a caucus system that is quite public. New Hampshire will be a true test for Donald Trump.
Since New Hampshire uses a primary system, votes are almost entirely private and people will not have social biases interfere with their vote. Currently, FiveThirtyEight of the New York Times estimates Donald Trump will bring in about 29% of the vote. If Trump is able to soar beyond this point, that may be evidence that this reverse Bradley effect is in play due to New Hampshire’s primary system. However, if Trump does worse than 29%, this may be the beginning of the end for him.
On the Democratic side, one can make an argument that Hillary Clinton takes the role of Tom Bradley. Some people may feel social pressure to claim to support Clinton because of her gender but not vote for her in the primary. However, because Bernie Sanders has an enormous lead over Clinton, it may be hard to tell this early.
New Hampshire Winners Prediction: Donald Trump & Bernie Sanders
AdvertisementsThe Neo C comes from Minix, a Hong Kong-based manufacturer of media hubs and various computer accessories. It’s a chunky yet compact hub made of sturdy metal that lets your MacBook’s USB-C port handle just about anything you’d want for regular computer use: two regular USB-A 3.0 ports that carry power, slots for both SD and microSD cards, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, your choice of VGA or HDMI monitor output — the latter up to 4K, though the highest resolution I could test was 2560 x 1080 21:9 — and, critically, another USB-C port so you can continue to charge your computer as you use all these features.
"The power delivery protocol is comprised of exceptionally complicated logic."
That last point is one that’s tripped up other manufacturers; there have been lots of MacBook USB Type-C hubs, but very few have supported pass-through charging. Nonda’s Hub+ was a particularly notable Kickstarter failure, with the creators ultimately winding down the project despite raising $883,460 from over 8,000 backers. Minix has managed to get the charging feature working, however, along with the widest array of ports we’ve seen. "The power delivery protocol is comprised of exceptionally complicated logic," says Minix’s John Scutt. "Our software engineers have spent months testing and fine-tuning the firmware to ensure that the end result is a product that exceeds expectations and guarantees seamless integration with Apple’s hardware."
So, to give you an idea of how this can work in practice, this is my current setup: I have a monitor plugged into the Neo C along with a USB-A cable that enables the monitor’s own USB ports. An external hard drive and Lightning dock are plugged into the monitor, and the MacBook’s USB-C charger is plugged into the Neo C. The upshot is that by plugging in a single cable to my MacBook, I get power, a second display, a hard drive, an iPhone charger and connection, Ethernet connectivity, SD card slots, and extra USB ports. When I want to use the MacBook on the go, I just turn off the hard drive and unplug the cable; when I return to my desk, I only have to plug in one thing to get an instant workstation. Once you’re set up like this, the new MacBook is actually easier to dock than any other laptop I’ve used — even with my old MacBook Pro and its multiple ports, I’d have to plug in the power, the monitor, and the monitor’s USB connection separately.AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Police acting on a tip-off from the Dutch intelligence agency arrested a 30-year-old “terrorist” suspect and seized an arsenal of weapons in the port city of Rotterdam on Friday afternoon, prosecutors said.
Detectives found a Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle, four boxes of illegal highly explosive fireworks, a large depiction of the Islamic State flag, several mobile phones and 1,600 euros in cash when they searched the suspect’s apartment.
“He is suspected of preparing a terrorist crime,” prosecutors said in a statement. Judges ordered the suspect remanded in custody.
The Netherlands’ terrorism threat level has been at one below the highest level since March 2013, meaning that officials believe there is a realistic chance of an attack.
As in many European countries, intelligence officials have repeatedly warned of the threat posed by Dutch citizens who have returned from fighting alongside the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.
The investigation was “still in full progress,” national prosecution spokesman Wim de Bruin said. “At this moment we have only one suspect,” he said, adding that he could not rule out further arrests. He did not expect prosecutors to release further details on Friday.
After attacks by Islamist militants in France, Belgium and Germany, the Netherlands is considered a potential target, because it supports U.S.-led military operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Europe’s largest port, Rotterdam is home to a diverse and transient populations as well as to one of the Netherlands’ largest Muslim communities.For Fatima, a 13-year-old girl from Myanmar’s western marshlands, the new year began with a grueling escape. She spent the first days of 2017 on the run, slogging through rice fields in the dark.
With each step, cold muck sucked at her ankles. The sky above was dark — just a dim crescent moon and a thousand pinpricks of starlight.
She was grateful for the blackness of night. At least there was no sign of armed border guards on the horizon. No distant flashlight beams scanning for intruders in the fields.
She was determined to stay alive until she reached the refugee camps in Bangladesh — a haven for Rohingya Muslims, among the world’s most tormented people.
But as Fatima trudged on, her insides burned. Just one week before, Myanmar’s army had violated her in almost every imaginable way.
It happened on Christmas Day. A platoon stormed into her village, torching homes and rounding up Muslims. When she tried to escape, Fatima says, three soldiers tracked her down and raped her, repeatedly, in front of her sobbing mother.
“My mom watched everything,” Fatima says. “What could she do? They are the army — and she’s just one lady.”
Fatima blacked out from the pain. When she awoke, her charred village was unnervingly quiet. The soldiers were gone and everyone had fled — even her parents. She was feverish, alone and bleeding badly.
Fatima thanks God for the strangers who discovered her. All around her district, other villages were also under siege — and a few adults, escaping their own hell, happened to pass by her home.
“They said, ‘You can’t stay here. You’ve got to come with us. We’re fleeing to the camps in Bangladesh.’”
Fatima joined the group on its journey to the border. After several days of plodding through rice fields, they arrived at their destination: Kutupalong Refugee Camp.
It is a grim colony, full of heartache and sickness. Fatima was just another newcomer caked in paddy muck. Fresh arrivals are directed to the camp’s perimeter, a place where refugees must sculpt their own shelters out of mud and plastic sheeting.
Miserable as it may be, the camp’s population keeps swelling — perhaps north of 80,000 people. Each day, Rohingya show up with horror stories. The men speak of flaming villages. But even darker stories are told by women and girls. They are subjected to a distinct form of cruelty.
A walk through Kutapalong Rohingya refugee camp A video posted by Allison Joyce (@allisonsarahjoyce) on Jan 20, 2017 at 6:01am PST
Practically every major rights agency — from the United Nations to Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch — has interviewed scores of these women.
Fatima’s nightmare is not unique.
Myanmar’s troops are systematically raping Muslim women — a tactic seemingly designed to terrorize this population into fleeing the country.
It is alarmingly effective.
*****
Since October, nearly 70,000 Rohingya have poured out of Myanmar into neighboring Bangladesh. Add that figure to the 300,000 to 500,000 Rohingya refugees who’ve fled purges in decades past.
That’s a population the size of Belize or Luxembourg, all exiled from their homeland.
This is 21st-century ethnic cleansing, orchestrated by Myanmar’s army. It is abetted by the government, now helmed by Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who rose to power with American backing.
The military’s prime goal, it seems, is to make life so intolerable for the Rohingya that they leave Myanmar forever.
Among Myanmar’s Buddhist officialdom, Rohingya Muslims are often portrayed as an invasive species.
One state-run newspaper suggests they’re “human fleas … loathe for their stench and for sucking our blood.” A prominent lawmaker refutes their rape claims by insisting Rohingya women are too “dirty” to arouse soldiers.
If only this was all talk. For years, the state has imposed a complex system of apartheid upon Myanmar’s roughly 1 million Rohingya. About 10 percent are held in internment camps. The rest are quarantined in militarized districts and forbidden to travel.
In any given year, these hardships will pressure a stream of Rohingya to escape the country. Some sail east on creaky boats bound for Malaysia. But most go west, across a wide river into Bangladesh.
As the army rampages around Myanmar’s coast, that stream has become a torrent of people — all surging toward refugee camps.
Marshlands in Bangladesh are used as an underground railroad by Rohingya Muslims fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Credit: Patrick Winn
Even UN officials, who typically prefer bland assessments, are calling this “ethnic cleansing” and a “process of genocide.”
Other high-profile observers go much farther. More than a dozen Nobel laureates liken this crisis to past horrors in Darfur, Bosnia and Rwanda.
The laureates are pleading for a credible investigation into the rapes and killings. Among them: Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai — a teenage Muslim girl, just like Fatima.
These peace-prize winners warn that “if we fail to take action … people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets … which will lead us once again to wring our hands belatedly and say ‘never again.’”
*****
Kutupalong Refugee Camp is surrounded by an ochre moonscape. You enter the camp by climbing bald hills of orange dirt. In the valleys below, rainwater accumulates in viscous, malarial ponds.
Keep going and you’ll reach a labyrinth of clay dwellings. This is the camp’s raucous core — a grid of dirt lanes, inhabited by naked kids and underfed adults.
This is the outer perimeter of the Kutupalong Refugee Camp. Credit: Patrick Winn
I’m here to interview Fatima. I’ve brought along a female Bangladeshi colleague — just in case Fatima prefers to direct her answers to a woman instead of a man.
Fatima waits for us inside a one-room shelter. Its door is a rectangular scrap of tin. Inside, a few female Rohingya elders have cleared out a private space, a semiquiet spot where we can speak to Fatima under their supervision.
When this meeting was first arranged, the elders conveyed that we’d be speaking to a woman — a recent victim of army violence who’s keen to share her story.
But when that tin door clatters open, and daylight illuminates Fatima’s childlike frame, I can see that she’s not a woman at all. She |
"If you can read, you can pass the test," she was quoted as saying by the AP.
South Dakota's Republican governor, Dennis Daugaard, vetoed a similar measure in his state earlier this month. In an op-ed in the Rapid City Journal, Daugaard wrote that he could not support "bad legislation which would lead to a whole host of unintended consequences. The laws we currently have in place are effective, appropriate and minimal."
Idaho, Mississippi and West Virginia passed similar laws last year, and New Hampshire did so last month.Greek presidential vote moves to second round
By Robert Stevens
19 December 2014
With MPs voting according to their party blocs, the government mustered the votes of just 160 Greek MPs from the 300-strong parliament in the first round of the vote for presidential candidate Stavros Dimas.
The vote on Wednesday evening was slated to be held in February 2015, but was brought forward by conservative New Democracy (ND) Prime Minister Antonis Samaras amid a deepening economic and social crisis. The election is being held over three rounds, with the concluding vote scheduled for December 29.
According to the Greek constitution, a president can only be elected by a two thirds majority. If parliament fails to elect a head of state, general elections are immediately triggered. All opinion polls show the opposition SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) party ahead in the polls.
As the ruling coalition between ND and the social-democratic PASOK party has the slimmest of majorities in the parliament, with 155 seats between them, the election of the president is expected to go to the final round. The government’s candidate received far less than the 200 votes required in the first round. It is a certainty that it will also fail to reach this target by December 23’s second round. However, by the third vote the threshold for electing the president drops to 180.
By that stage the government must secure an additional 25 seats from MPs among a number of smaller parties—the Democratic Left, Independent Greeks and the fascist Golden Dawn. The government also hopes to win the support from a number of Independent MPs, who have left the coalition at various points since it was elected two years ago.
In the first round, just five independents backed the government’s 155 MPs. One-hundred-thirty-five MPs abstained (MPs cannot vote “No” in a presidential vote and instead state they are “present” during the roll call).
Five others were absent from the vote. Of the 24-strong bloc of independent MPs, eight had originally signalled they would vote for the government ahead of the ballot.
All 70 SYRIZA MPs opposed the government, with the exception of one of their MPs who was abroad. Also opposing the government were the 12 Independent Greeks (ANEL), the 12 Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the 10 Democratic Left (DIMAR) and all 16 Golden Dawn MPs. Kathimerini reported Wednesday evening that the government was stepping up its “efforts to win round undecided MPs,” with “sources suggested that an initiative by five independents and three Democratic Left MPs aimed at securing a cross-party consensus for president and setting elections later next year could gain extra backing in the coming days.”
PASOK leader and Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the government was open to compromises to ensure the president was elected. “He suggested, for instance, providing SYRIZA with representation on a Greek team to negotiate with the troika,” Kathimerini reported—referring to the team of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank that coordinates Greek austerity measures with the Greek government.
Venizelos said, “We advance to the third round while waiting for a response from opposition parties to an approach that would link the presidential election to the national negotiation team. Then we would be open to discussing all options because what we are concerned about is the national interest.”
The fate of the government may hang on the votes of Golden Dawn, as both Independent Greeks and the Democratic Left had said they will oppose the election of Dimas.
Just prior to the vote, ANEL leader Panos Kammenos said, “We want elections, because the country needs to draft a new economic policy, including a debt restructuring, as soon as possible… We foresee a coalition government that would exclude pro-bailout parties like New Democracy and the Socialists [PASOK] that have failed to turn around the economy.”
On Thursday Kammenos met with Konstantinos Mitsotaki, a former prime minister and ND leader, at the latter’s invite. Noting the significance of the talks, I Efimerida Ton Syntakton (Ef.Syn.) said, “Those in the know… see behind these moves by Mitsotakis the intention to oust Samaras from the premiership, if not from the country’s political scene, and the formation of a government of national unity.”
The Golden Dawn bloc of MPs was only able to participate in the vote due to the authorities allowing seven deputies, including party leader Nikos Michaloliakos to leave prison on a day release. The Golden Dawn MPs have been in prison for more than a year, pending trial on charges of being members of a criminal association. In unprecedented scenes, they were transferred under armed guard from Athens’ high-security Korydallos prison to parliament, arriving just before the vote began.
The extraordinary move of the government in ensuring the presence of the fascists, who are routinely denounced as “criminals”, points to them having reached a deal.
Although Golden Dawn declared beforehand it would reject Dimas’ candidacy in the first round, they have not said how they will vote in subsequent rounds. Given the proven close connections between sections of the government and Golden Dawn it is entirely possible that, in return for their support, they have been promised leniency, and that the charges against the fascists could eventually be dropped ahead of their 2015 trial.
The presidential vote was called by Samaras under conditions where he was unable to secure further loans from the troika. The troika are demanding even deeper austerity, giving Athens a two-month extension to its current loan terms in order to come up with proposals for more cuts, including a further slashing of pensions.
This makes a mockery of any pretence of democracy and underscores the vise-like grip the international financial aristocracy have over economic and social life.
This was illustrated by the high-level interventions into the elections by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who all but declared his support for Samaras’ candidate. Juncker recently warned of the perils of the “wrong election result”. He stated, “I wouldn’t like extreme forces to come to power,” adding, “I would prefer if known faces show up.”
Juncker’s statement was backed up by European Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, who concluded a two-day visit to Athens Tuesday. Moscovici said the government had to complete its austerity programme, insisting, “It is time to deepen the efforts for reform, it’s time to deepen the efforts to create a competitive economy.”
He added that Brussels would prefer to deal with those committed to “preserving the integrity of the euro zone and to reforms.”
The naked intervention by the European Commission into the Greek presidential vote is a message from the financial elite aimed not just at Greece. It is a warning that no retreat from austerity will be brooked in those other countries also being subjected to massive austerity cuts—Ireland, Spain and Portugal.
While in Athens, Moscovici was careful not to meet with SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras. Despite SYRIZA dropping much of its previous rhetoric about unilaterally withdrawing from the troika’s austerity programme, it has not yet done enough to satisfy the troika’s demands, and there is no confidence that it will be able to stem rising opposition in the working class.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Saint Louis FC Will Try To Bounce Back Against Richmond Saturday
Saint Louis FC takes on the Richmond Kickers this Saturday at City Stadium in Richmond, Virginia in a United Soccer League match. STLFC is 5-8-4 on the season while Richmond is 3-10-7 and sits below the local club on the USL East table.
Kickoff is set for 6 pm Saturday night in Richmond. The match can be streamed live on YouTube and in the St. Louis area on KPLR 11. Scroll down for a preview of this weekend’s match and the streaming link.
Saint Louis FC is back home at Toyota Stadium at World Wide Technology Soccer Park in Fenton on August 5 against the Swope Park Rangers.
Last Time Out For Saint Louis FC
Following a 1-0 win over the conference-leading Charleston Battery on July 15, hope was back amongst the STLFC faithful. Saying things were “back on” was reasonable. After 45+ minutes last Saturday, Saint Louis was holding a 1-0 lead over Louisville City FC on the strength of a Daniel Jackson tally. Early in the second half, Christian Volesky earned a straight red and trip to the showers for an ill-advised dangerous play.
Four minutes after the red card, the man disadvantage and intense heat combined to be too much for Preki’s club. Louisville City would score 4 goals in the second half for the three points and Kings’ Cup victory on a 4-1 score.
Head Coach Preki gives his thoughts on the upcoming game against @RichmondKickers in this week's episode of @stlbugs "Bugging the Coaches" pic.twitter.com/2SVEke13YS — Saint Louis FC (@SaintLouisFC) July 28, 2017
Kamara Leads Richmond In Scoring
Alhaji Kamara leads Richmond, D.C. United’s USL affiliate, in scoring with four goals in nine matches. In 20 USL matches this season, the club has scored 13 goals with those coming from eight different players.
The Kickers will be playing on short rest as they played to a 0-0 draw with the Charlotte Independence earlier this week. It was the second consecutive short week for Richmond as they played a mid-week exhibition game on July 19 against Swansea City AFC in between Saturday league contests.
After falling in the exhibition match, Richmond earned a victory on July 22 3-2 over Bethlehem Steel FC. The win snapped a 13-match winless streak.
Saint Louis FC will likely see Matt Turner in goal Saturday for Richmond. The 23-year old Americanhas played in 17 matches for Richmond this season on loan from the New England Revolution of MLS. Turner has conceded 21 goals while making 51 saves and earning three clean sheets.
Doody Leaves STLFC, Returns To Chicago
Patrick Doody was been recalled by the Chicago Fire of Major League Soccer. The recall followed the injury last week to back Brandon Vincent. Doody had joined Saint Louis on July 14 and played in two matches for the club. The Naperville, Illinois native also spent parts of the previous two seasons in St. Louis, playing a total of 33 games.
Aside from being available for selection by coach Veljko Paunovic during league matches, Doody will serve as a guest coach for the 2017 Special Olympics Unified Sports All-Star soccer match on August 1 in Chicago. The event is part of festivities surrounding the 2017 MLS All-Star Game in Chicago.
Volesky Given One Match Suspension
Christian Volesky was handed a one-match suspension by the USL following his red card ejection last weekend. He will sit out this Saturday against Richmond.
Saint Louis FC Signs Emmanuel Appiah
Saint Louis FC signed 23-year old Ghana native Emmanuel Appiah earlier this week. Appiah, the 15th overall selection in the 2016 MLS SuperDraft, most recently played for the Swope Park Rangers last season. The midfielder played in twelve matches last season for Swope Park, including four in the playoffs.
Appiah played his college soccer at the University of Cincinnati.
What To Expect Saturday In Richmond
Saint Louis FC head coach Preki doesn’t exactly post his lineup days in advance of a match. He certainly doesn’t email them out in a press release to bloggers like myself. The former MLS Coach of the Year has been forced to roll out multiple different lineups this year due to various circumstances.
He’ll have to make another change Saturday due to Volesky’s aforementioned suspension.
Against Louisville City, Preki rolled out a Starting 11 featuring three forwards in Volesky, Daniel Jackson and Octavio Guzman. It’s possible that Milan Petosevic could see the start in Volesky’s absence. The 6’3″ Serbian came on for Jackson in the 58th minute last weekend.
Seth Rudolph could also see a start in a realigned formation. The 24-year old from Belleville came on in the 67th minute for Tyler David last weekend and twice came close to scoring.
Ivan Mirkovic will hopefully be able to play the entire match Saturday. After playing 45 minutes two weeks ago in his first game back from injury, his time on the pitch ended after 38 minutes last weekend due to a collision with a LouCity player.
STLFC Donates $5,000 To Women’s Club
Fire & Ice SC, a Women’s Premier Soccer League team headquartered in Belleville, won the WPSL Central Division last weekend to advance to the league’s Final Four. The amateur club took to the online fundraising site GoFundMe to raise money to make the trip to California this weekend. Jim Kavanaugh, Tom Strunk and the Saint Louis FC organization donated $5,000 to the cause. Kavanaugh and Strunk are the CEO and CFO of Saint Louis FC, respectively.
Fire & Ice SC will play the San Diego SeaLions on Saturday in the WPSL semifinals.
THANK YOU to everyone that has donated to our trip! Shout out again to @jimpkavanaugh and @ts9767 w/ @SaintLouisFC! pic.twitter.com/ZLfgncyokU — Fire & Ice SC (@Fire_and_Ice_SC) July 26, 2017
Barry & Strunk Join This Is Silly! Podcast
While local media coverage of Saint Louis FC is lacking, Saint Louis FC fans are fortunate to have one of the best supporters’ podcasts in the USL. President Patrick Barry and CFO Tom Strunk joined the Louligans characters in the latest episode. I highly recommend you give it a listen. Just click the logo to the right.
Scouting City Stadium In Richmond
The Richmond Kickers play at the 22,000-seat City Stadium in Richmond, Virginia. The club has called the stadium home since its establishment in 1993. The stadium, then known as University of Richmond stadium, hosted the NCAA Division I Men’s Soccer Championship between 1995-1998, including the 1997 national semifinal when 18,202 people saw Virginia beat Saint Louis University 3-1. The Billikens’ lone goal that day was scored by captain Tim Leonard, now an assistant coach with Saint Louis FC.
The Kickers are hosting a Craft Beer Fest on Saturday before the match. $16 gets you a ticket to the match and 2 drinks of your choosing from 30+ beers on tap with live music in the parking lot as well. Single game tickets to a Richmond Kickers match are priced from $12-$20.
Stream Saint Louis FC v Richmond Saturday
Every USL match is streamed for free live on YouTube. In the St. Louis area, Saturday’s match can be seen on KPLR 11.
Listen to KTRS FC Soccer Weekly for Friday nights from 7-9 pm on 550 KTRS.
Want to watch the game with friends? Join the St. Louligans at International Tap House in Soulard Saturday to watch the match.
Stuck in the St. Charles area? Watch the match at Hattrick’s Irish Pub in O’Fallon, MO.
Saint Louis FC v Richmond Kickers 7-29-2017 #RICvSTL
Brought to you by Mills ApartmentsHow Fast are Semiconductor Prices Falling?
NBER Working Paper No. 21074
Issued in April 2015
NBER Program(s):Development of the American Economy, Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Industrial Organization, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
The Producer Price Index (PPI) for the United States suggests that semiconductor prices have barely been falling in recent years, a dramatic contrast from the rapid declines reported from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s. This slowdown in the rate of decline is puzzling in light of evidence that the performance of microprocessor units (MPUs) has continued to improve at a rapid pace. Roughly coincident with the shift to slower price declines in the PPI, Intel — the leading producer of MPUs — substantially changed its pricing behavior for these chips. As a result of this change, we argue that the matched-model methodology used in the PPI for MPUs likely started to be biased in the mid-2000s and that hedonic indexes can provide a more accurate measure of price change since then. Our preferred hedonic index of MPU prices tracks the PPI closely through 2004. However, from 2004 to 2008, our preferred index fell faster than the PPI, and from 2008 to 2013 the gap widened further, with our preferred index falling at an average annual rate of 43 percent, while the PPI declined at only an 8 percent rate. Given that MPUs currently represent about half of U.S. shipments of semiconductors, this difference has important implications for gauging the rate of innovation in the semiconductor sector.
A non-technical summary of this paper is available in the July 2015 NBER Digest. You can sign up to receive the NBER Digest by email.
Acknowledgments
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21074
Published: David M. Byrne & Stephen D. Oliner & Daniel E. Sichel, 2017. "How Fast are Semiconductor Prices Falling?," Review of Income and Wealth,. citation courtesy of
Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:Turkey’s cooperation with Gulf countries has perceptibly grown since the March 2015 meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud in Riyadh. It hasn’t escaped notice that this cooperation is beginning to slowly encompass security matters.
Reports of military cooperation between Turkey and Qatar are not really new. It wasn’t a secret that Qatari Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, in his December visit to Turkey, sought to find ways and means of boosting security and defense cooperation between Qatar and Turkey. Thani continued these discussions in his March visit to Turkey.
As a result of these high-level contacts, the Turkey-Qatar Military Cooperation Agreement was passed with unusual speed, first in the Turkish parliament on March 22 and then by Erdogan on March 27. The agreement went into force after its March 28 publication in the official gazette.
The agreement outlines intelligence sharing between Qatar and Turkey as well as military cooperation and the deployment of forces in each other’s territory. There is no longer any legal impediment to the return of the Turkish military to Qatar, which it evacuated Aug. 19, 1915.
In the discussion of the agreement, strong views were expressed by Turkey's parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Ali Ozgunduz asked, "Does Qatar need Turkey to send soldiers to train them? There is no such need. There are US soldiers based in Qatar. Are we actually sending a military unit that would eventually join an international task force that could be set up there? We want to know. Why are our soldiers going there? Are they going to defend Qatar against somebody?"
Aytug Atici, another CHP deputy, objected, "Is there anyone who knows what the Turkish Armed Forces are going to do in Qatar? You signed a train-equip accord with the US. I say now you are going to send Turkish soldiers to Qatar to train and equip Syrian opposition in Qatar."
An official statement from the Foreign Affairs Committee noted that there was no connection between the train-and-equip agreements reached between Turkey and the United States to train Syrian opposition groups and the military agreement signed with Qatar. The agreement with Qatar, according to the statement, should not be attributed to anything beyond what is stipulated in the agreement, and it had nothing to do with US CENTCOM activities in Qatar. The statement also noted that the agreement will enable Qatar to send its military personnel to Turkey. What attracted attention was the reference to foreign military engagements in Gulf countries and that arrangements similar to the Turkey-Qatar agreement may one day be replicated with other Gulf countries.
The military agreement with Turkey has special meaning for Qatar, which is concerned by increased Iranian influence in the Gulf, the improvement of US-Iran relations and China's growing role in the Middle East. Qatar lacks serious military power and appears determined to make up for its deterrence weakness in the Gulf by entering into a military alliance with Turkey and diversifying its defensive capacities. A strong military alliance with Turkey will enable Qatar to enhance its defense industry capacity, improve the training of its army and reduce its military dependence on the United States by diversifying its military partners to counter Iranian influence and perhaps even develop stronger cooperation with NATO via Turkey.
The next question is, what has motivated Turkey to enter such an agreement with Qatar? According to Mehmet Akif Okur, associate professor at Gazi University, the Gulf is important in the global economic-political equation, and Turkey wants to have a say in the Gulf. A close military alliance with Qatar will provide the Turkish Defense Ministry with a tempting opportunity to access a lucrative market. It will also offer Turkey a way to strategically counter Iranian influence in the region and boost Turkey’s role in global security and global energy security.
Okur draws attention to two aspects of the military facility Turkey is planning in Qatar. "Primarily, Turkey has to make sure that the public will understand the risks and opportunities of setting up a base in an important region like the Gulf and ensure that there is a democratic mechanism to supervise the process of the base opening and security it will provide," he said. "No such transparent accountability that involves the civilian rule in military and security fields exists in Turkey. Such a ‘black-box’ setup allows avoiding public scrutiny and accountability by concealing every development behind the shield of secrecy."
According to Okur, military and security relations with oil-rich countries necessitate a closer look at the links between private and public interests.
Okur said it is important to clearly define the objectives of posting Turkish troops to Qatar. "Qatar is a country that had border issues with Saudi Arabia," he said. "It now fears a threat from Iran and is prone to palace struggles for power. It is trying to be influential in regional developments through its peculiar ways. All this means that the Turkish soldiers who will serve in Qatar may be subject to a wide spectrum of tensions. An appropriate strategic-logistical preparation will allow Turkey to field a strong resistance against anyone who may wish to deter Turkey from taking similar steps elsewhere.”
Security sources in Ankara told Al-Monitor that the Turkish Armed Forces subscribe to the "cautious approach" advocated by Okur. They say the Turkish military is now engaged in serious cost-benefit studies and risk analysis. For the time being, the unit that is to be dispatched to Qatar is envisaged as a reinforced battalion task force that includes a small naval element, combat engineers and special forces. The Turkish high command is working on drafting the mission, authority, duties, rules of engagement and international legal aspects of the force. These sources emphasize that the Turkish military is determined to strictly adhere to national and international legality.
Sources also point to the importance of close cooperation with US and NATO allies in the Gulf. Establishing a military presence in Qatar and carrying forward the Sunni alliance of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar is likely to begin after the June 7 general elections. A well-placed source who didn’t want to be identified said that the Turkish army is consciously moving slowly to see how Turkey's political picture develops after the elections.
In sum, although the return of Turkish soldiers to Qatar after 100 years carries strong symbolic messages, the Turkish military is approaching the issue in a serious and professional manner.
Of course, Ankara officials are asking one more momentous question that has yet to receive an answer: How will Iran respond to Turkey’s deploying soldiers in Qatar?So, in the unlikely event you’re done reading the first, sort of explanatory blog, well, congrats, you’ve reached boss level. BTW, Jen hates video games, so don’t tell her that I made a video game reference on a blog that is ostensibly about her adventure. Also, her name is Jen, or Jennifer, but for the love of tiny baby jeebus, don’t spell it with two “n”s. I don’t know why this is important, but I have learnend that it is. Like all good conversations, this one is likely to be steered towards BJJ. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is like Jiu Jitsu, honey….It takes a long time, and it can give you a sore neck. And often times you don’t smell so good.
Speaking of, I sent Jen off yesterday morning, around 9. I can’t say what day, because my sister in law, Janet, is convinced that someone is going to read the blog, or my facebook posts, drive out to the middle of nowhere, hike multiple miles in difficult conditions, and attack my wife. I’d like to point out the number of murders on the PCT are, statistically speaking, lower than the number of alien abductions, also, lower than your chance of winning the Power Ball or having sex with whomever is on your freebie list. Yes, Ross Geller, I’m looking at you.
Now, you might question my math, but here’s the proof. The number of people who have won the lottery is more than 0. People having sex with hot Italian actresses whom, while past their prime, are still more attractive than anybody reading, or writing, this blog. Or anybody on Friends. Seriously, I used to think Courtney Cox was pretty hot, but the neurosis……
Anyway, I digress, as I am wont to do. Also, then number of reported Alien abductions is also non-zero, and the fact that there is a lingering question of whether they happen or not still makes them more likely than getting murdered on the PCT. Not even crazy people think they got murdered on the PCT.
So, Jen has a sore neck. I sent her off from the Mexican border wall, which frankly, looks like the Mexicans did pay for it, exactly the amount they think it’s worth. I walked with her for about a mile and a half, during which time she constantly fucked with her umbrella.
We had gotten up really early and driven in from San Diego, and it was hard to see her go, and well, frankly I don’t think I was at my best emotionally. I may have also had one more whiskey than I am accustomed too the night before, and well, the whole thing was stressful and sad, and she kept fucking with this umbrella. Also Bernardo tried to run off and join the fire department, who was a mile down the road carting some poor woman off who hurt her ankle and probably killed six months of planning in the first mile.
So I kissed her about an hour in, turned around, and headed back to the border with Mexico, while she began her walk towards the border with Canada. I headed back to San Diego, briefly thought about a nap, and instead opted to hit Jiu Jitsu.
I visited Barum BJJ, which is a stones throw, but a fifteen minute drive, from my Trailer Park Paradise. Seriously California, for a state that worships the car, you sure make it hard to drive one. Anyway, most of the good schools I’ve visited are in tucked away pockets, with no glitz and no glamour.
I’ve trained in a garage with a member of the Dirty Dozen, and in a broken down strip mall with a bunch of amazing Kauai players. My favorite is the BJJ Class taught by Daniel Thomas in a kung fu studio in Monterey. This is one of those places. Guys show up ten minutes late, the place is in an industrial park, nothing fancy. Ah, but the Jiu Jitsu. Solid, fundamentally sound, those little tweaks that you wished you had known five years ago.
I just got my Purple Belt on Saturday, and this was my first time actually training since then.
I was nervous. Heavy is the waist that wears the purple, and I was visiting a town full of killers. This school is good, but man, they’re also really cool. They work on the theory that you get better if you’re not thinking murder or be murdered all the time. We all need a little mayhem and chaos, but I’m fifty, and well, I like to roll, and as much as I’m filled with thoughts of homicide, it’s nice to have really technical rolls with good people. And that’s what I got. Okay, enough BJJ for today, which is how I felt after rolling for ninety minutes.
She had planned on a short day, about 5 miles, and I got a text saying that she had reached that point, at 12:30. She set up her tent, a light weight miracle made by Z-packs which cost more than a semester at a State College here, and tucked in.
That lasted about 60 sweaty, bright minutes. She ate some lunch, packed up, and walked another five. Honestly, although she deviated from the don’t do too much plan, I’m proud of her. I’m also slightly, guiltily, experiencing some schadenfreude. She told me last night that the goddamn umbrella had made her neck hurt. Of course, so did mine, but I didn’t tell her that.During last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama proposed fighting poverty by raising the minimum wage. It sounds appealing but it will not work.
Labor economists have repeatedly studied the effects of minimum wage increases. They find no correlation between higher minimum wages and lower poverty. Raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour as the President suggests simply would not reduce poverty.
This seems counterintuitive, to put it mildly. Surely low-income families would benefit from higher pay. Why wouldn’t it help? For several reasons.
First, relatively few minimum wage workers are poor. The average minimum wage worker lives in a family making over $50,000 a year. Many minimum wage workers are teenagers or college students working part time—they are not trying to support themselves (or a family) with their income. Only one-ninth of the workers who would potentially benefit live in poverty. Raising the minimum wage will not affect many poor families.
Second, higher minimum wages cost some workers their jobs. The true minimum wage remains $0 an hour. No business pays its employees more than they produce. A higher minimum wage would cause businesses to lay off every worker who does not add at least $9 an hour in value to their enterprise. The President’s proposed 25 percent minimum wage hike would unemploy about 5 percent of low-wage workers. (Some liberal economists disagree, but more recent research undercuts their arguments.)
Now, this may seem like an acceptable trade-off, however, most minimum wage jobs are entry-level positions. As minimum wage workers gain experience they become more productive and can command higher pay. Two-thirds of minimum wage workers earn a raise within a year. The primary value of a minimum wage job is the on-the-job training it provides, not the present low pay.
Raising the minimum wage makes these entry-level jobs harder to find. That makes it harder for less skilled workers to gain the skills necessary to get ahead. In effect it saws off the bottom rung of their career ladder. That is bad enough in normal economic times, let alone during an anemic recovery from a deep recession.
Finally, the welfare state claws back raises that low-income families do receive. Low-income workers qualify for a host of means-tested federal benefits. These include food stamps, housing vouchers, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. As workers’ incomes rise they qualify for less and less aid—effectively an additional tax on their income. The Congressional Budget Office finds these reductions push many low-income workers’ marginal tax rates to nearly 100 percent.
A single parent working full time at the minimum wage makes $15,000 a year. A raise to $9 an hour would increase their pay almost $4,000—almost all of which they would then forfeit through reduced benefits. The structure of the welfare state makes it virtually impossible to fight poverty with a higher minimum wage.
H. L. Mencken once observed that “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” He could have been talking about minimum wage increases.PHOENIX — The Rockies lost another closer to the disabled list Monday, taking right-hander Adam Ottavino off the roster with a right triceps injury. He was placed on the 15-day disabled list and Colorado called up righty Jorge Rondon from Triple-A Albuquerque to take his bullpen spot.
Ottavino, 29, pitched a scoreless ninth inning Friday night against the Giants for his third save of the season. He also pitched a scorless 10th inning Saturday. In 10 appearances, he’s allowed just three hits and no runs. And he has 13 strikeouts against only one walk.
“Hopefully we can nip this in the bud now early in the season,” said Ottavino, who said he pitched through pain in his last three starts. He was waiting for the final results of a magnetic resonance imaging scan before Monday’s game against the Diamondbacks, but his early diagnosis was triceps inflammation.
“I didn’t feel like myself,” he said. “Now I’m in a holding pattern.”
John Axford, a former major-league saves leader with Cleveland, will take over the Rockies closer job, for now.
“If we have the lead in the ninth tonight, it’ll be Axford,” manager Walt Weiss said. “But with Axford and (Rafael) Betancourt, we have options down there.”
The Rockies also have veteran LaTroy Hawkins on the DL. He started the season as Colorado’s closer before he was demoted, then injured.
Ottavino, who last went on the DL while in the minors in 2011, has not allowed a run in his past 16 games, dating back to Sept. 7, 2014. Since then, he’s pitched 16 scoreless innings with just six hits, two walks and 17 strikeouts.
Ottavino said he felt some soreness when pitching against the Giants on Saturday. He was able to pitch well but the pain continued into the following day.
Rondon has one major league appearance, a one-inning stint for the St. Louis Cardinals last season. He’s allowed two hits and one run in 6 2/3 innings over five games at Albuquerque.
“My fastball is good right now. And my command feels right,” said Rondon, who was on the Rockies’ lineup sheet Sunday before a rained out game against the Giants. He wasn’t officially activated until Monday.
Ottavino’s DL stint is retroactive to Saturday’s game. The Rockies also reinstated David Hale from the 15-day disabled list and optioned the right-hander to Triple A. Hale, 27, has made two minor league appearances after recovering from a strained left oblique.
Nick Groke: ngroke@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nickgrokeChaz Stevens talks with reporters after setting up his Festivus pole made out of beer cans at the Florida Capitol building in Tallahassee, Fla., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. Stevens placed the pole across from a Nativity scene. Since Florida considers the Statehouse rotunda to be a public forum, people can use the space to express themselves or protest, as long as they first apply with a state agency. (AP Photo/Brendan Farrington)
Chaz Stevens, the atheist responsible for erecting a Festivus pole made of beer cans in the Florida capitol, is now threatening to sue the town of Deerfield Beach for displaying a nativity scene, according to a video he posted to YouTube.
"People don't f*cking learn?" Stevens says in the video, which shows the Deerfield Beach nativity scene. "Told you I was gonna sue."
Stevens mocks the scene in the video, slamming the "baby f*cking Jesus" and saying it looks "like somebody stuck their finger up the little baby's ass." He also mocks the figure of the Virgin Mary and the accuracy of the nativity scene.
Stevens said his fight to have Festivus poles placed near nativity scenes is "the most ridiculous thing I could come up with."
"This is about the separation of church and state," Stevens said.
But Stevens isn't the only one protesting nativity scenes. In addition to Festivus poles, both the Florida and Wisconsin capitols also have tributes to the Flying Spaghetti Monster on display.For this week’s team build, let’s take a look at a theme that works for both Marvel and DC. It’s a theme that most people don’t really pay much attention to. Yep, we’re diving down into the depths to Atlantis!
I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m a Marvel guy. Aside from Batman and a few other key DC characters, I don’t really know much about that universe. That doesn’t stop me from playing DC pieces in Heroclix, as they’re still comic characters and I did really enjoy the Justice League cartoons in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. So I thought I would use a theme today that uses both of these universes.
Let’s be honest; both the poster children for Atlantis for Marvel and DC have some connotation, be they true or not. Aquaman has always been called useless and is the constant ass of jokes when it comes to superheroes. You can tell that DC has been trying to change this image of Aquaman for quite some time as the cinematic version is played by a much more ‘masculine’ actor (Jason Momoa) and he looks more savage and brutal. Namor on the other hand, is a dick. Pure and simple. The guy is a total seahorses’ ass and I really don’t know anyone who actually likes the character. When I pulled that gorgeous NFAoS Namor sculpt, I found myself trading him because I really don’t like the character. He’s pompous, he’s full of himself, and he often rushes into things forgetting that, ya’ know, he’s a king of a race of people. Good job invading Wakanda, douche.
These feelings lead a lot people I know to shy away from the Atlantis keyword in Heroclix. When you do a quick search on HCRealms, you’ll see that there is really only a handful of pieces to pick from, and they don’t seem too powerful on their own. However, when you build a theme team is when they really |
earn more war points etc)
[REQUEST] "Sticky" nanohive variant: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=686878#post686878
Update: The dev team will discuss this.
[FEEDBACK] The little things to improve in DUST: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=68898&find=unread
Update: These are on our 'to do' list.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Frame
C C P
C C P Alliance
702
Posted - 2013.04.19 01:51:00 - [33] - Quote
Dear players,
DUST 514 Community Team will be attending Fanfest 2013 for the next two weeks so there will be an hiatus on the weekly updates until May 9th. We will resume the weekly updates around that time. Thank you.
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
1907
Posted - 2013.05.09 05:59:00 - [34] - Quote
Here's this week's update on issues and feedback the dev team discussed with regards to the Uprising deployment.
[FEEDBACK] Uprising - strongest dropsuits only available for AUR? https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=73560&find=unread
Status: We are woking on a fix for this. AUR dropsuits are not supposed to be the strongest ones.
[FEEDBACK] Specializations are redundant? https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=73239&find=unread
Status: We are reviewing the skill tree design and will take player feedback into account.
[REQUEST] Constant revive indicator on HUD for logistics: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=74019
Status: This is being looked at and player feedback will be taken into account.
[FEEDBACK] Aiming in Uprising feels different: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=761754#post761754
Status: We are investigating this issue and will apply fixes accordingly.
[FEEDBACK] HMG Balance and discussion: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=756155#post756155
Status: We will be discussing this issue and take player feedback into account.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2025
Posted - 2013.05.16 09:57:00 - [35] - Quote
Here's this week's update on issues and suggestions that the dev team discussed.
[FEEDBACK] Logistics Suits excel in everything? Assault suit fittings underwhelming? https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=74206&find=unread
Update: We are actively looking into overall dropsuit balance and will monitor the "killer bees" as we go.
[FEEDBACK] Electronics and Engineering skills for dropsuits and vehicles (being too high a progression path) from CPM feedback.
Update: This is part of the skill progression change and the skills in question offer bonuses that justify their SP cost.
[FEEDBACK] Weapon ammo skills - not giving any bonuses: from CPM feedback.
Update: We are looking into this and will make changes as necessary.
[FEEDBACK] Dropship flight mechanics in Uprising - handling feels different: from CPM feedback.
Update: The only change made to the dropship flight mmechanic was a small reduction in speed. We will continue to monitor player feedback on this.
[FEEDBACK] Weapons don't need less range, they need more falloff: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=73977&find=unread
Update: This is what we are planning to implement in the next release.
[FEEDBACK] Tactical Assault Rifle GÇô its balance and modded controllers: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=76001&find=unread
Update: We are monitoring TAR actively, and will get modded controllers to investigate this further and will apply some tweaks to it.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2032
Posted - 2013.05.27 04:40:00 - [36] - Quote
Below are the list of feedback and suggestions that the dev team discussed last week.
Planetary Conquest AWOXing - EVE mechanic moved to DUST: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=830411#post830411
Update: We are looking into this issue and will implement changes that will give players better options to counter this.
[REQUEST] Trophies: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77197&p=2
Update: We do have trophies planned for future updates.
[SUGGESTION] In-game explanation of mercenary battles, instant battles and corporation battles: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77668&find=unread
Update: This will be part of the tutorial system that will explain to players what the battles are in future updates.
[FEEDBACK] Vehicle recall may be used to prevent vehicle loss: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=75567&find=unread
Update: We will review this game mechanic and see what can be done to prevent such exploits.
[FEEDBACK] Drop Uplink locations too clear on the map: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77683&find=unread
Update: This is being fixed in the next update.
[FEEDBACK] Priority - map elements and game modes: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77595&find=unread
Update: More game modes and new installations and terrain are being worked on.
[FEEDBACK] Improving matchmaking further with allocated SP and matching squads: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=74346&find=unread
Update: We are looking at this issue and taking player feedback into account as we improve the current MM design.
[REQUEST] Race/Avatar change for AUR: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=78097&find=unread
Update: We can definitely do this, let us know if you all really like this feature by replying in thread!
We'll be back later this week with more updates so stay tuned!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2040
Posted - 2013.05.30 06:23:00 - [37] - Quote
Here's this week's update on issues and suggestions that the dev team discussed.
[REQUEST] "Hover mode" on assault dropships: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=74063&find=unread
Update: This is being considered for future implementation.
[REQUEST] Restock options and net gain/loss info: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=78008&find=unread
Update: This will be considered for future implementation.
[REQUEST] Timestamps in chat: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77667&find=unread
Update: This is being looked into and should be implemented soon.
[REQUEST] Multiple grenade slots: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=68008&find=unread
Update: We are still improving the grenade system and this is in the plans.
[FEEDBACK] Stick deflection vs rotation speed: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=82088&find=unread
Update: We received some great feedback on this and are working on improving in-game controls.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2041
Posted - 2013.06.06 08:26:00 - [38] - Quote
Here's this week's update on issues and suggestions that the dev team discussed.
[FEEDBACK] Templar Manhunt Event: http://www.reddit.com/r/dust514/comments/1fisvd/while_the_servers_are_down_i_am_templar_57_ama/
Update: The community team and the CPM were discussing this event in general and we are looking into improving this further.
[FEEDBACK] Adjusting the low-value secondary weapon skills: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=82867&find=unread
Update: Great info from the player base, we are reviewing this and working on fixes to address this.
[FEEDBACK] Shield > Armor and detailed explanation why: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=83983&find=unread
Update: New armor modules being introduced in the next patch should address this issue.
[FEEDBACK] Planetary Conquest: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=80441&find=unread
Update: There are plans to improve the PC mechanic, expect dev comments in the discussion thread above.
[FEEDBACK] Laser Rifles in Uprising: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77908
Update: There are more laser rifle variants coming, and we are working on fixing ADS issues.
[FEEDBACK] LAV "death taxis": https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?find=unread&g=posts&t=81717
Update: We are working on resolving this issue.
[REQUEST] Suns and moons: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=75366&find=unread
Update: Soon! The community team will ask the dev working on this feature to comment on the forums.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2041
Posted - 2013.06.06 08:28:00 - [39] - Quote
Next week is the Dragon Boat festival in Shanghai and our Shanghai office will be on haitus from June 10-12. We will resume our weekly updates on June 20.
Thank you for your interest and support in DUST 514.
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2043
Posted - 2013.06.20 09:56:00 - [40] - Quote
Here's this week's update on issues and suggestions that the dev team discussed.
[FEEDBACK] Ferroscale and Reactive plates stats https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86664&find=unread
Update: We will improve on getting info regarding changes and new features out to players sooner and also monitor community feedback on the new items after they get the chance to try it in game.
[SUGGESTION] Detonation on impact grenades https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=84916&p=4
Update: We will look at the number of kills from these grenades and apply changes if needed.
[REQUEST] Test server https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=84702&find=unread
Update: We understand the need for this and are looking at ways to implement this for the console platform.
[FEEDBACK] How would you design New Player Experience https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=84956&find=unread
Update: We will have multiple teams working on this feature and we will improve this in future updates.
[REQUEST] Corporation battles https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=903487#post903487
Update: We've taken this feature down temporarily for the planetary conquest feature, but have plans to reintroduce it in future updates.
[REQUEST] Stamina recovery whilst falling https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=85897&find=unread
Update: This is a bug and will be tested for a fix.
[FEEDBACK/BUG?] Scrambler rifle passive does nothing for Assault variant https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77250&find=unread
Update: This is by design for the charged scrambler rifle.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2072
Posted - 2013.06.28 09:35:00 - [41] - Quote
Here's this week's update on issues and suggestions that the dev team discussed.
[FEEDBACK] Killing 'the collectibe' - making rewards matter https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=89435&find=unread
Update: The community team are introducing a new event rewards paradigm to address this.
[REQUEST] Prototype "Gauged" Triage Repair Tool https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=87052&find=unread
Update: This is a great suggestion.
[FEEDBACK] Persistent LAV issues https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=923636#post923636
Update: We are aware that LAVs are too tough to kill, and we have some changes planned in the pipeline.
[FEEDBACK] How would you design Dropships? https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=88523&find=unread
Update: Great suggestions. We will revisit dropship design after the core gameplay fixes are in-game.
[REQUEST] War Points for stopping virus upload https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=77846&find=unread
Update: We are aware of this, and it is on our backlog in terms of overall WP rewards.
[REQUEST] More maps and more diversity https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86277&find=unread
Update: We like the ideas and we are constantly working on a new content in terms of maps.
[REQUEST] Control of district SI, cannon, installation https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=85717&find=unread
Update: Great comments on improving the gameplay. Expect devs to continue this discussion on the forums.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2072
Posted - 2013.07.04 06:54:00 - [42] - Quote
It's time for our weekly updates on issues and suggestions from the community that were discussed by the dev team!
[FEEDBACK] GÇ£The Fall of the ScoutGÇ¥ https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=90394&find=unread
Update: We are planning on giving Scout role some love in the future. We can see their performance dropping in game overall.
[FEEDBACK] Commando dev blog https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=988007#post988007
Update: We are actively monitoring performance of the Commando dropsuit on TQ. If needed, we will apply tweaks to it.
[REQUEST] Grenade button change https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=67990&find=unread
Update: Good idea, however, it isn't clear where the grenade throw button will be after this change.
[REQUEST] Making forum report option more visible https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=89880&find=unread
Update: This feature has been requested.
[SUGGESTION] Skillback booster https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86041&find=unread
Update: An intriguing idea that the dev team will discuss further.
[FEEDBACK] Active scanner giving inconsistent results https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=90589&find=unread
Update: We are aware of the issues regarding active scanner and we are working on a patch to fix this.
[REQUEST] Dynamic HUD options https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=89747&find=unread
Update: We have some HUD related tasks on our backlog, but we are focusing mainly on HUD feedback and not cosmetics for the time being.
[REQUEST] Lore/RP forums https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=89747&find=unread
Update: This has been requested.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2094
Posted - 2013.07.15 03:14:00 - [43] - Quote
Here's the list of issues and suggestions from the community discussed by the dev team last week.
AUR LAV lack of ISK equivalent https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=90394&find=unread
Update: This may be related to the Saga II LAV. We are looking into this issue.
[FEEDBACK] Triple SP event https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=90741&p=2
Update: We are working on a fix to the AFK farming issue. A fix to this should be out in the next couple of updates.
[FEEDBACK] Uplink spam vs. GÇ£needleGÇ¥ spam https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=91745&find=unread
Update: We are looking at some possible solutions to this and implementing them in future updates.
[FEEDBACK] A day (or two) as a commando https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=91698&find=unread
Update: We are actively monitoring the Commando dropsuit metrics and monitoring community feedback on this.
[FEEDBACK] Strafing oddities in 1.2 https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=91698&find=unread
Update: We are investigating this issues.
[FEEDBACK/REQUEST] Swarm Launchers vs Plasma Cannons - with math https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=92028&find=unread
Update: We are looking into the plasma launcher and see if we can apply some changes to it, as well as some future countermeasures to swarm launchers.
[FEEDBACK] Weapon ranges and profiles in 1.2 https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=91530&find=unread
Update: We are still making refinements to this and will let the community know when we are ready to do so.
CCP Cmdr Wang
C C P
C C P Alliance
2094
Posted - 2013.07.19 03:40:00 - [44] - Quote
Below is the list of community feedback/suggestions the dev team discussed this week.
AFK issue - solution request https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=91818&find=unread
Status: We are working on a feature to counter this.
[FEEDBACK] Remote and proximity explosives https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=82610&find=unread
Status: We are review the design for this and will plan for improvements.
[FEEDBACK] Mordu's Challenge Event http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/DUST-514/DUST-514-Launches-Live-Event-Mordu-s-Challenge/td-p/40882367/highlight/false/page/2
Status: The Organized Event team met with the CPM recently to vet future in-game events that are planned and to gather player feedback from previous events.
[FEEDBACK] Making meters - meters https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93217&find=unread
Status: This is due to gameGÇÖs FOV, and meters are meters in game.
[FEEDBACK/SUGGESTION] Making Amarr tech feel Amarr https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=92000&find=unread
Status: Everything Amarr in DUST shouldn't be exactly like Amarr from EVE. And there are already enough benefits to choose one race over another in terms of equipment.
[REQUEST] Clan/Corporation hub https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93654&find=unread
Status: This could be something we can implement in a future update.
[FEEDBACK] Tanks - cost, destruction, and balance https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93873&find=unread
Status: We will be taking design pass on all vehicles.
That's it for this week, thank you for your interest and we'll be back next week with more updates!
CCP Frame
C C P
C C P Alliance
1370
Posted - 2013.07.26 04:14:00 - [45] - Quote
[FEEDBACK] Tank Petition - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93873
Update: Players were informed on forums that the devs will be doing a pass on vehicles as a whole at a later date. Players also requested that we do not fix a bug with armor rep stacking because that will help tanksGÇÖ suitability. We will be delaying that fix for now, until we do a pass on overall vehicle balance.
[FEEDBACK] Logistics Dropsuit Changes in Uprising 1.3 - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=95412&find=unread
Update: Dropsuit changes were meant to stop misuse of the dropsuit role. They are still effective dropsuits in combat and great for what they are designed to be. We really like the feedback that we received on the dev blog so far.
[FEEDBACK] LAV Changes on 7/18 - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=95372&p=2
Update: There will more vehicle changes coming for LAVs this will include a new physics model that should reduce the effect of "murder taxis".
[FEEDBACK] Forge gun vs. Infantry - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93259&find=unread
Update: We feel that the FG is in a good place and there is no need to make changes to this weapon right now. However, we are constantly monitoring performance of each weapon and its variants on TQ and will react in case we see unusual performance spikes showing up that we are not comfortable with.
[REQUEST] Vehicle "locks" - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93259&find=unread
Status: We want to have a feature where the vehicle is tied to its owner and will be locked to other players. Players should be able to decide to then unlock their vehicle access to either their squad or their team.
[REQUEST] Infantry heat sink module - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=94111&find=unread
Update: There are no plans to implement this currently. This will require some balancing test before we will consider it, but keep the constructive feedback like this coming!
[REQUEST] Name change option - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93655&find=unread
Update: We may consider this, however, we donGÇÖt want this to become a GÇ£witness protectionGÇ¥ program. This can potentially less the amount of consequences of a playerGÇÖs action and promote scamming.
[SUGGESTION] If armor makes you slow, shield should make you more detectable - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=95406&find=unread
Update: Some good ideas here, and we will consider them for a future updates. We do understand that shields may need a downside in some shape or form, and this may be one of those things. We will be careful with the implementation of those.
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
272
Posted - 2013.08.02 10:13:00 - [46] - Quote
[FEEDBACK] Uprising 1.3 Aiming changes dev blog - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1101204#post1101204
Status: CCP Wolfman will write another dev blog on this topic prior to 1.4. Request for more sensitivity options is possible for 1.5. Interested parties can also listen to more details on aiming in CAST 514 Ep. 11 - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1104056#post1104056
[FEEDBACK] Text is in all caps when using SD PS3 output - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1104381#post1104381
Status: Community will discuss with development teams about possible changes
[REQUEST] "Zealot" variants for energy weapons - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=93848&find=unread
Status: Game Design likes this idea, but may need do some further concept work on this.
[REQUEST] More incentive to play a support role - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?find=unread&g=posts&t=96467
Update: More WP rewards for support actions will be available in 1.5
[FEEDBACK] Uprising 1.3 Weapon Rebalancing dev blog -
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=96693&find=unread
Status: Changes seem well received, still working on making contact grenades into sticky grenades. Will monitor weapon performance in 1.3 and make changes as necessary in later patches. CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites
@CCP_Logibro
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
318
Posted - 2013.08.08 11:32:00 - [47] - Quote
Here's some of the feedback we've been discussing with the team this week:
[FEEDBACK] [DEV Post] We are increasing Clone Pack Amounts - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1128660#post1128660
Status: All feedback so far has been good, with most people happy with the change. Some people have expressed interest in more clone pack options
[REQUEST] Extreme range scanner - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1132609#post1132609
Status: We would like to see player feedback on the scanners being introduced in 1.4 first. But it is a good idea.
[REQUEST] Infantry Shield Transporter - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1107071#post1107071
Status: Good idea, we can add this, but after we balance armor vs. shield tank first.
[REQUEST] List weapon ranges in weapon stats - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1000613#post1000613
Status: The dev team is still working on finalizing this. No date yet.
[REQUEST] Anit-MCC weapon variety - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1052071#post1052071
Status: Good idea but low on our list of priority right now.
[FEEDBACK] Allow players to select recruiter in game - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1116252#post1116252
Status: Good suggestion, will poke marketing and let them know this. CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites // Patron Saint of Logistics
@CCP_Logibro
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
480
Posted - 2013.08.15 23:49:00 - [48] - Quote
[REQUEST] Minimum Arming Distance on Mass Driver - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1157781#post1157781
Status: This a decent idea, we may take this into account next time we look at the Mass Driver.
[REQUEST] Additional Loading Screens for greater Map/Facility recognition - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1167688#post1167688
Status: ItGÇÖs cool. We like it. We should do it when we get the chance.
[REQUEST] Plasma Charges - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1112627#post1112627
Status: ItGÇÖs a nice idea, and we have plans for AoE effects.
[FEEDBACK] Improving the HUD - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=870617#post870617
Status: We quite like some of these ideas and weGÇÖll take a look at some of them.
[FEEDBACK] Some skills still have no bonuses to training - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1159560#post1159560
Status: Adding bonuses to any skills lacking them is an ongoing process at present.
[REQUEST] Number the Drop Uplinks - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1159404#post1159404
Status: This is a good idea and we'll look into it.
[REQUEST] SP Cap Rollover - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1159285#post1159285
Status: We have no immediate plans to implement this, but we will keep players advised. CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites // Patron Saint of Logistics
@CCP_Logibro
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
534
Posted - 2013.08.22 16:16:00 - [49] - Quote
[REQUEST] Face customization in character creation - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=102487&find=unread
Status: No plans to do this anytime soon.
[REQUEST] Bring back E3 version of restocking - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=101835&find=unread
Status: Not a high priority for the dev team right now. Will discuss this internally to see if this needs a new feature request.
[REQUEST] Race & avatar change for AUR - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=78097&find=unread
Status: Will discuss with marketing/stat team to see if we have an estimated demand for this feature.
[SUGGESTION] Show Bleedout timer on downed clones - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=101832&find=unread
Status: Good idea. This will be put on the backlog.
[FEEDBACK] Changes to the active SP system - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=100135&find=unread
Status: In match SP earn rate is on the list for review but may not result in any changes CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites // Patron Saint of Logistics
@CCP_Logibro
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
1035
Posted - 2013.08.30 15:57:00 - [50] - Quote
[FEEDBACK] TAR is a better "tactical" rifle than a Scrambler - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1009163#post1009163
Status: We are planning to change the range in 1.5 so this will feel different after the update.
[SUGGESTION] Logibros would like to be able to easily see allied armor status - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1211660#post1211660
Status: This is on our to do list, but will not happen anytime soon due to other priorities. We will monitor feedback in 1.4
[FEEDBACK] Daily Bonus coming in 1.4 and the reset - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1207562#post1207562
Status: We will take this suggestion into consideration.
[FEEDBACK] CCP's choice of starter fits make the game look boring - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1214602#post1214602
Status: We like this idea and we'll talk about it internally.
[SUGGESTION] Global/Player Drop Uplink limit - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1217809#post1217809
Status: This isn't a bad idea and we will take a look at this in the future. CCP Logibro // EVE Universe Community Team // Distributor of Nanites // Patron Saint of Logistics
@CCP_Logibro
CCP Logibro
C C P
C C P Alliance
1532
Posted - 2013.09.07 20:08:00 - [51] - Quote
Sorry about the late feedback, we've all been busy with Uprising 1.4.
[FEEDBACK] Commando suit - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1246139#post1246139
Status: as per previous weekly updates, we are looking into it
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on your composition, POV, and focal length, the effect gives rise to that ‘fake miniature’ look.
But when you use a Tilt+Shift lens and engage the tilt function you are doing something quite different. You are changing the angle of the lens relative to the focal plane, so rather than selectively blurring the shot, you are instead selectively focusing it, something like this:
Another example:
Both the above images were shot with the original Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift Lens. For the first, the lens was tilted to the left, and for the second, the camera was rotated on a tripod to Portrait, and the lens was tilted down -8 degrees, like so:
Here is what another Tilt+Shift lens looks like, tilted up to the maximum:
A way of imagining how it works is to think of focusing on a flat vertical surface in front of the lens. Keeping the centre of the surface still, if you tilt the surface down a bit you are bringing the top portion closer to the camera lens and hence out of focus, and you are taking the bottom portion further away from the lens but also out of focus, but the centre remains in the same position and thus remains in focus. The greater the degree of tilting that flat surface, the more pronounced the out-of-focus region of the image. Now imagine that instead of tilting the subject, you tilt the lens instead in the same fashion. Same result.
Now imagine that instead of a flat vertical surface, your subject is a landscape, with distinct foreground and background objects. By tilting the lens towards the ground, you can manipulate the degree of tilt to make the plane of focus run along the ground and thus achieve, in theory, an increased DOF, regardless of the aperture. This aspect of a Tilt+Shift lens is a vivid demonstration of the Scheimpflug Principle, which I mentioned earlier, and which is as follows: When the extended lines from the lens plane, the object plane and the film plane intersect at the same point, the entire subject plane is in focus.
You cannot do this with a normal lens because its axis is always in a fixed position perpendicular to the focal plane. When you use a Tilt+Shift lens, you can see through the camera viewfinder the effect tilting the lens has on the image. It is not easy to definitively select your field of focus (it’s harder to do with the (old) TS-E 24mm than with the 45mm) and part of the process should ideally involve focusing the lens on the midpoint of the frame before engaging the tilt, but you will notice that tilting the lens and thus the focal plane can require re-positioning the camera slightly for composition.
There are rules of thumb you can use to estimate the degree of tilt required to achieve focus throughout the frame depending on the distance from the object plane to the axis of the lens, but we’re not all Mensa-qualified mathematicians are we? However, I do reference and link to an excellent paper by photographer David Summerhayes below under the heading Further Reading/References, and he has kindly prepared tilt tables for the 4 Canon Tilt+shift lenses, for public use.
I have not yet been that disciplined, and normally max out the tilt just because it creates something special and because of the difficulty of discerning single degrees of tilt. But, as Summerhayes has pointed out: “The most common mistake I have seen is over estimating the amount of tilt needed. Just throwing in 5 degrees of tilt for a starting point to get a Scheimpflug effect on a normal landscape is usually way too much …”
For example, the image below is a crop of a shot which was tilted to the max, so whilst some of the image is in focus throughout the plane, most of it isn’t:
I discuss again the Tilt function under the heading The Rotation Function.
4. The Shift Function
Ever wondered how or why your camera produces a rectangular photograph when the lens is circular? The answer gives the basis of the shift function of a Tilt+Shift lens.
All lenses capture a circular image, whereas the sensor in the camera is only capturing the central rectangular portion of that image, thereby cropping the actual image coming through the lens. The sides of that rectangle have to fit within the diameter of that circle in order to have a complete, cropped, rectangular image. The image circle of a normal lens has a diameter that extends only a little bit from the sides of that rectangle. This is because there is no point making the image circle any larger.
In contrast, the image circle of a Tilt+Shift lens extends way beyond the sides of the rectangle. Thus, if you can imagine a Landscape image – which is a rectangle shape with the horizontal (top and bottom) sides being longer than the vertical (left and right) sides, by shifting a Tilt+Shift lens to the left to take a shot, you are shifting the rectangle crop of the sensor to the left whilst still being within the image circle. And if you then take another shot with the lens back in the normal position, without moving the camera, and then another shot after shifting the lens to the right (again, without moving camera), you have 3 different rectangles which can then be merged into one long rectangle – a panoramic image. As this is achieved without moving the camera (which needs to be on a tripod), the merge of the 3 images in Photoshop is done seamlessly. (Some programs, like Photostitch, are designed to remove the distortion inherent in panoramic images shot by moving the camera for each shot, and don’t recognise non-distorted images shot with a Tilt+Shift lens. The result of merging the images with such an a program is … an image that is hyper-distorted and disjointed.)
Let’s look at some numbers to get another idea of the image circle concept. To cover an APS-C Sensor, a standard lens’s image circle must have a diameter of 27.3mm (as do Canon EF-S lenses), whereas to cover a 24 × 36mm Full-Frame Sensor, a standard lens needs an image circle of 43.2mm (as do Canon EF lenses). (Thus, as an aside, using a lens designed for an APS-C Sensor on a Full-Frame camera will produce significant vignetting in the form of barrel distortion because the lens’s image circle isn’t wider than the camera’s sensor – a trap for young players, especially in relation to Sigma and Tamron lenses – look at their design specs before buying!)
On the other hand, Canon’s 1991 original set of Tilt+Shift lenses all have an image circle of 58.6mm, and the newer 17mm and 24mm versions each has an image circle of a staggering 67.2mm. An excellent interactive demonstration of the image circle concept with a Tilt+Shift lens is near the top of this page.
This is what the Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift Lens looks like with the shift set to maximum in one direction (it also shifts to the right):
Here is another view of a Tilt+Shift lens shifted to the maximum:
As you can see, the shift function does what it says – it shifts the lens parallel to the sensor plane. When I look through the viewfinder and turn the Shift knob, I can be suddenly looking at the ground or sky. Sometimes I will then move the entire lens to bring the subject back into frame and this will result in perspective being changed.
As I mentioned earlier, the combined effect of creating a 3 shot panoramic image with the shift function and using the lens on my full-frame Canon EOS 5D Mark II gives me an effective and distortion-free focal length of 14.9mm with a 100.8 degree
angle of vertical view.
The following photographs demonstrate the creation of a panoramic image by using a Tilt+Shift lens to take 3 separate images of the same scene, respectively, at -11mm shift (maximum), 0mm shift (normal prime position), and +11mm shift (maximum).
And the full panoramic:
Some vignetting can be experienced at the extreme ends of a shift, as you can see, but one benefit of creating panoramic images in this way is the increase in resolution due to the dramatic increase in file size. A trap for young players, however, is not testing the composition of the total panoramic by shifting the lens throughout the 3 positions before settling on the camera/tripod position. Another trap is not taking particular care with getting the horizon straight.
Think about it. The 3 shot panoramic means the horizon is much longer. Thus, the degree of slant is increased at the edges if the horizon is not straight (because you do not move the camera between shots), which in turn creates the need for a much bigger crop than normal. Another tip is to let the camera “settle” after shifting the lens and before taking the shot. This is because the mere physical act of shifting (by turning the knob) will slightly bump the camera, which means the outer edges of your merged panoramic will never be perfectly aligned – but near enough!
Another use for the shift function of a Tilt+Shift lens is one favoured by architectural and interior photographers – engaging the shift can deal with the problem of converging vertical objects, in particular, buildings. Normally, to capture the height of a tall building, you need to point the camera up at an angle. This changes one side of the distance of the subject from the imaging plane, versus the other side and makes the building look as if it is leaning away from you. The effect is also known as keystoning. The wider the lens, the steeper the convergence effect, the less natural-looking is the image. The naked eye will do the same thing, but not to anywhere the same extent.
By engaging the shift function in an upward motion, however, you can keep the camera pointed directly at the building, rather than pointing the camera up, and as you do so, you can see the building in the viewfinder appear to lean towards you, allowing you to adjust for effect before taking the shot. And because of the effect of distance of the object from the lens, you don’t need too many millimetres of shift to achieve major alterations in convergence. Remember also, a Tilt+Shift lens has a huge image circle relative to a normal lens, and this helps enormously when shifting to correct converging lines.
5. The Tilt and Shift Effect
You can shoot an image with both the tilt function and the shift function engaged, like so:
I wanted to capture the scale of the middle section of Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, hence the 3 shot pano using the shift function on the TS-E 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift lens, but I also couldn’t resist engaging the tilt function to focus on the water flow. But that’s the limit basically – 3 shot shift horizontal pano with vertical tilt. But the story is a little different with some lenses – see the discussion under the heading Independent Tilt and Shift Functions.
6. The Rotation Function
I have mentioned already the rotation function of a Tilt+Shift lens, and I have noted also that it can be engaged whilst using either or both the tilt and shift functions.
In relation to the tilt function, rotating the lens at the same time changes again the angle of the focal plane relative to the sensor. Why would you do this? Well, a commercial photographer shooting an interior shot of a car, for example, can place the model at a 45 degree angle to the camera for composition effect yet still obtain focus along the length of the car by using a Tilt+Shift lens, for example the 45mm, tilting it and then rotating the lens to move the tilt from being either horizontal or vertical to being on an angle. Simple, but highly effective.
The same technique can be applied when shooting, for example, the bridal party in an outdoor setting (especially given you don’t have to stop right down as with a normal lens and can shoot faster as a result), or a close landscape where a certain feature is at an angle. A perfect demonstration of this is a waterfall, which is often best shot at an angle, or simply best accessible from an angle. The following two photographs are obviously from the same shoot with the same settings and positions, but notice how the second one has a different focus. Can you see the angle of the focused area? (A diagonal line commencing from the bottom left and ending just above the middle right.) The second photograph is the result of engaging the tilt function on the 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift lens and rotating the lens 90 degrees. I wanted the focus line to run from the top of the waterfall to past that rock with the green moss.
I suppose you could try to replicate the effect of tilting and rotating in Photoshop or another process, but again I stress the transition from focus to no-focus. It’s pretty smooth.
In relation to the shift function, rotating the lens at the same time basically moves the captured area of the total scene in front of the lens by increments. To demonstrate, the following image is a merge of 21 separate photographs, each one taken without moving the camera, but instead by firstly rotating a TS-E 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift lens through the complete 180 degree range of 30 degree increments; secondly, taking three photographs at each rotation, each one in a different shift position, being -11mm, 0mm, and +11mm respectively; then merging the images in Photoshop. Naturally, the settings were unchanged for each shot.
As you can see, there is some cropping to do, but even so, the final result of such a shooting technique with a wide angle Tilt+Shift lens gives a rather full-bodied panoramic:
Finally, rotating a Tilt+Shift lens 90 degrees is also how you change either tilt or shift function from being up and down to left and right. Except of course if you are using one of the new Canon Tilt+Shift lenses …
7. Independent Tilt and Shift Functions
If the Canon set of 3 original Tilt+Shift lenses (1991) have one major limitation, it is the inability to engage either the tilt function or the shift function at a different angle to the other function. In practical terms, if you want to engage both functions for the one shot, the shift function will allow left and right movements, for example, whilst the tilt function will only be available either up or done. You can of course rotate the lens to change the shift to up and down, but this also change the tilt from left to right.
For example, the following image is a crop of a merge of 3 images shot with the shift function of the original 24mm engaged from left to right, at maximum shift. Because I was shooting a horizontal landscape, the tilt function could only be engaged up or down, thus creating a perfectly focused band stretching across the image from left to right, roughly in the middle:
I could not use the lens to have instead a perfectly focused vertical band running from the top fall to the bottom, for example. To do that, I have to rotate the lens 45 degrees, and shoot the 3 shot panoramic vertically so as to be able to use the tilt from left and right and thus achieve my vertical focus, as I attempted with this shot (of the same falls incidentally, but on a different day):
The only way I can align the tilt function with the shift function is to take the lens into a Canon service centre and get them to unscrew the tilt element, turn it 45 degrees, then put it back on the lens.
Hartblei was the first manufacturer to offer Tilt+Shift lenses which allowed independent angles to be applied when using both functions at the same time. They call their lenses “Super-Rotators”, and I give all their details below.
Interestingly, while Canon rectified the issue with their Tilt+Shift lenses in 2009 with the release of the 17mm and new 24mm Tilt+Shift lenses, they also claim they are a “world first”, ie ignoring Hartblei. Both those Tilt+Shift lenses also now allow total flexibility in the selection of the axis of engagement of both functions. This alone is, as I said earlier, a significant improvement in functionality, which is pretty hard to achieve given the lenses’ other capabilities.
I want one.
8. Who Makes Tilt+Shift lenses?
As you may have noticed, the most common ones are manufactured by Canon. In fact, Canon produced the first Tilt+Shift lenses way back in 1973. Less common ones are made by Nikkor, and Hartblei.
Canon’s Tilt+Shift (TS-E) Lenses
This is the current range of Tilt+Shift Lenses offered by Canon:
TS-E 17mm f4L Tilt+Shift Lens (released in 2009). – Maximum Shift = 12mm in any direction. Maximum Tilt = 6.5 degrees in any direction.
TS-E 24mm f3.5L II Tilt+Shift Lens (2009) – Maximum Shift = 12mm in any direction. Maximum Tilt = 8.5 degrees in any direction.
TS-E 45mm f2.8 Tilt+Shift Lens (1991) – Maximum Shift = 11mm. Maximum Tilt = 8 degrees.
TS-E 90mm f2.8 Tilt+Shift Lens (1991) – Maximum Shift = 11mm. Maximum Tilt = 8 degrees.
“TS-E” is short for Tilt Shift – EOS, ie a TS-E lens is designed for the EOS range, both film and digital. Canon’s original and now discontinued 24mm version is the TS-E 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift Lens, which was first released in 1991. It has a maximum shift of 11mm and a maximum tilt of 8 degrees (I own and use this particular lens. I also own the original 45mm f2.8 and would use it if I could get it out of the hands of my girlfriend.)
Given the 1991 originals have been around for a while, there is a solid second-hand market. Prices are variable. I bought my 24mm from an architectural photographer in the US and the 45mm from an RBer, both for AUS$1400. Amazon list a second-hand 24mm original at US$1500. New, the 45mm and 90mm will set you back about US$1200 and the newer 17mm and 24mm about US $2200 (B&H). This Australian retailer is selling the original 24mm for $2,294, the new version for $2,555, and the 17mm for a spectacular $2,972.75 (don’t forget the 75 cents). This is comparable pricing to other suppliers.
Nikkor’s Perspective Control (PC-E) Lenses
Perspective Control? Huh? Ken Rockwell explains:
“PC” stands for perspective control and “E” stands for electronic diaphragm. Actually, Perspective Control is a misnomer, since the only way to change perspective is to move the camera somewhere else. Nikon is trying to say that you can shift this lens to keep parallel lines from converging, not really change perspective. Nikon should call it tilt-shift, but Canon does that."
This is the current range of Tilt+Shift, sorry, Perspective Control Lenses offered by Nikkor:
PC-E 24mm f3.5D ED Lens – Maximum Shift = 11.5mm. Maximum Tilt = 8.5 degrees:
PC-E Micro 45mm f2.8D ED Lens – Maximum Shift = 11.5mm. Maximum Tilt = 8.5 degrees:
PC-E Micro 85mm f2.8D Lens – Maximum Shift = 11.5mm. Maximum Tilt = 8.5 degrees:
Nikkor also has a discontinued (?) PC Micro 85mm f2.8D Lens (8.3 degree tilt, 12.4mm shift), and Nikon also released in 1980 a “shift only” lens, the 28mm f3.5 PC.
Nikkor released its PC-E range in 2008, whereas Canon first used electronic diaphragm technology in 1991 on the release of the original 24mm, 45mm and 90mm. Importantly, whilst the entire Canon TS-E range, is compatible with any Canon EOS (autofocus) camera (eg the new 2009 lenses can be used on the very first EOS camera – the film EOS 650 SLR, released in 1987), whereas the Nikkor lenses have major compatibility issues. For example, and to quote Ken Rockwell again, “Nikon excused itself from its usual fanatical and backwards compatibility with the 24mm f3.5 PC-E. The only camera with which the 24mm PC-E works properly is the D3.”
That was the least of his criticisms. Nikon don’t mention any of these issues on their lens website, confining the issue to “(w)ith the Nikon D3, D700 and D300, auto aperture control with electromagnetic diaphragm is possible.” So, if you own a Nikon camera and want to know if real tilt+shift photography is for you, I recommend a read of Rockwell’s compatibility paper at the link given above.
Interestingly, whilst Canon’s TS-E lenses range from a 58mm diameter (the 90mm) to 82mm (the new 24mm), Nikkor’s PC-E lenses are all at 77mm. (Note that the TS-E 17mm cannot take filters given its bulbous front element.)
Hartblei
Canon’s TS-E lenses are not cheap, but they are a fraction of the cost of Hartblei’s with the Zeiss glass. We are talking here about the Rolls Royces of tilt+shift lenses. Like a Rolls Royce, a Hartblei tilt+shift is (allegedly) hand-made. The following Hartblei lenses are designed for these mounts: Canon EOS, Canon FD, Nikon, Minolta Dynax / Maxxum / AF, Minolta MD, Pentax K, M42 Zenit / Praktica / Pentax M, and Leica R:
MC PS-PC 35mm f2.8 Super-Rotator Tilt+Shift Lens – Maximum Shift = 10mm in any direction. Maximum Tilt = 8 degrees in any direction:
MC PS-PC 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator Tilt+Shift Lens – Maximum Shift = 10mm in any direction. Maximum Tilt = 8 degrees in any direction:
MC PS-PC 80mm f2.8 Super-Rotator Tilt+Shift Lens – Maximum Shift = 10mm in any direction. Maximum Tilt = 8 degrees in any direction:
MC PS-PC 120mm f2.8 Super-Rotator Tilt+Shift Lens – Maximum Shift = 10mm in any direction. Maximum Tilt = 8 degrees in any direction:
Hartblei also make a 45mm f3.5 Super-Rotator lens for medium format cameras with a maximum shift of 12mm in any direction and maximum tilt of 8 degrees in any direction:
But wait, there’s more. Hartblei also makes available the following Arsat tilt+shift lenses for the same mounts as above:
MC TS 35mm f2.8 Tilt Shift
MC TS 80mm f2.8 Tilt Shift
(I haven’t been able to find out any more information about these cheaper Tilt+Shift lenses.)
There’s only one problem with Hartblei Tilt Shift lenses – they are nigh impossible to get. According to the website they’ve been out of stock for some time. In fact, they’ve almost reached mythical status. I emailed the manufacturer about a year ago and was told they did not have an Australian distributor but would I like to be it? These lenses are, however, forever turning up on eBay as being available from a seller in the Ukraine, but be warned, there is negative feedback about non-delivery and refusal by the seller to use PayPal. I was tempted to procure the mouth-watering 120mm by this route but decided against it.
But if you want to really get serious about tilt+shift photography, buy a 4×5” View camera or check this out. O..M..G..
9. Sample Images
This is just a short selection of images I have shot with the Canon TS-E 24mmf3.5L Tilt+Shift lens, on the full-frame Canon EOS 5D Mark II, and which I particularly like:
Weeping Rock Falls
ISO 50, f6.3, 84 seconds, B+W 10-stop ND filter
Having to hold an umbrella over the camera and me the whole time was the only real challenge for this photograph, which is basically as shot. The lens was tilted 6 degrees in order to bring the falls themselves into focus, along with everything else along the same horizontal focal plane, such as the handrail on the left.
Stay
ISO 50, f3.5, 90 seconds, Hoya ND x400 and Lee 1.2 Hard Grad ND filters
Sorry, but it was the only title I could think of for this photograph. Again, minimal processing of this single RAW file. The challenges here were the mosquitoes. This particular area (Cumberland State Forest in suburban Sydney) is infested with them. This time a slightly lower tilt factor, to bring the part of the frame just below the middle into focus, and deliberately so. The hands were just a spur of the moment thing. The aim was the tree. On this occasion the lens had to be rotated 90 degrees to the left to bring the tilt function horizontal.
Pond Her
ISO 50, f6.3, 15 seconds, Hoya ND x400 filter and Lee 1.2 Hard Grad Nd and 0.9 Soft Grad ND filters
Again, the challenge here was the rain and holding an umbrella. On this occasion the tilt is engaged vertically, with the focal point being the plane on which the model sat.
Ancient Path
ISO 100, f8, 50 seconds, Hoya ND x400 filter
This is another example of a 3 shot panoramic using the shift engaged whilst also using the tilt function. I wanted to feature the steps, but also show them in the context of both the cliff wall and the drop on the other side, and not in isolation. You can see the focus area being a horizontal band midway through the frame. The final image was cropped and vignetting applied.
[Here is where I also wanted to give some links to other RBers who shoot with a Tilt+Shift lens so you could see some different creative outcomes – given my propensity to do long exposures – but my search just threw up mostly the fake miniature variety of results. So if you are one of those RBers, or you know someone who is, let me know and I’ll add the link in the next update.]
Hopefully, this Tutorial has given you the basics of how a Tilt+Shift lens works and how creative it allows you to be! There’s a lot I didn’t mention, so …..
10. Further Reading/References
Whilst much of the material in this Tutorial comes from my own experience of using Tilt+Shift lenses, the following sources were also referred to. They are also good for further reading, particularly for the technical aspects, and for some interactive examples (Note: all web links were checked on 10 August 2010 and working):
Canon Europe, Tilt and shift lenses: smart moves, October 2008, published by the Canon Professional Network (short and basic but easy to read overview)
Canon USA, Tilt-Shift Lenses – Basic Concepts, Date Unknown (This pdf has diagrams and explanations. It appears to have been written in Japanese some time ago then “translated” into English by a Japanese person who doesn’t speak much English, eg “Ideally you should be on a tripod to assure that you keep the camera parrellel to the subject.” Putting that aside, it’s a good, short, diagrammatic article.)
Canon USA, An Introduction to Canon’s New Tilt-Shift Lenses, circa 2009, Canon Digital Learning Centre (This is more than just a blurb, it’s an eye-popping expose, with a link to the above Manglish document.)
Canon USA, Tilt-Shift Lenses: Special Feature, Date unknown, Canon Digital Learning Centre (This is mainly 2 extensive interviews with Vincent Laforet and Norman McGrath about their Tilt+Shift work, with samples.)
Carnathan, B Canon TS-E 17mm f/4 L Tilt-Shift Lens Review, circa 2009, published by www.the-digital-picture.com (Simply the best Canon review site on the planet, with oodles of interactive comparisons – highly recommended)
Carnathan, B Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L Tilt-Shift Lens Review, circa 2009, published by www.the-digital-picture.com (Like I said, simply the best Canon review site on the planet, with oodles of interactive comparisons – highly recommended)
Carnathan, B Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 II Tilt-Shift Lens Review, circa 2009, published by www.the-digital-picture.com (Just one more time: simply the best Canon review site on the planet, with oodles of interactive comparisons – highly recommended)
Carnathan, B Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8 Tilt-Shift Lens Review, circa 2009, published by www.the-digital-picture.com (Have I mentioned this is simply the best Canon review site on the planet, with oodles of interactive comparisons?)
Carnathan, B Canon TS-E 90mm f/2.8 Tilt-Shift Lens Review, circa 2009, published by www.the-digital-picture.com (Btw, this is simply the best Canon review site on the planet, with oodles of interactive comparisons – highly recommended)
Conrad, J Image Controls: Tilt and Shift, v1.2b, September 2004, EOS Documentation Project. (Quite technical but also quite fascinating, with particular reference to the original Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift lens)
Cooper, K A Tilt and Shift lens on your digital SLR – The Canon TS-E 24mm lens – a review and discussion, Date unknown, published by Northlight Images (A bit all over the shop, as the article has been added to several times and updated here and there, but it remains a good overall introduction to Tilt+Shift photography.)
Cooper, K Using tilt on your digital SLR, Date unknown, published by Northlight Images (A more technical article than the first, but with oodles of pictorial demonstrations.)
Reichmann, M Canon TS/E 17mm F4 (sic), August 2009, published by www.luminous-landscape.com (A first impressions review)
Rockwell, K View Camera Movements: Why Tilt and Shift?, also known as Why and How to Use Tilt and Shift, April 2008, published by kenrockwell.com. (A short easy-to-read primer on Tilt+Shift photography, with pretty pictures)
Rockwell, K Nikon 24mm PC-E, April 2008, published by kenrockwell.com. (An extensive, easy-to-read, review of all the lens’s functions, with comparative sample images)
Rockwell, K Nikon 24mm PC-E Compatibility, April 2008, published by kenrockwell.com. (A short but highly critical article)
Sheeran, F How Shift Lenses Change Your Life, 1997, published by photo.net (Written in pre-digital days but the principles are unchanged. Focus [excuse the pun] is on the Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5L Tilt+Shift lens)
Summerhayes, D Focusing the Tilt-Shift Lens, 2009, published by www.davidsummerhayes.com. (This is an excellent article, with some great samples of the techniques. You can always tell the tilt+shift articles written by photographers as opposed to those written by technicians – the former is more practical and understandable than the latter!)
Well, that’s it for me. If you got this far with this Tutorial, you may find these of interest as well:
Serious but easy to follow stuff
The concepts of Aperture and f stop – explained
Orton Effect – how to do it
Basic Photoshop tips, eg sharpening, straightening, cropping
Creating artwork samples for your profile or public view page – how to
Creating a linked sample – how to
Creating linked text – just like this
What is mirror lock-up and when to do it – a guide
Motion blur – how to
Adding clouds to an image – how to
All your questions about shooting in RAW answered here
The most comprehensive easy-on-the mind guide to Neutral Density filters on the planet
Understanding ISO – explained here
All your questions about converting a digital camera to infrared are answered here
Not-so-serious Stuff
How (not) to shoot seascapes like a pro – an easy-to-follow guide (not) here
An alternate use for Canon lenses (ouch!) shown here
Work-in-progress
Tutorials currently in progress:
The Photographer’s Guide to Blue Mountains Waterfalls
The Easy Guide to Composing a Photograph
Cheers
Peter
HistoryWhen Fucci signed up for an Instagram account in 2014, building a fine-art career wasn't the plan. But looking at his experience, intentions don't necessarily always align with reality.
"I don't think I ever reached out to be in a gallery," the Canadian "post-pop" artist tells CBC Arts by phone, but as his Instagram's popularity grew, the galleries came to him — starting local (Toronto's Super Wonder Gallery) and rapidly going global. The demand has been such that he can't exactly recall how many shows featured his NSFW cartoon paintings last year. It's either 16 or 17, he says — and those exhibitions were in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. As for the Instagram's progress, his follower count is past the 35K mark.
Fucci's latest solo exhibition, Soup du Jour, is on at Toronto's Only One Gallery to April 7. (Courtesy of OOG)
Fucci is currently part of a group show at Vancouver's Winsor Gallery, and Friday, he launched yet another exhibition: Soup du Jour. Appearing at Toronto's OnlyOneGallery to April 7, it might be his only solo offering in Canada this year, he teases. "There's no focus, and that's what I love about this show," Fucci says. "That's why it's called Soup du Jour." The exhibition features a collection of new and old acrylic paintings, original drawings, sculptures and prints — as well as a few brand collaborations, including a hand-painted bicycle he designed with Fuji last year.
I think just having the work speak for itself is enough on its own. - Fucci, artist
But before we go any further, let's talk about that name. It's an alias — obviously. "The meaning is like 'fake Gucci,' fake whatever," he says. "I thought it was sassy." And three years since he started using it, the artist continues to work anonymously, with plans to keep his identity a secret for the time being, at least.
Still, there are a few biographical details on record, and here are the bullet points. He's a he, for one — a 25-year-old dude who was born in Helsinki and raised in small-town northern Ontario — though he's worked out of Toronto the last seven years. He got into art during his teenage punk days, putting out flyers and T-shirts and flyers for his band, before eventually moving to the States to get his M.A. in graphic design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. School led to a job back in Canada, predictably enough — a corporate gig he describes as "soul-sucking." And that grind prompted him to pick up a hobby circa 2014: drawing and painting the CMYK sex jokes that now largely dominate his Instagram account.
Why doesn't he use his real name? "I just feel it's not necessary at this time," Fucci says. "I think just having the world speak for itself is enough on its own."
So let's see what it has to say...
Doing it for the LOLs
The artist loves a sight gag. "I'm not like a contemporary art snob where I'm going to give you this crazy back-story on my work — some unneeded art statement on all the pieces. It's just what I like drawing," he says. So as far as his declared intentions go, Fucci's only MO is the LOLs. "It's just witty comical stuff. If I can throw in something that makes you laugh, then that's good," he says. The jokes are vulgar but goofy — gags for that part of your brain that still thinks typing "80085" on a calculator is hilarious. But, says Fucci,"I don't think it's the sex that's funny."
"It's a little risqué, yeah, for sure," he says, but the humour? "I think it's in the situations."
Boobs, butts, birds
As for subject matter, the guy clearly has a focus. Every image is a tangle of contrasting colours, bubbly lines and lots of babes. Nude women with curves like Barbapapa Kardashians, specifically.
"They're faceless — they have no character. That's what I like about it," he says. If that statement's ringing some "objectification" alarm bells, Fucci responds by saying his intention is the opposite. He wants the viewer to feel like they're in the piece. To his thinking, if you can't see anyone's faces, then it's easier to imagine yourself in the picture. That lady telling some unseen jerk to get out of her face? That could be you. Same goes for the ones crying over spilled wine...or stumbling around their condos, possibly searching for pants. "I like having some allure in the work, to have everyone relate to it."
Still, it's clear that Planet Fucci definitely has a gender imbalance. There are a few men around, but women rule — so why ask the viewer to relate to a mudflap-bombshell female form? Per Fucci, there's actually no particular reason. He just likes drawing curves. "Everything in my work, it has curvature. Even the typeface [...] it's real curved. Everything goes together. It's very bubbly."
That darn copycat controversy...
All those dangerous, Technicolor curves have gained him international attention, good and bad. Online, he's frequently accused of ripping off another artist, Parra, and Fucci's aware of the controversy. That Dutch artist — one of Fucci's |
natural resources, and leave that country in total chaos, just like we did with Libya?
Trump: “No the other one:”
Hillary: “The creation of the biggest refugees crisis since WWII?”
Trump: “No the other one:”
Hillary: “Leaving Iraq in chaos? ”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “The DOJ spying on the press?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean HHS Secretary Sibelius shaking down health insurance Executives?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “Giving our cronies in SOLYNDRA $500 MILLION DOLLARS and 3 Months Later they declared bankruptcy and then the Chinese bought it?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “The NSA monitoring citizens’?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “The State Department interfering with an Inspector General Investigation on departmental sexual misconduct?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “Me, The IRS, Clapper and Holder all lying to Congress?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “Threats to all of Bill’s former mistresses to keep them quiet?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean the INSIDER TRADING of the Tyson chicken deal I did where I invested $1,000 and the next year I got $100,000?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean when Bill met with Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, just before my hearing with the FBI to cut a deal?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: ” You mean the one where my IT guy at Platte River Networks asked Reddit for help to alter emails?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean where the former Haitian Senate President accused me and my foundation of asking him for bribes?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean that old video of me laughing as I explain how I got the charges against that child rapist dropped by blaming the young girl for liking older men and fantasizing about them. Even though I knew the guy was guilty?
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean that video of me coughing up a giant green lunger into my drinking glass then drinking it back down?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean that video of me passing out on the curb and losing my shoe?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean when I robbed Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party Nomination by having the DNC rig the nomination process so that I would win?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “You mean how so many people that oppose me have died in mysterious was?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “Travel Gate? When seven employees of the White House Travel Office were fired so that friends of Bill and mine could take over the travel business? And when I lied under oath during the investigation by the FBI, the Department of Justice, the White House itself, the General Accounting Office, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, and the Whitewater Independent Counsel?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “The scandal where, (while I was Secretary if State), the State Department signed off on a deal to sell 20% of the USA’s uranium to a Canadian corporation that the Russians bought, netting a $145 million donation from Russia to the Clinton Foundation and a $500,000 speaking gig for Bill from the Russian Investment Bank that set up the corporate buyout?. That scandal?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “That time I lied when I said I was under sniper fire when I got off the plane in Bosnia?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “That time when after I became the First Lady, I improperly requested a bunch of FBI files so I could look for blackmail material on government insiders?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “That time when Bill nominated Zoe Baird as Attorney General, even though we knew she hired illegal immigrants and didn’t pay payroll taxes on them?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “When I got Nigeria exempted from foreign aid transparency guidelines despite evidence of corruption because they gave Bill a $700,000 in speaking fees?”
Trump” “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “That time in 2009 when Honduran military forces allied with rightist lawmakers ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, and I as then-Secretary of State sided with the armed forces and fought global pressure to reinstate him?”
Trump: “No, the other one.”
Hillary: “I give up! … Oh wait, I think I’ve got it! When I stole the White House furniture, silverware, when Bill left Office?”
Trump: “THAT’S IT! I almost forgot about that one”.As already introduced by Valorie my proposal was also selected for this years summer of code!
Okay, before celebrating too much prematurely, I should better get started with coding. So what will I work on during the next 3 months?
Not so long ago, I decided to treat myself with a brand-new 4K monitor - just to improve my productiveness of course. Thanks to many dedicated people the situation was not that bad. Of course, here and there were some quirks, but that’s what you get for living on the bleeding edge, right?
To my horror it happened that I stumbled upon competing desktop environments (it happened by accident, I swear!) and noticed that the situation there was even a bit better. There were no blurred images when opening my last holiday pictures in my favorite image viewer, not even unreadable documents when I’ve quickly have to proofread my paper after nearly missing a deadline!
So, I asked myself, why can’t we have all the nice things too? Well, first of all, because suitable HiDPI support in Qt landed just fairly recently. Secondly, not everyone owns a high-res screen yet (unfortunately!) and therefore might not even be aware of some rendering issues. And thirdly, getting HiDPI rendering correct can be hard (except for the times when it’s really easy).
I thought about it and decided that it would be best if the remaining issues would be fixed in a coordinated approach. This way, I can build up enough knowledge about the current HiDPI situation, which I then apply to different applications - details about that can be found in my application here.
And hurray! - this proposal really got selected. And what’s even better - it will be mentored by David Edmundson, the guy that’s already worked on HiDPI support for Plasma and other projects for years.
I’m really looking forward to the next few months and promise to keep you updated with regular blog posts!TAIPEI, Taiwan — While China ramps up its missile threat, Taiwan's air defenses are getting shabbier by the day.
So says an unclassified report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, prepared for and sent to the U.S. Congress last month.
Taiwan has some 400 fighter jets, but "far fewer" than that number would actually be good in a fight, the DIA says.
(China has 330 fighters within range of Taiwan, and 1,655 fighters total, according to the most recent Pentagon report on China's military power).
Some of Taiwan's planes are too old, others have outdated gear. And for Taiwan's 56 French-made Mirage fighter jets, spare parts are in short supply. Afraid of China's wrath, France hasn't sold any major weapons to Taiwan recently, leaving the U.S. as Taiwan's only supplier of big-ticket arms systems.
The report also highlighted the growing missile gap between Taiwan and China. Despite warming cross-strait relations, China continues to build up its arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles (at least 1,300 and counting) and cruise missiles (several score).
To shoot those down, Taiwan has 200 Patriot missiles and 500 homegrown "Skybow" missiles, the DIA says. But Wendell Minnick, Asia bureau chief for Defense News, said in an email that only about half the Skybows can hit incoming SRBMs (the others can only be used against
aircraft), and "normally you dedicate 2 missiles per incoming target."
That means Taiwan can only blunt some 15 percent or less of China's deployed missile force.
Three hundred and thirty more Patriot missiles, and missile fire units, were approved by
Washington in 2008 but won't be delivered until August 2014, says the DIA. And the weapons package released for sale by the White House last month — the one China got so angry about — will add another 114 Patriots after that.
Even then, it's a lopsided game, and the Patriots and Skybows would be used to protect only the most valuable military and political targets.
China, for its part, has insisted its missile arsenal is there only to deter Taiwan's pro-independence forces from seeking a formal, legal break.
The DIA report comes as Taiwan and its allies in Washington push hard for President Obama to approve the island's request for 66 advanced F-16s to replace its over-the-hill fighters. Taiwan has been asking for the planes since 2006.
The DIA didn't openly push for the sale, but the implications of its report are clear. Says the report dryly, "Taiwan recognizes that it needs a sustainable replacement for obsolete and problematic aircraft platforms."
One interesting side-note of the DIA report was its inventory of Taiwan's tactical or short-range surface-to-air missile arsenal. It includes some 2,000 Stinger missiles, including 728 shoulder-fired units, and more than 700 other missiles.
Those wouldn't be any help against ballistic or cruise missiles. But if China's People's Liberation Army ever did attempt to invade and occupy Taiwan, they could be a "huge problem for [PLA] helicopters and low-altitude aircraft," said Minnick.Hey All,
Back again with another community task for those of you who want to help out the project but have 0 skills to help out with. In short this task is to chop up a large sound file into smaller pieces and name them the appropriate name provided so that I can put them into game. If you're interested in helping out in this way and alleviating some of the work off our hardworking voice actors so they can focus on recording more, we'd love to have your help.
The only requirement is that when you are given a clip (normally 120-250 divisions needed) that you try to get it done. If you can't, get as far as you can, tell us where you stopped, and send what you've completed to us so someone else can finish it off. Try to do about 30-50 cuts at a time so you don't burn yourself out. Remember to do it from front to back so to make it easy to keep track (this hopefully naturally would be what you would do anyways). Steps are listed below.
1. Check the listed available files and take a one of them. You will need to claim it so that 2 persons do not start on the same files.
2. Download the file and open it up in an audio program such as Audacity (free downloadable tool - google search) or other basic recording software.
3. Get the matching script, listen to the first line of your section and find it in the script (ctrl+f is fast). Lines should follow the script (hopefully).
4. Every time the audio recording corresponds with text in a new column (labeled: segment1, segment2, etc) is encountered, you need to chop the file up. Same with every time a new row is encountered, you need to chop it up as well. You'll want to name the clips as you go.
5. Naming Convention. You'll see each row has a filename included such as:
MorroDefau_MDQBalmoraSTemp_0000C331_2
This particular filename row has two segments to this line because of the last _2. A lot of filenames will just have one segment and thus end in a _1
This means segment1 should be labeled:
MorroDefau_MDQBalmoraSTemp_0000C331_1
and segment2 should be labeled:
MorroDefau_MDQBalmoraSTemp_0000C331_2
Notice the only difference is the last number. Basically the last number should match the segment number and everything should be good.
Continue doing this until complete. You will have questions, feel free to ask me and I'll get to them ASAP! Thanks!!
P.S.
Example:
you hear:
Selvil Sareloth runs the silt strider port on the southwest side of town, just inside the wall. Fares vary depending on the distance. | From here in Balmora you can travel to Seyda Neen and Ald'ruhn. From Seyda Neen you can travel to Vivec. | From Ald'ruhn you can travel to Gnisis and Maar Gan.
You find the row in the script which has this line and the filename is: MorroDefau_MDQsiltStriderS_0000BDD7_3
You notice where the segments break in the script. I've shown them with the "|" symbol above that happen to give you three sections. Label each section in ascending numeric order:
Selvil Sareloth runs the silt strider port on the southwest side of town, just inside the wall. Fares vary depending on the distance: MorroDefau_MDQsiltStriderS_0000BDD7_1
From here in Balmora you can travel to Seyda Neen and Ald'ruhn. From Seyda Neen you can travel to Vivec: MorroDefau_MDQsiltStriderS_0000BDD7_2
From Ald'ruhn you can travel to Gnisis and Maar Gan: MorroDefau_MDQsiltStriderS_0000BDD7_3
Filenames starting with IB : these are placeholders and they will never have more than one segment but filenames may end in a number other than _1. Just name the file exactly like the filename and we'll be good :)
REPORTING MISSING LINES AND MISPRONUNCIATIONS
Vas have a lot of lines to record, and sometimes they skip a line, or don’t know how to pronounce certain words properly (you will need to know what kind of accent is expected for each race). Your role is also to check for those problems and report them. You need to mark them in the script, following these conventions:
Missing lines: highlight row in red
Mispronunciation/bad acting/wrong accent: highlight row in blue. For mispronunciations, change the color of the word that is not said properly to red, so the actor knows what he needs to pay attention to.
Example: the actor says “I am a Dunmer”, but mispronounce the word “dunmer. The row will be like this: “I am a Dunmer”
SAVING THE FILE
Save in the following format:
.wav file
16 bit
44100 sample rate
mono (not stereo - this will save space)
The above is important for us to generate the moving mouth.lip files in the CK.
Hopefully this is enough info to make it really clear what needs to happen :) but I expect questions anyways, cheers.
Thanks everyone :)
Happy Cutting!Abstract
Neuroimaging studies have indicated abnormalities in cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuits in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder compared with controls. However, there are inconsistencies between studies regarding the exact set of brain structures involved and the direction of anatomical and functional changes. These inconsistencies may reflect the differential impact of environmental and genetic risk factors for obsessive–compulsive disorder on different parts of the brain. To distinguish between functional brain changes underlying environmentally and genetically mediated obsessive–compulsive disorder, we compared task performance and brain activation during a Tower of London planning paradigm in monozygotic twins discordant (n = 38) or concordant (n = 100) for obsessive–compulsive symptoms. Twins who score high on obsessive–compulsive symptoms can be considered at high risk for obsessive–compulsive disorder. We found that subjects at high risk for obsessive–compulsive disorder did not differ from the low-risk subjects behaviourally, but we obtained evidence that the high-risk subjects differed from the low-risk subjects in the patterns of brain activation accompanying task execution. These regions can be separated into those that were affected by mainly environmental risk (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and lingual cortex), genetic risk (frontopolar cortex, inferior frontal cortex, globus pallidus and caudate nucleus) and regions affected by both environmental and genetic risk factors (cingulate cortex, premotor cortex and parts of the parietal cortex). Our results suggest that neurobiological changes related to obsessive–compulsive symptoms induced by environmental factors involve primarily the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, whereas neurobiological changes induced by genetic factors involve orbitofrontal–basal ganglia structures. Regions showing similar changes in high-risk twins from discordant and concordant pairs may be part of compensatory networks that keep planning performance intact, in spite of cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical deficits.
Introduction
Obsessive–compulsive symptoms are characterized by recurrent, persistent and intrusive anxiety-provoking thoughts or images (obsessions) and subsequent repetitive behaviours (compulsions) performed to reduce anxiety and/or distress caused by the obsessions (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Common obsessions include fear of contamination, fixation on symmetry and orderliness and somatic and aggressive obsessions. Well-known compulsions are excessive hand washing, counting and detailed and rigid rituals or habits, such as excessive checking or specific morning or eating routines. When a person performs these obsessions and/or compulsions for >1 h a day and these thoughts and rituals significantly interfere with routines of daily life, the person fulfils the criteria for obsessive–compulsive disorder. Obsessive–compulsive disorder is generally assessed by clinical interviews, e.g. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-IV, 4th edn. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)]. Questionnaires, such as the Padua Inventory (Sanavio, 1988) and quantitative versions of the Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale (Goodman et al., 1989a, b) can be utilized to explore obsessive–compulsive symptomatology on a more quantitative scale. While the estimates of the prevalence of lifetime obsessive–compulsive disorder are found to be as high as 0.5–2% (American Psychiatric Association, 1994; Grabe et al., 2000), the prevalence of obsessive–compulsive symptoms in the general population is much higher, with estimates up to 72% as reported by Rachman and de Silva (1978).
Neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder suffer from deficits in executive function, including cognitive planning, response inhibition, set-switching, working memory and sustained attention (for review see Schultz et al., 1999; Chamberlain et al., 2005; Menzies et al., 2008). Recent neuroimaging studies have indicated several neurobiological changes associated with obsessive–compulsive disorder. Structural MRI has revealed brain volume changes in the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, anterior cingulate cortex, parietal cortex and thalamus (Pujol et al., 2004; Valente Jr et al., 2005; Menzies et al., 2007; Radua and Mataix-Cols, 2009; Rotge et al., 2009; van den Heuvel et al., 2009), in line with the hypothesis of a disturbed cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) network. Functional neuroimaging studies have also shown altered activation in the abovementioned brain structures during performance of cognitive tasks and after symptoms provocation (Breiter et al., 1996; Ursu et al., 2003; Maltby et al., 2005; Rauch et al., 2007; Menzies et al., 2008; Chamberlain and Menzies, 2009). Although the overall picture points to a deficit in CSTC processing, there are considerable inconsistencies across studies regarding the brain areas involved and the direction of anatomical and functional changes. A possible explanation for this relates to the presence of methodological differences between studies, such as heterogeneity of patient groups and differences in sample size, scanning modalities/parameters and analysis methods. However, there may also be ‘true’ variability in the underlying neurobiology of obsessive–compulsive disorder, that is, it may be that dysfunction of different brain regions leads to highly comparable changes at the behavioural level, because these regions are part of the same brain network involved in the regulation of anxiety and safety behaviours. Such heterogeneity in affected brain regions may, for instance, reflect the differential influence of environmental and genetic risk factors for obsessive–compulsive disorder that may impact on different parts of the brain.
Family studies (Nestadt et al., 2000; Hettema et al., 2001) and twin studies (Jonnal et al., 2000; van Grootheest et al., 2005) have indicated the importance of genetic as well as environmental risk factors with regard to the aetiology of obsessive–compulsive disorder. Heritability for obsessive–compulsive disorder has been estimated to be between 27% and 47% in adults and between 45% and 65% in children (Jonnal et al., 2000; van Grootheest et al., 2005), and linkage and association studies have pointed towards mainly functional deficits of genes involved in serotonergic, glutamatergic and dopaminergic neural signalling (Billett et al., 1998; Bengel et al., 1999; Enoch et al., 2001; Nicolini et al., 2009). Given this moderate heritability, as much as 35–73% of the risk for obsessive–compulsive disorder should be accounted for by environmental stressors and/or adverse gene–environment interactions. Potential environmental risk factors for obsessive–compulsive disorder include traumatic life experiences, perinatal problems, streptococcal infection, psychosocial stress, aspects of parenting (e.g. parental overprotection), pregnancy, divorce and emotional neglect (Albert et al., 2000; Alonso et al., 2004; Lin et al., 2007; Cath et al., 2008; Geller et al., 2008; Wilcox et al., 2008).
Most brain imaging studies apply a group comparison of affected individuals with healthy controls. These standard case–control designs cannot disentangle differences in brain function that are due to environmental risk factors from those that are due to genetic risk factors. A design that makes a distinction between genetically and environmentally mediated neurobiological changes underlying the development of behavioural traits such as obsessive–compulsive disorder is the so-called discordant/concordant monozygotic twin design (de Geus et al., 2007; Wolfensberger et al., 2008; van’t Ent et al., 2009). As nearly all monozygotic twins begin life with identical genomes, discordance at the behavioural level is likely to arise from differential exposure to environmental influences. Consequently, differences in brain function between the high-risk twin and the low-risk co-twin from discordant pairs reflect environmental effects on the brain, rather than effects of genetic variation, although these environmental stressors may ultimately act through modification of gene expression (Heijmans et al., 2009).
In contrast, to maximize detection of the effects of genetic risk factors, neuroimaging results can be compared between monozygotic twins who both score high on obsessive–compulsive symptoms and monozygotic twins who both score very low on obsessive–compulsive symptoms. These monozygotic concordant high- and low-scoring twins are likely to come from families with either high or low vulnerability for obsessive–compulsive disorder. This familial vulnerability may consist of shared environmental or genetic vulnerability. However, since no influence of shared family environment on obsessive–compulsive behaviour was found in any of the studies in adult twins (Clifford et al., 1984; Jonnal et al., 2000; van Grootheest et al., 2007), familial vulnerability for this trait translates entirely to genetic vulnerability. Therefore, a comparison between monozygotic twins scoring both high (concordant-high) on obsessive–compulsive symptoms and monozygotic twins scoring both low (concordant-low) on obsessive–compulsive symptoms will reveal functional activation differences due to influences of genetic risk factors. Furthermore, comparing the regions affected in the high-risk discordant twins with those in high-risk concordant twins allows for the identification of regions commonly affected in all high-risk subjects. These regions may be most closely correlated with the observed behavioural deficits of the disorder.
In the present study, the discordant/concordant monozygotic twin design was used to assess differences in functional brain activation during cognitive planning with the Tower of London paradigm (Shallice, 1982). The Tower of London paradigm has been found to activate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, (pre)cuneus, supramarginal and angular gyrus of the parietal lobe, and frontal opercular areas of the insula (Dagher et al., 1999; Lazeron et al., 2000; Newman et al., 2003; van den Heuvel et al., 2003). Several neuropsychological studies have used a computerized version of the Tower of London to assess problem solving and planning ability in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (Kuelz et al., 2004; Menzies et al., 2008). Some studies revealed that deviant performance on the Tower of London was evident not so much as a deficit in planning accuracy, but rather that patients were slower to recover from an incorrect move (Veale et al., 1996) or had longer movement times (Purcell et al., 1998a,b) compared with healthy controls. Chamberlain and colleagues (2007) further revealed that patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder required more attempts to obtain a correct response on the Tower of London, but only for the highest difficulty levels (4–6 moves).
Importantly, Delorme and colleagues (2007) found that unaffected relatives of patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder had significantly lower scores and increased response times on the Tower of London task compared with controls, which suggests genetic contribution to the behavioural planning deficits. A neuroimaging study further demonstrated that behavioural impairment on the Tower of London task in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder was associated with decreased functional MRI activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and caudate nucleus as well as increased activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (van den Heuvel et al., 2005). This differential brain activation does not only reflect a genetic aetiology, since we replicated the reduced dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation in 12 monozygotic twin pairs discordant for obsessive–compulsive symptoms (den Braber et al., 2008). No obsessive–compulsive symptom-related changes were found for the caudate nucleus or the anterior cingulate cortex, which may be more specific to obsessive–compulsive symptoms caused by genetic factors.
Here, we aimed to extend our previous findings and to specifically examine whether different brain regions are affected in subjects at high risk for obsessive–compulsive disorder due to adverse environmental influences or to genetic influences. For this, we compared performance and functional MRI data during the Tower of London task between twins scoring low and high on obsessive–compulsive symptoms from discordant monozygotic pairs, and between concordant pairs where both twins scored low or both scored high on obsessive–compulsive symptoms. Furthermore, we explicitly tested for the presence of overlap in the regions that were affected by both environmental and genetic risk for obsessive–compulsive disorder.
Materials and methods
Subjects
The twin pairs in this study were recruited from the Netherlands Twin Register (Boomsma et al., 2006). In 2002, surveys were sent to twin families that included the Padua Inventory Abbreviated. The Padua Inventory Abbreviated is derived from the Padua Inventory–Revised version, a widely used self-report inventory on obsessive–compulsive symptoms (Sanavio, 1988; van Oppen, 1992). The Padua Inventory–Revised measures obsessive–compulsive symptoms on a scale from 0 to 4, and contains five subcategories: washing, checking, rumination, precision and impulses (van Oppen et al., 1995). The Padua Inventory–Revised correlates moderately with the Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale symptom checklist, a clinician-derived inventory on obsessive–compulsive symptoms (Denys et al., 2004). Reduction of the Padua Inventory–Revised to 12 items was implemented by selecting two items from each of the five Padua Inventory–Revised subscales with highest factor loadings in a previous validation study (van Oppen et al., 1995) and adding another two items for each of the more equivocal obsession subscales: rumination and impulses.
Completed Padua Inventory Abbreviated questionnaires were returned by 815 monozygotic twin pairs (222 male, 593 female). From this sample, we selected twin pairs with an age range between 18 and 60 years who scored discordant, concordant-high or concordant-low for obsessive–compulsive symptoms. A twin pair was classified as discordant for obsessive–compulsive symptoms if one twin scored high (>16) and the co-twin scored low (≤7). A twin pair was classified as concordant-high for obsessive–compulsive symptoms if both twins scored ≥15, with at least one twin scoring ≥16. A twin pair was classified as concordant-low for obsessive–compulsive symptoms if both twins scored ≤7. These Padua Inventory Abbreviated cut-off scores were derived from sensitivity and specificity measurements in a sample of patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder compared with clinical controls [n = 120; mean scores 20.7, standard deviation (SD) 8.1; sensitivity 0.74 and specificity 0.72 at the best cut-off point of 16 (Cath et al., 2008)]. This initial selection yielded 32 discordant monozygotic twin pairs, 40 concordant-high monozygotic twin pairs and 269 concordant-low monozygotic twin pairs for obsessive–compulsive symptoms. From the large sample of concordant-low twin pairs, a selection was made to optimally match the concordant-high twin pairs by sex and age that resulted in a final concordant-low sample of 41 twin pairs. Two concordant-high twin pairs were omitted from the selection; in one pair, both twins were treated for severe anorexia and had indicated that they were not willing to participate in research projects; in the other pair, the twins indicated that they were not willing to participate in research projects other than the filling out of questionnaires. The remaining 111 twin pairs were invited by letter. Exclusion criteria were neurological damage, colour blindness and contraindications for MRI (e.g. pregnancy, metal artefacts in the body and claustrophobia). From this group, 69 monozygotic twin pairs finally participated in our MRI study, including 19 discordant (seven pairs newly enrolled), 22 concordant-high and 28 concordant-low twin pairs (Table 1). Of this final population, two twins with high obsessive–compulsive symptoms scores from the discordant group and five twins with high obsessive–compulsive symptoms scores from the concordant-high group met clinical diagnosis for obsessive–compulsive disorder. Furthermore, three twins with high obsessive–compulsive symptoms scores and one twin with a low obsessive–compulsive symptoms score from the discordant group, and six twins from the concordant-high group used selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
Table 1 Twin pairs Discordant Concordant High (13 female, 6 male) Low (13 female, 6 male) High (17 female, 5 male) Low (20 female, 8 male) Age at MRI scan (SD) 35.58 (8.92) 36.23 (10.87) 37.50 (8.87) Obsessive–compulsive symptoms PI-R-ABBR 2002 19.55 (3.99) 4.53 (2.17)a 20.62 (4.56) 4.18 (2.19)b PI-R-ABBR current 12.63 (7.34) 6.84 (4.15)a 15.27 (5.58) 4.43 (3.00)b Y-BOCS severity lifetime 7.74 (5.85) 7.00 (8.29) 10.66 (7.21) 3.18 (4.54)b Y-BOCS severity current 5.42 (5.78) 1.47 (2.25)a 7.64 (5.95) 0.95 (2.13)b Y-BOCS symptom lifetime 22.11 (25.32) 7.11 (7.17)a 30.09 (27.34) 4.82 (6.15)b Y-BOCS symptom current 24.32 (30.37) 7.26 (9.61)a 22.82 (20.64) 3.25 (5.11)b Agressive/checking lifetime 5.84 (7.34) 2.11 (2.73)a 9.43 (9.36) 1.79 (2.16)b Agressive/checking current 5.74 (7.82) 2.00 (3.59)a 6.89 (7.61) 1.05 (1.54)b Hoarding/saving lifetime 1.16 (1.38) 0.26 (0.56)a 1.48 (1.84) 0.36 (0.70)b Hoarding/saving current 1.21 (1.44) 0.37 (0.68)a 1.23 (1.64) 0.39 (0.78)b Symmetry/ordering lifetime 1.68 (3.48) 0.84 (1.64) 2.64 (3.44) 0.43 (1.29)b Symmetry/ordering current 1.58 (3.63) 0.68 (1.49) 2.02 (3.14) 0.23 (0.63)b Washing/cleaning lifetime 5.11 (8.09) 0.95 (2.39)a 4.84 (6.39) 0.77 (1.90)b Washing/cleaning current 5.21 (6.70) 1.32 (2.83)a 3.43 (4.74) 0.63 (1.74)b Comorbidity Comorbidity lifetime (MINI) 1.58 (1.39) 0.74 (1.10)a 1.45 (1.42) 0.41 (0.78)b Comorbidity current (MINI) 0.63 (1.71) 0.00 (0.00)a 0.27 (0.50) 0.02 (0.13) Tic 0.37 (0.76) 0.16 (0.37) 0.27 (0.66) 0.05 (0.23)b BDI 4.58 (6.61) 2.95 (2.84) 3.57 (3.22) 1.38 (2.18)b STAI 13.95 (8.77) 12.53 (6.17) 13.64 (7.36) 8.55 (7.36)b STAS 0.21 (0.71) 0.00 (0.00) 0.48 (2.14) 0.11 (0.49) Twin pairs Discordant Concordant High (13 female, 6 male) Low (13 female, 6 male) High (17 female, 5 male) Low (20 female, 8 male) Age at MRI scan (SD) 35.58 (8.92) 36.23 (10.87) 37.50 (8.87) Obsessive–compulsive symptoms PI-R-ABBR 2002 19.55 (3.99) 4.53 (2.17)a 20.62 (4.56) 4.18 (2.19)b PI-R-ABBR current 12.63 (7.34) 6.84 (4.15)a 15.27 (5.58) 4.43 (3.00)b Y-BOCS severity lifetime 7.74 (5.85) 7.00 (8.29) 10.66 (7.21) 3.18 (4.54)b Y-BOCS severity current 5.42 (5.78) 1.47 (2.25)a 7.64 (5.95) 0.95 (2.13)b Y-BOCS symptom lifetime 22.11 (25.32) 7.11 (7.17)a 30.09 (27.34) 4.82 (6.15)b Y-BOCS symptom current 24.32 (30.37) 7.26 (9.61)a 22.82 (20.64) 3.25 (5.11)b Agressive/checking lifetime 5.84 (7.34) 2.11 (2.73)a 9.43 (9.36) 1.79 (2.16)b Agressive/checking current 5.74 (7.82) 2.00 (3.59)a 6.89 (7.61) 1.05 (1.54)b Hoarding/saving lifetime 1.16 (1.38) 0.26 (0.56)a 1.48 (1.84) 0.36 (0.70)b Hoarding/saving current 1.21 (1. |
pride and social responsibility. This may partially reveal why regulators have been slow to embrace this new wave of services, but their popularity demands that renewed attention be given to the laws of commerce and the rights of the individual to trade freely. The future success of these organisations may actually depend more on persuading government to collaborate than consumers.The Pregnant MotherBy LeahgPregnancy, and the expectation of the birth of a child, brings joy to entire families. Not only the parents to be, but the grandparents and siblings of the expectant couple all wish to share the joy of this miraculous event. A new baby in the family is a wondrous thing. However, many people seem to forget the pregnant mother in all the excitement. Grandmothers and aunts start planning what they will do and give to the child. Family members sit and discuss who will be at the actual birth and who will get to hold the baby first.Grandparents run out and buy entire nursery sets and decide color schemes.Many expectant Grandparents see a grandchild as their opportunity to do all that they could not do when they, themselves, were parents for the first time. People tend to forget or run over the feelings and desires of the actual mother to be. Some family members even go so far as to accuse the pregnant mother of being selfish. Any time a pregnant woman will announce HER wishes, it is swept under the rug as raging hormones, and the other family members go on planning HER life. The following are situations that often occur during a pregnancy.1 - Grandparents start to decide what the baby will be named. In fact, many grandparents start to insist, and are then angry and hurt that they do not get to name the grandchild. They also believe that they have the right to veto a name that is not appealing to them. As much as this child will be a part of the grandparent's family, they already named their children. This is the sole right of the expectant parents.2 - Decorating the nursery: Many relatives start going all out and buying entire nursery sets for the new infant. Either that, or they totally disregard the mother’s wishes as to color schemes and decorating wishes for the baby’s nursery. People, this is NOT your baby. Please honor the mother and let her have the joy of decorating HER child’s room.3 - There have been various occasions where the Grandparents go out and buy an entire nursery for THEIR home, with the intention of the baby staying overnight quite often. There have been, unfortunately, many instances where the Grandparents will keep some of the shower gifts at THEIR home, so that THEY will be able to use them for the baby. Once again, we must iterate, this is NOT the Grandparents’ child. It belongs to the mother and father who conceived him/her. Most mothers want to have their infants/children with THEM at all times. This is NATURAL.4 - The question of who attends the birth. Nowadays, there is a loud voice demanding that things be FAIR (e.g. “If the pregnant woman’s mother is with her at birth, then it is only FAIR that the husband’s mother be there as well.”). Many families are quite put out when they are told that they cannot be in the birthing room. They call the pregnant woman SELFISH. In this situation, the only people being selfish are those who demand the right to be in the audience, and this includes the father of the child. Many a time a man has berated his spouse, because she does not want his family members in with her while she is in the throws of labor. What people seem to forget is that, while this is a miraculous moment, there is an actual HUMAN BEING going through labor here. Just as everyone has the right to privacy when going under surgery, so does a woman have the right to privacy when she gives birth. While the event is miraculous and beautiful, it is also one of the most undignified positions a woman can find herself in, if she has people staring at her personal parts. No one has the right to demand attendance or be hurt by not being there. Not even the father of the child has the right to allow someone in the birthing room, unless the mother gives her consent. Please do not guilt the expectant parents. Do not barge into the room when told not to. NO ONE has the right to do this. Fathers, do NOT tell your spouse that she is being unfair not to allow your parents view the birth. You did not ask them to be there at conception. Do not insist now.5 - Holding the child after birth: While we acknowledge that the desire to hold one’s grandchild, niece, or nephew after birth is a very natural and accepted desire, the mother and father have the RIGHT to hold their child first. They even have the right for a bit of quiet time to enjoy this bundle of joy. Please hold your excitement for a bit, and let the actual parents bond with THEIR child. The mother has just gone through hell. Let her enjoy the payment. You will have ample opportunity to hold and coo over the child.6 - Visitation after birth: A woman who has given birth is just like someone who has gone through surgery. She needs time to rest, and she needs peace and quiet. She does NOT need tons of relatives coming to visit. She does NOT need the grandparents sitting by her bed 24/7. She certainly does not need rude people who refuse to leave, even when she nurses the infant. Also, as exhausting and hard as the birth is also on the father, his wife needs him WITH HER. He should not be catering to his family or going home to rest and leaving his wife alone at the hospital while he entertains relatives. The time for entertainment will soon come. Taking a couple of days off and spending it helping the mother of your child is the RIGHT thing to do.7 - Visiting once the mother and child are home: While it is perfectly understandable that relatives want to see the baby, they must remember the mother. She is tired and needs her rest. She needs alone time with her husband so that they can get used to this new person in their household. The parents need bonding time, before the entire world goes back to its regular orbit. Soon, the father will go back to work and the home must be taken care of. Give them a week. Also, many Grandparents want to come visit and "help" the new mother. Helping means doing the wash and the dishes. Helping means cooking, cleaning and doing the shopping. Helping does NOT mean sitting around, constantly taking the baby from its mother and waiting to be catered to. Helping also does NOT mean telling the mother all the things she is doing wrong, how her baby is starving and should get the bottle instead of the breast, and generally berating her for all her child raising decisions.8 - Grabbing the baby: There is a very NASTY and HURTFUL habit of relatives and friends simply grabbing the infant from its mother’s arms. No one has the right to do this, not even the grandmother who just wants to hold her grandchild. No one has the right to do this. If you want to hold the baby, then ASK!!!!. The same thing goes for grabbing the baby from the stroller, or waking the baby up. If the child is asleep, leave her/him be!!!! ASK the mother if you can hold her/him. This is also true when it comes to giving the child BACK to his/her mother. If the baby cries and the mothers asks to have him/her back to feed the infant, THEN GIVE THE BABY TO HER. There are numerous instances where a grandparent will refuse to hand the baby back, citing that the baby is NOT hungry, or that h/she needs a bottle and not the breast. No one has the right to refuse to hand a child back to the mother.Please remember, in all this excitement, that it is the pregnant woman who carries the child for 9 months under her heart. SHE is the one who throws up, feels sick and has to run to the bathroom every ten minutes. The MOTHER is the one who goes through labor/surgery and has the child. SHE and her husband are the only ones who have a say in what goes on during and after the pregnancy. Let them ENJOY this special occasion, and do not ruin it for them with selfish desires. Also, do NOT put the husband in an awkward position. Many men are pitted against their parents and their wives. Please do not put a son in this position. Yes, he has to honor his parents. Yes, he loves his parents. However, he loves and honors his wife as well. This child was created by TWO people, with no help and interference the grandparents (on BOTH sides). No man should be put in the position to have to placate his parents at his wife’s expense.One more thing that we would like to speak about has already been mentioned above. Many a father finds himself torn between his parents and siblings and his spouse. There should be no problem here. When you decide to marry/live with/start a life with a mate, then you have made a commitment to this person. THEIR desires should count above all others. Especially when it comes to something so precious as a child. Please remember that if you find yourself in the middle it is NOT your spouse who put you there, but your parents/siblings. Your spouse agreed to have YOUR child, yours and hers. She did not agree to be an incubator so that relatives on either side could have a child. When it comes to birth and childrearing, the ONLY two people who have a say are the actual parents of the child. To demand and insist that others have the right to tell the mother what to do is WRONG. To try and guilt one’s spouse into placating your parents/siblings is to betray and belittle her. By doing this, you are telling her that she is nothing in your eyes, and that her only duty is to bow down to you and your wishes. Please do not use the old worn phrase of honor thy parents, because your spouse IS NOW a parent and HER desires with HER child should be honored. Also, please take into account the implications and the results of your actions. If you side with others against the desires of your spouse, it will lead to resentment and lack of respect on her side. By you showing her that you have no respect for her as the woman who carried your child (and in pain shalt thou bring forth children) you are letting her know, intentionally or not, that you have little or no respect for her feelings AND WELL-being.
This article is NOT meant to bash anyone. It is not meant to try and ruin the very miraculous event of the coming of a child into this world. The only thing this article is meant to do is to remind people WHO is important here, and to protect the mother who wants to raise HER child.Josh Malone has eight kids. On a hot Texas days, he and his kids enjoy a water balloon fight to cool things off. Josh is normally in the rear with the gear. He is the family reloader, filling and tying water balloons to supply his kids with the ammunition necessary to keep the back yard action going. It was during one of these skirmishes that Josh figured he could replace himself if he just created a weapon of mass destruction. He thought of several ways of doing it and then, like so many inventors before him, he obsessively tinkered until he finally invented one that worked. It screws on a garden hose and has dozens of long tubes. Attached to the end of each tube is a self-sealing balloon. You just turn on the hose and when the balloons are substantially filled, you shake them, they fall off and the kids launch another attack. Leonardo da Vinci would be proud.
He named it a Bunch O Balloons. Josh knew then that he had a winner and building a company based on his own invention became his American Dream. He filed a provisional patent application on February 2014. Things went quickly at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and his first patent was issued about 18 months after the provisional application was filed.
Patenting proved Josh was the inventor and that he had an exclusive right to his invention. But more importantly, the patent could be collateralized to attract investment to build his startup.
Investors look at upside potential and downside risks. On the upside a patent’s exclusive right meant that if Bunch O Balloons took off, Josh would be able to keep competition at bay long enough to establish his startup and return the investment. On the downside, a large company with deep pockets, existing customers and solid distribution capabilities could steal the invention and massively commercialize it thus flooding the market and killing Josh’s startup. But patents mitigated this risk. In the worst case, Josh’s investors could take control of the patent and return their investment by defending it against the same infringers who killed the company.
Josh manufactured an initial batch of products and then ran a crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter. This campaign was a hit, generating 598 orders on day one and bringing in nearly a million dollars overall. Within a couple of days it triggered national media coverage in Sports Illustrated, Time, Good Morning America, and the Today Show. Bunch O Balloons went viral with 9.6 million YouTube views. I can only imagine how Josh must have felt… this would mean everything to his growing family.
Over the next few months, orders kept pouring in. He was contacted by several ethical manufactures seeking to license his invention. With business picking up fast, Josh partnered with a company called ZURU, who is now marketing, manufacturing and selling Bunch O Balloons. Josh achieved the American Dream. But that means nothing under the current American patent system.
Kickstarter is regularly watched by potential investors, customers and ethical businesses. But there are others. Infringers also monitor Kickstarter for potential new products and as it turns out, the better a product does on Kickstarter, the more likely it will get knocked off. Bunch O Balloons got knocked off by TeleBrands just a few months after Josh launched his Kickstarter campaign. (Kickstarter has lobbied for the Innovation Act, which would have done even more damage to inventors).
Today, the U.S. patent system favors infringers like TeleBrands. In fact, it is a CEO’s fiduciary duty to steal patented technologies, massively commercialize them and then never talk to the inventor unless they sue. In the vast majority of cases inventors cannot access the courts because contingent fee attorneys and investors have largely left the business, so in most cases the infringer gets to keep the invention free of charge.
Much has been written about how Congress in the America Invents Act of 2011 stacked the deck against inventors by creating the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in the USPTO. The PTAB turned property rights upside down by immediately invalidating the property right already granted by the USPTO and then forcing the inventor to reprove the validity of the same property right. Under the leadership of Michelle Lee, the deck was stacked even further by setting PTAB evaluation standards much lower than the court. Michelle Lee’s decision to set these low standards weaponized the PTAB for the mass destruction of patents. And a weapon of mass destruction they certainly are. The vast majority of patents evaluated in the PTAB are either invalidated or neutered. Big infringing corporations know this.
So when Josh sued TeleBrands for patent infringement, TeleBrands responded by filing a PTAB procedure called Post Grant Review (PGR). The court did not stay the case pending the outcome of the PGR and ordered a preliminary injunction against TeleBrands. TeleBrands appealed the preliminary injunction to the Federal Circuit.
During the pendency of the appeal, the PTAB rendered its verdict – Josh’s patent was invalidated as indefinite under Section 112. The claims state that the balloon must be “substantially filled”, which according to the PTAB is not defined: “… the Specification does not supply an objective standard for measuring the scope of the term ‘filled’ or ‘substantially filled.'”
But how else can you write the claims? You could use grams of water if a balloon was a solid structure, or perhaps if all balloons were exactly the same. But manufacturing processes that make balloons are not accurate processes. The thickness of the balloon’s wall varies greatly from balloon to balloon and even in the same balloon. Yet Michelle Lee’s PTAB invalidated the patent that Michelle Lee’s USPTO had just issued. (Five other patents have been issued to Josh, one even refers to this very PTAB proceeding as prior art, yet it was still granted by the examiner. I kid you not.)
The Federal Circuit, while deciding a preliminary injunction was properly granted, addressed the PTAB decision in its oral arguments and in its decision. In oral arguments Judge Moore stated, “You have to be able to say substantially, ‘cause there’s a million patents that use the word substantially.” And in their written decision the Federal Circuit explained: “We find it difficult to believe that a person with an associate’s degree in a science or engineering discipline who had read the specification and relevant prosecution history would be unable to determine with reasonable certainty when a water balloon is “substantially filled.” Indeed. I suspect that all eight of Josh’s kids can do that too.
Josh’s case is not over. Already he’s spent multiples of what he earned in his Kickstarter campaign and probably everything he’s made in this entire American Dream. Yet, he’s got years left of litigation and millions more to spend.
Patents can be invalidated in multiple ways by different branches of government and under different standards. Often these branches and standards disagree with each other, as is the case here. Today nobody can know if a patent is valid until the Federal Circuit or the Supreme Court says it is.
But this is the world inventors live in. If you invent something marketable, you will pay for it with years in court and millions of dollars. Nobody respects patent rights. They don’t have to. It is better to steal them and litigate the inventor into oblivion. Josh is fortunate to have a partner willing to fight with him and accept considerable financial burden. But most inventors cannot even open the courthouse doors.
UPDATED at 11:00am ET on Friday, January 27, 2017. An earlier version said the first patent issued in approximately three years. The first patent issued approximately 18 months after the filing of the provisional application.Limbaugh also took aim at Obama’s celebrity supporters. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Rush: Robin Hood was a tea partier
Rush Limbaugh was baffled Tuesday by President Barack Obama’s “Romney Hood” remark, saying Robin Hood is a misunderstood figure who, in fact, was a “tea party activist.”
“Everybody misunderstands the Robin Hood story,” Limbaugh said. “Everybody thinks that Robin Hood was out there stealing money from the rich and taking it back and giving it to the citizens of Sherwood Forest.”
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Obama said Monday that Mitt Romney’s tax policies amount to “Robin Hood in reverse,” calling them “Romney Hood.”
Limbaugh insisted Tuesday that the president got the story wrong: “Robin Hood was stealing from the government. Robin Hood was a tea party activist. Robin Hood was anti-taxes.”
To prove the “Romney Hood in reverse” attack line isn’t new, Limbaugh played a montage of sound clips of former Democratic Rep. Albert Wynn and former Vice President Al Gore saying the phrase, and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz saying “reverse Robin Hoodism.”
Limbaugh also took aim at Obama’s celebrity supporters, citing a Monday fundraiser at film producer Harvey Weinstein’s Connecticut home.
“I’m thinking [Weinstein’s] got to know that if this guy succeeds any more, that the whole notion of this being a wealth-generating economy and country, the days are over,” he said, according to a transcript of his show.
“These people are idiots. They’re abject idiots,” Limbaugh added. “The Anna Wintours of the world, the Sarah Jessica Parkers. They’re absolute, blooming idiots. They are applauding their own demise.”Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes in Romanian) was descended from Basarab the Great, a fourteenth-century prince who is credited with having founded the state of Wallachia, part of present-day Romania. The most famous of the early Basarabs was Vlad's grandfather, Mircea cel Batrin (Mircea the Old). As Wallachian "voivode" (a word of Slavic origin, used in Romania for the leader of a principality, a war-lord, or a supreme chief), Mircea was prominent for his struggles against the Ottoman Empire and his attempts to exclude permanent Turkish settlement on Wallachian lands. Mircea died in 1418 and left behind a number of illegitimate children. As there were no clear rules of succession in Wallachia (the council of "boyars" had the power to select as voivode any son of a ruling prince), Mircea's death led to conflict between his illegitimate son Vlad (Vlad the Impaler's father) and Dan, the son of one of Mircea's brothers. This was the beginning of the Draculesti-Danesti feud that was to play a major role in the history of fifteenth-century Wallachia. In 1431, the year in which Vlad the Impaler may have been born (not confirmed), his father Vlad was stationed in Sighisoara as a military commander with responsibility for guarding the mountain passes from Transylvania into Wallachia from enemy incursion. In 1431, the senior Vlad was summoned to Nuremberg by Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor, to receive a unique honor. He was one of a number of princes and vassals initiated by the Emperor into the Order of the Dragon, an institution, similar to other chivalric orders of the time, modelled on the Order of St George. It was created in 1408 by Sigismund and his queen Barbara Cilli mainly for the purpose of gaining protection for the royal family; it also required its initiates to defend Christianity and to do battle against its enemies, principally the Turks. As an indication of his pride in the Order, Vlad took on the nickname "Dracul." (The Wallachian word "dracul" was derived from the Latin "draco" meaning "the dragon.") The sobriquet adopted by the younger Vlad ("Dracula" indicating "son of Dracul" or "son of the Dragon"), also had a positive connotation. In Romanian history, Vlad is usually referred to as "Tepes" (pronounced Tse-pesh). This name, from the Turkish nickname "kaziklu bey" ("impaling prince"), was used by Ottoman chroniclers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries because of Vlad's fondness for impalement as a means of execution. The epithet, which echoed the fear that he instilled in his enemies, was embraced in his native country. No evidence exists to suggest that Vlad ever used it in reference to himself. By contrast, the term "Dracula" (or linguistic variations thereof) was used on a number of occasions by Vlad himself in letters and documents that still survive in Romanian museums. We know little about Vlad's early childhood in Sighisoara. His mother was apparently Cneajna, of a Moldavian princely family. He was the second of three sons; his brothers were Mircea and Radu. The family remained in Sighisoara until 1436 when Vlad Dracul moved to Targoviste to become voivode of Wallachia. Here, young Vlad was educated at court, with training that was appropriate for knighthood. But his father's political actions were to have major consequences for him and his younger brother Radu. On the death of Sigismund, Vlad Dracul ranged from pro-Turkish policies to neutrality as he considered necessary to protect the interests of Wallachia. To ensure the reliability of Dracul's support, the Sultan required that two of his sons -- Vlad and Radu -- be held in Turkey as guarantees that he would actively support Turkish interests. The two boys may have spent up to six years under this precarious arrangement. Young Vlad would have been about eleven years old at the time of the internment, while Radu would have been about seven. It appears that they were held for part of the time at the fortress of Egregoz, located in western Anatolia, and later moved to Sultan Murad's court at Adrianople. The younger brother Radu, a handsome lad who attracted the attention of the future sultan, fared better than Vlad, a factor that helps explain the bitter hatred and rivalry that developed between the brothers later. Apparently, no serious physical harm came to the boys during these years of captivity, though the psychological impact on Vlad is difficult to assess. After their subsequent release in 1448, Radu chose to remain in Turkey. But Vlad returned to Wallachia to find that his father had been assassinated and his older brother Mircea buried alive by the nobles of Târgoviste who had supported a rival claimant. Vlad was voivode for three separate periods, totalling about seven years. Not too much is known of his first brief period of rule (in 1448). This reign was short-lived, and Vlad spent the next eight years plotting his return to power. Finally in 1456 he was successful and ruled for the next six years, the period about which most is known. After major battles against the Turks in 1462, he escaped across the mountains into Transylvania and was held as a prisoner by the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus until the mid-1470s. His recovery of the throne for a third time in 1476 was brief, for he was killed in battle during the subsequent winter. Though Vlad was to reign for less than seven years, his reputation throughout Europe was widespread. There are several primary sources of information, which offer a variety of representations, from Vlad as a cruel, even psychopathic tyrant to Vlad as a hero who put the needs of his country above all else. Consequently, it is a virtually impossible task to reconstruct his political and military activities with certainty. The most influential in establishing his notoriety throughout Europe, were the German sources, dating from as early as 1463 (while Vlad was still alive). The most popular were several pamphlets that began to appear late in the fifteenth century and which were widely circulated because of the recent invention of the printing press. Indeed, some of the earliest secular texts to roll off the presses were horror stories about Vlad Dracula. Written in German and published at major centres such as Nuremburg, Bamberg, and Strassburg, these had such unsavory titles as The Frightening and Truly Extraordinary Story of a Wicked Blood-drinking Tyrant Called Prince Dracula. Researchers have discovered at least thirteen of these pamphlets dating from 1488 to 1521. The printers of the Dracula tales also included woodcut portraits of the prince and, in some cases, illustrations of his atrocities. Other historical documents include Russian sources, notably one which presented not only the cruel side of Vlad's behavior but also his sense of justice and his determination to restore order. Turkish chronicles, not surprisingly, emphasize the horrors that Dracula inflicted on his enemies, especially during the battles of 1461-62. By contrast there are the Romanian oral narratives, still preserved in the villages near the ruins of Vlad Dracula's fortress on the Arges River. Here we find a very different Vlad: a prince who repeatedly defended his homeland from the Turks at a time when just about every other principality in the region had been subjected to Ottoman rule; and a leader who succeeded in maintaining law and order in what were indeed lawless and disorderly times. All of these sources are biased. In the case of the German reports, the German Saxons of Transylvania were victims of inccursions by Vlad into what was an independent state and the imposition of his harsh economic measures. One could hardly expect then to be objective informants. The Turkish chroniclers are hardly any more objective, downplaying Vlad's military successes and stressing their own demonstrations of bravery and cunning. Russian narratives were generally more unbiased. The Romanian narratives, by contrast, present a very different Vlad: a folk hero who endeavored to save his people not only from the invading Turks but from the treacherous boyars. Vlad's immediate priority when he regained his throne in 1456 was to consolidate his position in Wallachia. He was determined to break the political power of the boyars (nobles) who tended to support puppet (and often weak) leaders who would protect their interests. Such a policy, Vlad realized, worked against the development of a strong nation-state. A related internal problem that faced Vlad was the continuous threat from rival claimants to the throne, all of whom were descendants of Mircea cel Batrin. Coupled with his determination to consolidate his own power was his extreme view of law and order. He did not hesitate to inflict the punishment of impalement on anyone who committed a crime, large or small. On the economic front, he was determined to break the hold that the Saxon merchants of southern Transylvania (especially Brasov) had on trade. Not only were these merchants ignoring customs duties, they were also supporting rival claimants to his throne. Vlad began his six-year period of rule in 1456, just three years after Constantinople fell to the Turks. It was inevitable that he would finally have to confront the Turks, as the small principality of Wallachia lay between Turkish controlled Bulgaria and the rest of central and eastern Europe. Vlad precipitated the anger of the Sultan by refusing to honor an earlier arrangement to pay an annual tribute and to supply young Wallachian men for the Turkish army. After a period of raiding and pillaging along the Danube border, full-fledged war broke out during the winter of 1461-62. His exploits drew the attention of several European rulers, including the Pope himself. The Turks launched a full counter-offensive. Badly outnumbered, Vlad employed every possible means to gain an advantage: drawing the enemy deep into his own territory through a strategic retreat, he burned villages and poisoned wells along the route; he employed guerilla tactics, using the local terrain to advantage; he even initiated a form of germ warfare, deliberately sending victims of infectious diseases into the Turkish camps. On 17 June 1462, he led a raid known in Romanian history as the "Night Attack." But the Sultan's army continued onwards and reached the outskirts of Vlad's capital city. There Vlad used his most potent weapon -- psychological warfare. The following is an account from the Greek historian Chalkondyles of what greeted the invaders: "He [the Sultan] marched on for about five kilometers when he saw his men impaled; the Sultan's army came across a field with stakes, about three kilometers long and one kilometer wide. And there were large stakes on which they could see the impaled bodies of men, women, and children, about twenty thousand of them, as they said; quite a spectacle for the Turks and the Sultan himself! The Sultan, in wonder, kept saying that he could not conquer the country of a man who could do such terrible and unnatural things, and put his power and his subjects to such use. He also used to say that this man who did such things would be worthy of more. And the other Turks, seeing so many people impaled, were scared out of their wits. There were babies clinging to their mothers on the stakes, and birds had made nests in their breasts." The Sultan withdrew. But the war was not over. Mehmed threw his support behind Vlad's brother Radu, who with the support of defecting boyars and Turkish soldiers, pursued Vlad all the way to his mountain fortress at Poenari. According to oral legends that survive to this day in the village of Aref, near the fortress, Vlad was able to escape into Transylvania with the help of local villagers. But he was soon arrested near Brasov by Matthias Corvinus, who had chosen to throw his support behind Radu, Vlad's successor. Corvinus used as evidence letters supposedly written by Vlad that indicated he was a traitor to the Christian cause and was plotting to support the Turks; Romanian historians concur that these letters were forgeries and part of a larger campaign to discredit Vlad and justify Corvinus's actions. Vlad is best known today in the West for the many cruel actions that have been attributed to him. Even his most ardent defenders will concede that he took drastic measures to achieve his political, economic and military objectives. Most of these occurred during the period 1456-1462. One of his earliest actions was taken against the nobles of Tirgoviste whom he held responsible for the deaths of his father and brother. According to an early Romanian chronicle, in the spring of 1457, Vlad invited the nobles and their families to an Easter feast. After his guests had finished their meal, Vlad's soldiers surrounded them, rounded up the able-bodied and marched them fifty miles up the Arges River to Poenari, where they were forced to build his mountain fortress. His prisoners labored under very difficult conditions for many months. Those who survived the gruelling ordeal were impaled. Impalement was an especially sadistic means of execution, as victims would suffer excruciating pain for hours, even days, until death came. It appears that Vlad was determined at times to administer it in ways that would ensure the longest possible period of suffering for the victim. While impalement was his punishment of choice, Vlad apparently employed other equally tortuous ways of dispensing with opponents. One of the German pamphlets (Nuremberg 1488) notes the following episodes: "He had some of his people buried naked up to the navel and had them shot at. He also had some roasted and flayed. "He captured the young Dan [of the rival Danesti clan] and had a grave dug for him and had a funeral service held according to Christian custom and beheaded him beside the grave. "He had a large pot made and boards with holes fastened over it and had people's heads shoved through there and imprisoned them in this. And he had the pot filled with water and a big fire made under the pot and thus let the people cry out pitiably until they were boiled quite to death. "He devised dreadful, frightful, unspeakable torments, such as impaling together mothers and children nursing at their breasts so that the children kicked convulsively at their mothers' breasts until dead. In like manner he cut open mothers' breasts and stuffed their children's heads through and thus impaled both. "He had all kinds of people impaled sideways: Christians, Jews, heathens, so that they moved and twitched and whimpered in confusion a long time like frogs. "About three hundred gypsies came into his country. Then he selected the best three of them and had them roasted; these the others had to eat." While it is impossible to verify all of these, there is no doubt that Vlad meted out his punishments with unusual cruelty. Several of the tales of his atrocities occur in three or more separate and independent accounts, indicating a large measure of veracity. One is this story of how he dispensed with the sick and the poor: "Dracula was very concerned that all his subjects work and contribute to the common welfare. He once noticed that the poor, vagrants, beggars and cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Târgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared for them. The princes guests ate and drank late into the night, when Dracula himself made an appearance. 'What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world,' asked the prince. When they responded positively Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames. Dracula explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did this, 'in order that they represent no further burden to others so that no one will be poor in my realm." Nobody was immune from his cruelty. Another widely disseminated tale involves the arrival in his court of two foreign ambassadors: "Some Italian ambassadors were sent to him. When they came to him they bowed and removed their hats and they kept on the berets beneath them. Then he asked them why they did not take their caps off, too. They said it was their custom, and they did not even remove them for the Emperor. Dracula said, 'I wish to reinforce this for you.' He immediately had their caps nailed firmly on their heads so that their caps would not fall off and their custom would remain. Thus he reinforced it." In other versions, the ambassadors are Turkish and the caps are turbans. But the essence of the story remains the same. Impalement also proved to be a powerful deterrent to would-be criminals. Consider the following story, found in both Russian and Romanian narratives: "Dracula so hated evil in his land that if someone stole, lied or committed some injustice, he was not likely to stay alive. Whether he was a nobleman, or a priest or a monk or a common man, and even if he had great wealth, he could not escape death if he were dishonest. And he was so feared that the peasants say that in a certain place, near the source of the river, there was a fountain; at this fountain at the source of this river, there came many travelers from many lands and all these people came to drink at the fountain because the water was cool and sweet. Dracula had purposely put this fountain in a deserted place, and set a cup wonderfully wrought in gold and whoever wished to drink it from this gold cup and had to put it back in its place. And so long as this cup was there no one dared steal it." Perhaps his most horrifying atrocities were committed against the Germans (Saxons) of Transylvania, beginning with raids on a number of Transylvanian towns where residents were suspected of supporting a rival: "In the year 1460, on the morning of St Bartholomew's Day, Dracula came through the forest with his servants and had all the Wallachians of both sexes tracked down, as people say outside the village of Humilasch [Amlas], and he was able to bring so many together that he let them get piled up in a bunch and he cut them up like cabbage with swords, sabers and knives; as for their chaplain and the others whom he did not kill there, he led them back home and had them impaled. And he had the village completely burned up with their goods and it is said that there were more than 30,000 men." But the incident that was to cause the greatest damage to his reputation took place in Brasov. When the local merchants refused to pay taxes in spite of repeated warnings, in 1459 Dracula led an assault on Brasov, burned an entire suburb, and impaled numerous captives |
that there is a minimum of plastic components. I’ve done some research on the history of the pencil to find out that the internal mechanism used to be completely metal. However, the plastic in the pencil does not feel weak and I do not fear that it will fail to work anytime soon.
Functionality
Holding the pencil is a joy. The knurled grip provides a wonderful surface to hold. The Alvin Draft-Matic (a similar pencil based on the Rotring 500) has a sharper grip that can be painful to hold for long periods.
The mechanism seems to take any type of lead. I have fed HB, B, and 2B leads from different manufactures and no single brand seems to break more often. As a matter of fact, even though it has a thin tip, lead breakages are seldom and are mostly from user error.
The thin tip is an area of concern. Having seen many pictures of the result of fallen pencils (most should be marked “nsfw”), when I bought the pencil, I immediately dug up an old tin pencil case from my childhood to protect the pencil when I took it from my desk. It has since been replaced with a Midori Pen Case.
I have not used the eraser although I will note that it is about the same size as Pilot P20x series pencil erasers. It feels like it is on the dry side.
Conclusion
The Rotring 600 is a wonderful pencil. It is easy to write with it for long periods of time and it is very robust, sans the tip. This is one for the pocket.
AdvertisementsIf Middle East strongmen Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were still in this world, it would have been a better place, because what came instead is much worse, US presidential candidate Donald Trump said.
Asked by CNN's Jake Tapper on his State of the Union show whether the world would have been better off with Hussein and Gaddafi still ruling in Iraq and Syria, Trump said “100 percent.”
"I mean, look at Libya. Look at Iraq. Iraq used to be no terrorists. [Hussein] would kill the terrorists immediately, which is like now it's the Harvard of terrorism," Trump said.
"I'm not saying he was a nice guy, he was a horrible guy, but it was a lot better than it is right now. Right now, Iraq is a training ground for terrorists. Right now Libya, nobody even knows Libya, frankly there is no Iraq and there is no Libya. It's all broken up. They have no control. Nobody knows what's going on."
Both Hussein and Gaddafi were dictatorial leaders who ruled with a strong hand. Hussein was ousted by a US-led coalition that acted with no mandate on a pretext that he had a clandestine program of weapons of mass destruction. The accusation was later proven to be false. He was tried and executed by the post-invasion authorities.
Gaddafi was ousted by a violent uprising propped by a NATO bombing campaign, which hijacked a UN resolution demanding protection of civilians from bombings by Gaddafi forces. NATO instead devastated the Libyan army, allowing the rebels to catch and summarily execute Gaddafi.
Both Hussein and Gaddafi committed atrocities against their own people, but now the situation with human rights in Iraq and Libya is “worse than ever,” Trump told CNN.
"People are getting their heads chopped off, they're being drowned. Right now, they are far worse than they were, ever, under Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi," he said.
“Libya is a disaster. Iraq is a disaster. Syria is. The whole Middle East. And it all blew up around [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and [President] Barack Obama.”
Trump, who has been the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for next year’s presidential election, has been losing ground to his rival Ben Carson, who surged past Trump in the early-voting state of Iowa. The latest opinion poll, published Friday by Bloomberg/Des Moines Register, gives 28 percent support for Carson as opposed to 19 percent for Trump for the state’s Republican caucus.
READ MORE: Blair acknowledges ISIS stemmed from Iraq invasion, refuses to apologize for toppling Saddam
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who committed UK’s military support to then-President George W Bush to invade Iraq in 2003, has acknowledged that the current Middle East bloodshed may stem from that decision. He also said that in Iraq, Libya and Syria the West tried different approaches to regime change, and in none of these countries did turn out well.
LISTEN MORE:Climate change is here. Climate change is now. Climate change will be significantly more dangerous, deadly, and expensive if nothing is done to correct humanity's course, but aspects of future shifts are probably already irreversible.
That's the assessment of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has sent world governments a draft of its final "Synthesis Report" which seeks to tie together previous reports the panel has released over the last year and offers a stark assessment of the perilous future the planet and humanity face due to global warming and climate change.
Based on a clear and overwhelming consensus among the world's leading scientists, the draft says that failure to adequately acknowledge and act on previous warnings has put the planet on a path where “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” of human-caused climate change will surely be felt in the decades to come.
"The report tells us once again what we know with a greater degree of certainty: that climate change is real, it is caused by us, and it is already causing substantial damage to us and our environment. If there is one take home point of this report it is this: We have to act now."
—climate scientist Michael MannIn a clear statement regarding the dangers of continued inaction, the draft report declares: “The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.”
Obtained by several media outlets—including the Associated Press, the New York Times, and Bloomberg—the draft includes not new information per se, but employs stronger language and contains a more urgent warning than the previous reports from the IPCC which it attempts to synthesize and summarize.
Asked for his reaction to the draft, Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann wrote this to the AP in an email: "The report tells us once again what we know with a greater degree of certainty: that climate change is real, it is caused by us, and it is already causing substantial damage to us and our environment. If there is one take home point of this report it is this: We have to act now."
As IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri explained in a statement, the last report—which still faces a final review, editing, and approval process—is designed to integrate "the findings of the three working group contributions to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and two special reports" and "provide policymakers with a scientific foundation to tackle the challenge of climate change." Taken together, the IPCC reports and their recommendations are designed to help governments and other stakeholders work together at various levels, including a new international agreement to limit climate change, he said.
According to the Associated Press, which reviewed the 127-page document, the IPCC draft
paints a harsh warning of what’s causing global warming and what it will do to humans and the environment. It also describes what can be done about it. “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report says. The final report will be issued after governments and scientists go over the draft line by line in an October conference in Copenhagen. Depending on circumstances and values, “currently observed impacts might already be considered dangerous,” the report says. It mentions extreme weather and rising sea levels, such as heat waves, flooding and droughts. It even raises, as an earlier report did, the idea that climate change will worsen violent conflicts and refugee problems and could hinder efforts to grow more food. And ocean acidification, which comes from the added carbon absorbed by oceans, will harm marine life, it says. SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
Without changes in greenhouse gas emissions, “climate change risks are likely to be high or very high by the end of the 21st century,” the report says.
And the New York Times noted:
“Politicians have come together too many times with nothing more than rhetoric and empty promises in tow. Next month, thousands of true leaders will be marching on the streets of New York demanding real action. The question is, will our elected leaders follow.”
—David Turnbull, Oil Change InternationalUsing blunter, more forceful language than the reports that underpin it, the new draft highlights the urgency of the risks that are likely to be intensified by continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. The report found that companies and governments had identified reserves of these fuels at least four times larger than could safely be burned if global warming is to be kept to a tolerable level. That means if society wants to limit the risks to future generations, it must find the discipline to leave a vast majority of these valuable fuels in the ground, the report said. It cited rising political efforts around the world on climate change, including efforts to limit emissions as well as to adapt to changes that have become inevitable. But the report found that these efforts were being overwhelmed by construction of facilities like new coal-burning power plants that will lock in high emissions for decades. From 1970 to 2000, global emissions of greenhouse gases grew at 1.3 percent a year. But from 2000 to 2010, that rate jumped to 2.2 percent a year, the report found, and the pace seems to be accelerating further in this decade.
The IPCC draft will not be finalized until after governments have a chance to weigh in on the report and following a meeting in Copenhagen slated for late October.
In September, the United Nations is hosting its next international climate summit in New York City and climate campaigners are hoping to capitalize on the meeting by planning what they are calling the "People's Climate March" during the same week as a way to apply pressure on world governments to finally act on the issue.
If nothing else, the leaked IPCC draft report will serve to galvanize and add weight to the climate justice movement, which has consistently demanded that world leaders respond to the crisis with action—not words.
As David Turnbull, director of campaigns for the group Oil Change International, which is signed-on to support the New York march, said recently: “Politicians have come together too many times with nothing more than rhetoric and empty promises in tow. Next month, thousands of true leaders will be marching on the streets of New York demanding real action. The question is, will our elected leaders follow.”
Watch:Haryanvi: Bangaru Proper language
Short audio Bible stories and evangelistic messages that explain salvation and give basic Christian teaching. Each program is a customised and culturally relevant selection of scripts, and may include songs and music. (C26901).
Short audio Bible stories and evangelistic messages that explain salvation and give basic Christian teaching. Each program is a customised and culturally relevant selection of scripts, and may include songs and music. (A64290).
Audio-visual Bible lessons in 40 sections with pictures. Contains Bible overview from creation to Christ, and teaching on the Christian life. For evangelism and church planting. (A64291).
These recordings are designed for evangelism and basic Bible teaching to bring the gospel message to people who are not literate or are from oral cultures, particularly unreached people groups.
Audio/Video from other sources
Jesus Film Project films - Haryanvi - (The Jesus Film Project)
The Jesus Story (audiodrama) - Haryanvi - (The Jesus Film Project)
Other names for Haryanvi: Bangaru Proper
Bangaru Proper
हरियाणवी : बंगारू समुचित
Where Haryanvi: Bangaru Proper is spoken
India
Pakistan
Dialects related to Haryanvi: Bangaru Proper
People Groups who speak Haryanvi: Bangaru Proper
Jat, Hijra; Jat, Mahil;
Information about Haryanvi: Bangaru Proper
Other information: Intelligible with dialects but not with Hindi; highly educated speakers are more proficient in Hindi.
Population: 3,250,000
Work with GRN on this language
Are you passionate about Jesus and communicating the Christian gospel to those who have never heard the Bible message in their heart language? Are you a mother tongue speaker of this language or do you know someone who is? Would you like to help us by researching or providing information about this language, or help us find someone who can help us translate or record it? Would you like to sponsor recordings in this or any other language? If so, please Contact the GRN Language Hotline.
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GRN also has opportunities for Christians to contribute meaningfully to evangelizing unreached people groups through audio Bible stories, Bible lessons, Bible study tools, evangelistic messages, songs and music. You can assist missions or churches involved in evangelism or church planting through sponsoring or distributing materials. We also have exciting opportunities to be involved in missions remotely from wherever you are in the world. If you regularly attend a Christian church, and believe the Bible, you can play a part in mission, and see unreached people groups hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. Contact your local GRN office.Amar’e Stoudemire is ramping up his workouts and says he could play in the Knicks’ final two preseason games and the season opener against Milwaukee Oct. 30.
After flying through his most strenuous workout Tuesday, Stoudemire came into the press room, sweating profusely and exuding optimism he didn’t show on Media Day nine days ago.
Stoudemire went through a host of solitary basketball drills and did his usual training-room workouts — running in the pool and using an exercise machine.
“It’s going great,’’ Stoudemire said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress right now. I’m still getting stronger, still getting strong enough to withstand the pressure of playing. The progress has been great so far.’’
Stoudemire hasn’t been cleared to scrimmage yet or run on the court at full speed. Until Tuesday, it had seemed a long shot he could be ready for the season opener. And the Knicks didn’t seem to mind. After Stoudemire underwent a minor knee procedure in July, they kept him from rehabbing aggressively until training camp.
But now Stoudemire, who played just 29 regular-season games last season, is making a big push. His mood seemed much brighter than at any point during training camp where he mostly has been out of sight. He expects to be cleared to run at full speed next week.
“It’s definitely a possibility,’’ Stoudemire said of playing in the opener. “It’s matter of how strong my legs are. I’m working my butt off to gain strength. Hopefully I’ll be ready by the season opener.
“Everyone knows when I’m healthy, what kind of player I am and what I bring to the table.’’
The Knicks open the preseason Wednesday in Providence against the Celtics to begin a three-game trip. They have seven preseason games and Stoudemire wants to play in the final two.
“That’s a possibility for sure,’’ Stoudemire said. “If everything keeps progressing the way it has been, there’s a lot of great news how I felt. If that continues, I look forward to playing before the preseason is up.’’
Stoudemire wouldn’t identify the procedure he had in July, but said it wasn’t nearly as invasive as the two knee debridement surgeries he underwent last season.
He won’t make the first trip to Providence, Toronto and Manchester, N.H.
“Traveling these first [three] games is not very important,’’ Stoudemire said. “The most important thing is to stay here on a consistent basis to train in the comfort zone of the training center with the training staff and when guys come back I should be a step further than when I left.’’
Carmelo Anthony said Stoudemire’s recent injury history was “sad’’ and admitted it was bittersweet since he came to the Knicks because of Amar’e.
“I think about it sometimes,’’ Anthony said. “He was one of the reasons I wanted to come to New York. Me never having that chance to have a full season [with him] and get a rhythm going with him, it’s not something I thought would happen.
“I know it’s taken a toll on him mentally and emotionally. As a friend. it’s hard for me to sit back and act like it doesn’t bother me. I know how much hard work he’s put into training and rehabbing. To go forward and take steps back, it’s sad.’’
However, Stoudemire’s demeanor Tuesday brightened Anthony’s outlook.
“Right now it seems like he’s in a very good mood,” Anthony said. “I would love to see him start back up for us at the start of the season. It’s another weapon we need. We could’ve used him last season at certain points. To get a fresh start to this season, we need him.’’
Coach Mike Woodson said the possibility of Stoudemire playing in opener is back on the radar. The Knicks will have him on a minutes restriction — likely at 20.
“He hasn’t had any setbacks, which is nice,’’ Woodson said. “I’m hoping he plays some [in preseason]. You have to gauge it and see. If he can play 10 minutes a game in the exhibition season, we’ll play him. That’s providing he doesn’t have any setbacks and continues the pace he’s on.’’A new office complex is proposed for Barfield Road and Mount Vernon Highway in Sandy Springs’ booming corporate-headquarters corridor along Ga. 400.
Dubbed NorthPlace, the 3.7-acre site would be anchored by two office towers, one around six stories and one around 10 stories, along with build-to-suit structures, according to a press release. The development team includes Sandy Springs-based MidCity Real Estate Partners and Atlanta-based Crocker Partners.
“By adding the ability for users to own medium-size buildings at this location and submarket, considered by many to be the economic center of Atlanta, we expect significant interest from many tenants and users,” said MidCity President Kirk Demetrops in the press release.
The site is near the forthcoming new headquarters for Mercedes-Benz USA and the existing headquarters of Newell Rubbermaid and UPS, among other notable office spaces."Most Americans would be shocked to hear Israel imposes sharia law. But it does for some 60 years.” These are the words of Israeli writer Yossi Gurvitz, opening an article he wrote for +972, an online periodical.
He’s right — and it’s a fact that Americans who love Israel and hate sharia have to wrap their heads around.
In Israel, the family laws of several religions function within the larger framework of secular jurisprudence. Muslims marry according to the rules of Islamic law, as Jews do according to Jewish law, and Christians do according to Christian (canonical) law.
The religious courts belong to the Israeli court system. The Israeli government enforces their decisions. This is called legal pluralism — and Israelis inherit it from the Ottoman Empire.
Why, then, is the very idea of sharia so consistently vilified in our country? Why is it used as a culture-war punching bag, such as in the March Against Sharia being staged this Saturday?
Let’s be clear: America could never have state-sanctioned religious courts. The First Amendment, which prevents government establishment of religion, forbids it.
But Islamic law can and does already operate in America under state sanction. When Muslim Americans are married according to Islamic law by a state-certified officiant of Muslim marriages, and receive in the process a civil certificate of marriage, they have, in effect, practiced Islamic law under official U.S. sanction.
Would the anti-sharia agitators keep Muslim Americans from marrying? Would they keep them from praying, distributing charity, fasting during Ramadan? For Muslim Americans already do all these things at the command of their law.
Sharia is not about amputations and stoning. These extreme punishments carry over from earlier, biblical law, and such sayings of Jesus as, “If your right hand sins, cut it off” (Matthew 5:30).
Within the history of Islam, they have rarely occurred. What Islamic law does prescribe are the same do’s and don’ts of the Ten Commandments — the social imperatives most of us recognize whatever our religion.
But what sharia prescribes for criminal acts is in any case irrelevant to America. At the command of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims the world over obey the law of the land they inhabit, whether that is Egypt, Israel or the United States.
All they perform of sharia in any land is what coheres with the law of that land — as surely Muslim marriage, prayer and philanthropy do with the laws of America.
In an Op-Ed for The New York Times last summer, Harvard Law School Prof. Noah Feldman called sharia “a meaning-making effort.”
That meaning turns out to be very American. Muslim jurists have long reflected on the objectives, or purposes, of Islamic law. These include what Thomas Jefferson called life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Islamic law parses the pursuit of happiness into freedom of mind, religion, property, family and dignity.
Jefferson would not object. Originally, it was the right to property, not the pursuit of happiness, that he wanted to guarantee all Americans.
Contrary to the right-wing caricature, sharia does not presume to replace American law. It agrees with its underlying values and promotes them.
No less than the U.S Supreme Court affirms this fact. A frieze that decorates one of the interior halls celebrates the great lawgivers of the world. These include Moses, the Christian Emperor Justinian (483-565), John Marshall (1755-1835, fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court) and, yes, Muhammad the Prophet. All their teachings inform the founding documents of the American Republic.
For Muslims, Islamic law is more than law. It is a spiritual resource. The meaning of the word in Arabic is “the way to the watering hole” — a life-need in Arabian, desert climates. Sharia addresses the baseline need of all humanity for life, mind, property, family, religion and dignity.
We are not self-sufficient. We do not stand alone. A God who sustains us holds us in mercy and compassion.
The State of Israel does not protest against sharia. It clears a safe, protest-free path for sharia. If Israel can do it, why can’t America?
Rauf is founder and president of Cordoba House. He and Judge Iyad Zahalka, of the Israeli Sharia Court of Appeals, are co-authoring a book on sharia law.The Wooden Award released its midseason top 25 on Wednesday. It's simply a promotional tool for the award, presumably listing the 25 best players in college basketball to this point in the season. Nothing is binding about it: Players excluded from the list are still eligible to win the honor.
But the list, like any list, gets people talking about who's not on the list. At the top of that discussion was Kansas center Joel Embiid. Embiid's clearly deserving of mention with the best in the game and a lot of people commented as such after the watch list was released. You don't need me to spend additional time rehashing that, especially since Creighton's Doug McDermott is going to end up winning the award anyway.
However, I would like to talk about the guy who was left out of the conversation about who was left off the watch list. That man is UC Santa Barbara's Alan Williams. The Wooden Award does not release the ballots that were submitted for the top 25 list, but it's quite possible that Williams didn't even get a vote.
The case of Alan Williams' anonymity is an interesting one. For fans of conventional stats, I hate you, but I'll have you know that entering Thursday's games he's fifth in the nation in scoring average (22.8 points per game) and sixth in rebounding average (11.0), according to bbstate.com. There's no other player ranked in the top 15 of both categories. Williams is not exactly cheating his way to this accomplishment, either. He's averaging an unremarkable 30 minutes per game on a team that ranks among the nation's 100 slowest teams.
The raw numbers alone would seem to get him some notoriety, but sadly, Williams continues to do his work off the grid. The main reason probably lies in the fact he plays in the Big West, and the rare TV appearances by the Gauchos are late starts for the East Coast media establishment. East Coast bias is often a sloppy and unfair criticism to make of college basketball coverage, and in the era of conference networks and online feeds it doesn't really apply to Pac-12 or Mountain West teams any longer, but one has to do serious work to catch a UCSB game. Nobody's going to make it easy for you.
My other theory is that it might also help if Williams had a more marketable name. Perhaps it's easier to root for a guy with a name like Isaiah Canaan or Damian Lillard or Nate Wolters. If Alan Williams were Lightning Bolt McGee and played for Harvard instead of UCSB, you'd already know a lot about him. Instead, you are left with me laying out the case for the man they call Big Sauce.
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For starters, Williams has taken 39.3 percent of his team's shots when he's been on the floor, a figure that leads the entire country. Nobody is going to hand out a trophy for shot volume, but Williams isn't exactly chucking up prayers on a regular basis. He's made 54 percent of his attempts to this point, all of them two-pointers and most of them close to rim, often drawing the attention of more than one defender. Furthermore, Williams is good at the things people don't notice. While Embiid gets a free pass for committing 14 turnovers in his last three games, Williams, despite the enormous workload, has committed just 13 over his past eight.
Williams is a prolific rebounder, ranking in the top 100 of both offensive and defensive rebounding percentages. He pulls down one out of eight of his team's misses, and one out of every four opponents' misses, a difficult task considering UCSB is usually playing zone. Those numbers are down from his freshman and sophomore seasons as Williams makes a serious effort to end the foul-happy ways of his past. (After fouling out of seven games last season, Williams has avoided a single DQ as a junior.) Even so, Big Al has had five double-digit rebounding performances in 12 games against D-I competition this season.
You know what else Williams is good at? Pretty much everything, but let's tackle the art of blocking shots next. He's blocked 9.6 percent of opponents' two-point attempts, good for 46th-best in the country. This is a good time to point out that Williams is listed at 6-7. Of the nation's top 50 shot blockers, 45 of them are 6-8 or taller. For good measure, Williams also has 17 steals on the season. You don't expect defense from a guy who scores as much as Williams, and it's fair to say he takes the occasional possession off defensively, but between the blocks, steals, and rebounds, he does make an impact on that end of the floor.
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It's reasonable to suggest that Williams' numbers might not be so gaudy were he playing in a league better than the Big West. Although it's not unheard of, you don't see many power conference teams starting a 6-7 center. However in four games against top 100 competition, Williams' numbers have barely suffered. In those contests, he's averaged 23 points and nine boards, while making 51 percent of his shots.
Alan Williams may or may not find himself on the national stage at some point this season. UC Santa Barbara is a fine team, good enough to beat a healthy Cal squad at home, but not good enough to avoid a loss to Cal Poly on the road. The Gauchos may well be the favorite to win the Big West tournament, but there's enough parity at the top of the conference that they'll need some good fortune to earn a bid to the NCAA tournament.
I don't know what the future holds. It may involve another season-and-a-half in obscurity at Santa Barbara followed by a lucrative career with CSKA Moscow. Regardless of how things turn out, he'll continue make life difficult for scorekeepers that must record his frequent exploits. Obviously, he not going to be considered for the Wooden Award, but among college centers, his production is truly unmatched.
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Correction: A stat above originally read that is no other player in the top 20 in points and rebounds; it's been corrected to say top 15.
Image via Getty
Ken Pomeroy is the founder of KenPom.com, the best site for advanced analysis of college basketball. He's written for ESPN.com, Sports Illustrated, and the New York Times.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 intends to force a vote on a $110 billion defense deal President Trump signed with Saudi Arabia, according to an aide to the Kentucky Republican.
Paul is expected to introduce a measure to disapprove of the sale later on Wednesday, the aide said, over concerns that the deal may pull the U.S. into Yemen's civil war.
The move will allow Paul to force a vote in early June. Under the Arms Export Control Act, he can bring the measure up on the Senate floor after 10 calendar days, but the Senate is leaving town on Friday for a week-long Memorial Day break.
The Senate in September overwhelmingly rejected a similar move from Paul to halt a $1.15 billion arms sale between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
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Paul argued that that deal, which the Obama administration approved last August, would interject the U.S. in Yemen’s civil war. Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition supporting the former Yemeni government.
Trump last Saturday signed a deal with Saudi Arabia aimed at addressing the kingdom’s defenses amid threats from terrorist groups and Iran.
The package is expected to include U.S. missiles, bombs, armored personnel carriers, Littoral Combat Ships, terminal high altitude area defense missile systems and munitions.
“That was a tremendous day,” Trump said of the deal, according to a pool report. “Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Trump was visiting Saudi Arabia as part of his first foreign trip as president, which includes stops in Israel and the Vatican.
--Jordain Carney contributed to this report, which was updated at 2:57 p.m.Make Way For The Next Generation — Eubank Jr Breezes Past Abraham
In a largely dominant display, Eubank Jr punched his ticket to the World Boxing Super Series with a 12 round decision over the faded Arthur Abraham
Babajide Sotande-Peters Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 16, 2017
He may not have gotten the statement making stoppage victory that he promised and desired, but there is growing evidence that Chris Eubank Jr. is beginning to come of age, now over half a decade into his professional career.
Against an experienced, iron-willed and iron-chinned veteran 10 years his senior, Jr largely had his own way, putting in the type of performance which provided fleeting excitement mixed with a lingering sense of curiosity – allowing him to retain his IBO Super Middleweight belt.
This clash was yet another example of nostalgic matchmaking. Abraham’s low punch output style coupled with his advancing years meant that he was never truly a serious threat to Eubank’s progression. He seldom has a problem finding a target, more with landing his ammunition. But in many ways he could be seen as the perfect opponent at this stage of the 27 year old’s career.
Over the distance of the scrap, Abraham presented enough of a persistent presence in the ring to force Eubank to fluctuate in work rate and intensity levels, but simultaneously enough of a stationary presence to allow his British foe to display his trademark flashy offensive repertoire. Clean body punching, sharp hooks and uppercuts wound up from the ground like a prime Drederick Tatum.
In the absence of fight-ending power, the more redeeming qualities of Eubank were able to shine through briefly. None more so than in the eleventh stanza, when tagged by a clean Abraham right cross, Junior merely smirked at his adversary and responded with a flurry which had Abraham backed up against the ropes. For a young man born and raised in privilege, Eubank certainly fights with a philosophy that befits an individual who fights in pursuit of such comforts. As he is able to display the type of tenacity which goes a little way to justifying the faith his eccentric father has in him, as well as the minor league PPV status that he has garnered off the back of his family name.
By the time the decision was read out, there was a fresh sense of satisfaction with both fighter, father and customers which wasn’t forthcoming in Eubank’s previous outing against the nondescript Renold Quinlan earlier in the year. The inherited theatrics remain, but so does the dynamic offence and the athletic gifts.
And on top of that there can be the anticipation of seeing a young fighter reach his potential now that Eubank has signed on for the inaugural World Boxing Super Series. His quarter-final bout with the undefeated young Turkish brawler Avni Yildrim has carnage written all over it. Provided he is successful there, potential semi-final and final duels with domestic rivals are ones to salivate over and would serve as the perfect platform for Eubank’s realisation. Could he deal with the sharp punching and pure boxing ability of George Groves and could he maintain a high volume offence against someone with the physical strength and counter punching ability of Callum Smith? It’s hard imagining a British fight fan who would object to seeing these questions answered in the near future.
Alas, it is only right to err on the side of caution with Chris Eubank Jr. Fans also believed that he would be able to realise his potential last year against Gennady Golovkin and in a rematch with Billy Joe Saunders — but the drum that both Junior and Senior beat to clearly felt otherwise with negotiation breakdowns galore marring what could have been a compelling 2016.
Nonetheless, there has always been method to the madness with this particular family institution. Forging their own journey and free-styling their way to relevance within the market. But compromise is essential to establish rank and create legacies, and if compromise allows us to see Chris Eubank Jr in real fights going forward from here, then we can only hope that father and son can oblige us with a display of just that.Charles Krauthammer has accused President Obama of not being seriously concerned about Israel’s security because the President seems disinclined to make hard military threats against Iran. It is surprising that Mr. Krauthammer could make such accusations when he is calling for aggressive military brinksmanship that would expose Israel to the gravest strategic risks.
Game theory teaches us the importance of looking at any potential conflict from the perspectives of all the parties involved. If Israel’s security depends on Iranian decisions, then anyone who really cares about Israel must try to look at the international situation from Iran’s perspective as well.
There are good reasons why Iranians should prefer not to have nuclear weapons. First, as Thomas Friedman has noted, Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons could provoke other neighboring countries to get their own nuclear weapons, to preserve the regional balance of power. The resulting regional proliferation of nuclear weapons would make everyone in the region less safe. Second, if Iran had nuclear weapons then Iranians would face risks of nuclear retaliation to a terrorist nuclear attack against Israel, even if the terrorists might have gotten their nuclear weapon from somewhere else. These are two very significant reasons why Iranians could become less secure by acquiring nuclear weapons. So what could be the advantages of nuclear weapons for Iran?
One potential advantage is that nuclear weapons might open some opportunities for profitable expansionism, perhaps taking control of some weak oil-rich neighbor in a moment of political instability. If Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons when he invaded Kuwait in 1991, he might have been able to hold Kuwait by threatening that any counter-attack would escalate into a nuclear war. Such potential for opportunistic expansionism would diminish, however, as other countries in the region acquired their own nuclear capabilities to defend the status quo.
The more important advantage is that nuclear weapons could make Iran immune to foreign invasion. This is a serious concern that needs to be recognized. In the past decade, the United State has invaded two countries that border Iran. American politicians and public opinion leaders have regularly insisted that the possibility of military action against Iran should be “on the table.” Keeping it “on the table” means making it something that Iranians have to worry about. And as long as they have to worry about even a small chance of an American invasion which could have been deterred by nuclear weapons, the people of Iran, even opponents of the current regime, have at least one very significant reason to want their country to acquire nuclear weapons. (Or at least to create some ambiguity about their nuclear capability.)
So when prominent critics of President Obama, such as Mr Krauthammer, call for America to threaten military action against Iran, they are actually reinforcing Iran’s political determination to get its own nuclear arsenal. If they were truly concerned about security for Israel or anyone else in the region, they would not be so eager to make such dangerously destabilizing threats.
Once we recognize the potential motivations for a country like Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, we can begin to look seriously for deterrent policies that address these motivations. A more effective way for America to deter Iran from getting nuclear weapons would be to (1) announce that America would offer broad military security agreements to Iran’s neighbors if Iran acquired nuclear weapons and (2) offer real American friendship to Iran if it complies with international standards of nuclear nonproliferation. A rapprochement between American and Iran would open up the possibility of cooperation for shared interests in stabilizing Afghanistan and Iraq, and it would eliminate Iran’s only real reason to make trouble for America’s ally Israel.
Although they have no common border, the security of Israel and the security of Iran have come to depend on each other. Efforts to assure the security of both nations deserve bipartisan support in America.
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antisemitism. Eichmann took part in the Holocaust because he wanted to do so. In this he was no different from many others, though his crimes were larger in scale.
No doubt something like the type of evil that Arendt identified is real enough. Large parts of the population in Germany went along with Nazi policies of racial persecution and genocide from motives that included social conformity and obedience to authority. The number of doctors, teachers and lawyers who refused to implement Nazi policies was vanishingly small. But again, this wasn’t only passive obedience. Until it became clear that Hitler’s war might be lost, Nazism was extremely popular. As the great American journalist William Shirer reported in his eyewitness account of the rise of Hitler, The Nightmare Years:
“Most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work were being regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation … On the whole, people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm.”
When large populations of human beings collude with repressive regimes it need not be from thoughtlessness or inertia. Liberal meliorists like to think that human life contains many things that are bad, some of which may never be entirely eliminated; but there is nothing that is intrinsically destructive or malevolent in human beings themselves – nothing, in other words, that corresponds to a traditional idea of evil. But another view is possible, and one that need make no call on theology.
What has been described as evil in the past can be understood as a natural tendency to animosity and destruction, co-existing in human beings alongside tendencies to sympathy and cooperation. This was the view put forward by Sigmund Freud in a celebrated exchange of letters with Albert Einstein in 1931-32. Einstein had asked: “Is it possible to control man’s mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychosis of hate and destructiveness?” Freud replied that “there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies”.
Freud suggested that human beings were ruled by impulses or instincts, eros and thanatos, impelling them towards life and creation or destruction and death. He cautioned against thinking that these forces embodied good and evil in any simple way. Whether they worked together or in opposition, both were necessary. Even so, Freud was clear that a major threat to anything that might be called a good life came from within human beings. The fragility of civilisation reflected the divided nature of the human animal itself.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The crowd at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin salute Hitler’s arrival at the stadium. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
One need not subscribe to Freud’s theory (which in the same letter he describes as a type of mythology) to think he was on to something here. Rather than psychoanalysis, it may be some version of evolutionary psychology that can best illuminate the human proclivity to hatred and destruction. The point is that destructive behaviour of this kind flows from inherent human flaws. Crucially, these defects are not only or even mainly intellectual. No advance in human knowledge can stop humans attacking and persecuting others. Poisonous ideologies like Nazi “scientific racism” justify such behaviour. But these ideologies are not just erroneous theories that can be discarded when their falsehood has been demonstrated. Ideas of similar kinds recur whenever societies are threatened by severe and continuing hardship. At present, antisemitism and ethnic nationalism, along with hatred of gay people, immigrants and other minorities, are re-emerging across much of the continent. Toxic ideologies express and reinforce responses to social conflict that are generically human.
Mass support for despotic regimes has many sources. Without the economic upheavals that ruined much of the German middle class, the Nazis might well have remained a fringe movement. Undoubtedly there were many who looked to the Nazi regime for protection against economic insecurity. But it is a mistake to suppose that when people turn to tyrants, they do so despite the crimes that tyrants commit. Large numbers have admired tyrannical regimes and actively endorsed their crimes. If Nazism had not existed, something like it would surely have been invented in the chaos of interwar Europe.
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When the west aligned itself with the USSR in the second world war, it was choosing the lesser of two evils – both of them evils of a radical kind. This was the view of Winston Churchill, who famously said he would “sup with the devil” if doing so would help destroy “that evil man” Hitler. Churchill’s candid recognition of the nature of the choice he made is testimony to how shallow the discourse of evil has since become. Today, no western politician could admit to making such a decision.
In his profound study On Compromise and Rotten Compromises, the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit distinguishes between regimes that rest on cruelty and humiliation, as many have done throughout history, and those that go further by excluding some human beings altogether from moral concern. Describing the latter as radically evil, he argues that Nazi Germany falls into this category. The distinction Margalit draws is not a quantitative one based on the numbers of victims, but categorical: Nazi racism created an immutable hierarchy in which there could be no common moral bonds. Margalit goes on to argue – surely rightly – that in allying itself with the Soviet Union in the struggle against Nazism, the west was making a necessary and justified moral compromise. But this was not because the Nazis were the greater evil, he suggests. For all its oppression, the Soviet Union offered a vision of the future that included all of humankind. Viewing most of the species as less than human, Nazism rejected morality itself.
There should be no doubt that the Nazis are in a class by themselves. No other regime has launched a project of systematic extermination that is comparable. From the beginning of the Soviet system there were some camps from which it was difficult to emerge alive. Yet at no time was there anything in the Soviet gulag akin to the Nazi death camps that operated at Sobibor and Treblinka. Contrary to some in post-communist countries who try to deny the fact, the Holocaust remains a unique crime. Judged by Margalit’s formula, however, the Soviet Union was also implicated in radical evil. The Soviet state implemented a policy of exclusion from society of “former persons” – a group that included those who lived off unearned income, clergy of all religions and tsarist functionaries – who were denied civic rights, prohibited from seeking public office and restricted in their access to the rationing system. Many died of starvation or were consigned to camps where they perished from overwork, undernourishment and brutal treatment.
Considered as a broad moral category, what Margalit defines as radical evil is not uncommon. The colonial genocide of the Herero people in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) at the start of the 20th century was implemented against a background of ersatz-scientific racist ideology that denied the humanity of Africans. (The genocide included the use of Hereros as subjects of medical experiments, conducted by doctors some of whom returned to Germany to teach physicians later implicated in experiments on prisoners in Nazi camps.) The institution of slavery in antebellum America and South African apartheid rested on a similar denial. A refusal of moral standing to some of those they rule is a feature of societies of widely different varieties in many times and places. In one form or another, denying the shared humanity of others seems to be a universal human trait.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An Islamic State fighter in Raqqa, Syria. Photograph: Reuters
Describing Isis’s behaviour as “psychopathic”, as David Cameron has done, represents the group as being more humanly aberrant than the record allows. Aside from the fact that it publicises them on the internet, Isis’s atrocities are not greatly different from those that have been committed in many other situations of acute conflict. To cite only a few of the more recent examples, murder of hostages, mass killings and systematic rape have been used as methods of warfare in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Rwanda, and the Congo.
A campaign of mass murder is never simply an expression of psychopathic aggression. In the case of Isis, the ideology of Wahhabism has played an important role. Ever since the 1920s, the rulers of the Saudi kingdom have promoted this 18th-century brand of highly repressive and exclusionary Sunni Islam as part of the project of legitimating the Saudi state. More recently, Saudi sponsorship of Wahhabi ideology has been a response to the threat posed by the rise of Shia Iran. If the ungoverned space in which Isis operates has been created by the west’s exercises in regime change, the group’s advances are also a byproduct of the struggle for hegemony between Iran and the Saudis. In such conditions of intense geopolitical rivalry there can be no effective government in Iraq, no end to the Syrian civil war and no meaningful regional coalition against the self-styled caliphate.
But the rise of Isis is also part of a war of religion. Nothing is more commonplace than the assertion that religion is a tool of power, which ruling elites use to control the people. No doubt that’s often true. But a contrary view is also true: politics may be a continuation of religion by other means. In Europe religion was a primary force in politics for many centuries. When religion seemed to be in retreat, it renewed itself in political creeds – Jacobinism, nationalism and varieties of totalitarianism – that were partly religious in nature. Something similar is happening in the Middle East. Fuelled by movements that combine radical fundamentalism with elements borrowed from secular ideologies such as Leninism and fascism, conflict between Shia and Sunni communities looks set to continue for generations to come. Even if Isis is defeated, it will not be the last movement of its kind. Along with war, religion is not declining, but continuously mutating into hybrid forms.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Iraqi Yazidis, who fled an Islamic State attack on Sinjar, gather to collect bottles of water at the Bajid Kandala camp in Kurdistan’s western Dohuk province. Photograph: Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images
Western intervention in the Middle East has been guided by a view of the world that itself has some of the functions of religion. There is no factual basis for thinking that something like the democratic nation-state provides a model on which the region could be remade. States of this kind emerged in modern Europe, after much bloodshed, but their future is far from assured and they are not the goal or end-point of modern political development. From an empirical viewpoint, any endpoint can only be an act of faith. All that can be observed is a succession of political experiments whose outcomes are highly contingent. Launched in circumstances in which states constructed under the aegis of western colonialism have broken down under the impact of more recent western intervention, the gruesome tyranny established by Isis will go down in history as one of these experiments.
The weakness of faith-based liberalism is that it contains nothing that helps in the choices that must be made between different kinds and degrees of evil. Given the west’s role in bringing about the anarchy in which the Yazidis, the Kurds and other communities face a deadly threat, non-intervention is a morally compromised option. If sufficient resources are available – something that cannot be taken for granted – military action may be justified. But it is hard to see how there can be lasting peace in territories where there is no functioning state. Our leaders have helped create a situation that their view of the world claims cannot exist: an intractable conflict in which there are no good outcomes. •Two people are dead following a shooting at the GiftCenter & JewelryMart complex in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. One suspect is in police custody.
The shooting was reported at 2:03 p.m. When police arrived at the scene, they encountered a person who was covered was blood who then opened fire on the officers. The suspect then fled to a nearby restaurant and continued to fire at police, but then surrendered. Police did not return fire.
The two people killed were both inside Victoga, Inc. According to the GiftCenter & JewelryMart website, Victoga specializes in gold jewelry. San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr says both victims were women. One of the women suffered gunshot wounds and the other had wounds from an "edged weapon." A male victim sustained wounds from both weapons. He was transported to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries. The victims' identities have not been released.
While the suspect has not been identified, Suhr says it appears that it was not his first time inside the GiftCenter & JewelryMart. He was transported to a nearby hospital with a hand injury. He is in non-life threatening condition. His identity has not been released.
Employees at other nearby businesses, including REI and Pinterest were told to shelter in place. Police were treating the area as an active crime scene. Although there is believed to only be one suspect, police were continuing the area out of an overabundance of caution.
Brannan Street was closed between Seventh and Ninth streets and Eighth Street is closed between Townsend and Harrison streets.Rating agency Standard & Poor’s has cut its forecasts for eurozone economic growth and inflation.
Central bank actions are having a diminishing impact on inflation and growth prospects
It blamed a “nosedive” in financial conditions since the start of the year.
S&P now expects gross domestic product in the 19 countries of the euro area to grow at 1.5 percent this year.
Last November its forecast was 1.8 percent.
In 2017 it is predicting expansion of just 1.6 percent.
We have trimmed our growth projections for the #eurozone#economy for this year (now 1.5%) and next (1.6%) https://t.co/AR91Cf8Xm8 — Standard & Poor's (@standardpoors) 30 March 2016
On inflation S&P’s economists said it will likely be just 0.4 percent this year; previously they thought it would rise to 1.1 percent.
For 2017 eurozone inflation is expected to reach 1.4 percent, slightly down from the original 1.5 percent.
And Standard & Poor’s chief economist for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Jean-Michel Six, warned that “central bank actions are having a diminishing impact on inflation and growth prospects” while expressing concern that they were trying to address problems they cannot control, such as the fall in commodity prices and a lack of support from governments for economic reforms to boost competitiveness.
The economic forecasts do not have a direct impact on S&P’s sovereign ratings of countries, but the shift in the fundamentals does feed into underlying analysis.In a charged debate in the Supreme Court on Thursday, the Centre, through attorney-general KK Venugopal, said the top court has “acquired vast powers”, and that it has become the “world’s most powerful court”.He also said the SC had added “at least 30 new rights” to the fundamental rights already enshrined in the Constitution Responding equally strongly, Chief Justice Dipak Misra said, “This court has vast powers to do substantive justice. We have to strike a balance in every case. We understand that we cannot cross the lakshman rekha.” And Justice DY Chandrachud said the court “cannot shut its eyes” in matters of “social welfare”.Speaking before a five-judge bench, and on the issue of whether parliamentary reports can be used in court proceedings, A-G said, emphasising his point of ‘judicial overreach’, that the court’s ban on highway liquor vends has cost 100,000 jobs.The court responded to A-G’s argument by saying that on the liquor ban, it was only enforcing a surface transport ministry rule designed to reduce road fatalities.The case before the SC is a petition demanding compensation from pharma companies that conducted drug trials. The companies have argued a parliamentary committee report that criticises them cannot be used in court proceedings, while the petitioners have demanded that the report be considered.Venugopal said the court should refrain from examining any parliamentary reports on the ground that such reports involved privileges of MPs.He further said the court was getting into legislating, a domain earmarked by the Constitution for Parliament, instead of adhering to its defined role of acting as the custodian of the Constitution.“You are exercising Article 142 powers (extraordinary powers which allow the court to do complete justice) which at times encroach into the powers of the legislature,” A-G said. In this context, he also cited the manner in which the court has over the years extended the ambit of Article 21, the right to life and liberty, enshrined in the Constitution to guarantee a host of other rights such as right to clean air, jobs, education et al.“You have read into Article 21 at least 30 other rights. There is no way these can be enforced for another 50 years,” he said. The government of the day, he said, had chosen to accept all orders as it does not want a confrontation with the judiciary. Justice Chandrachud immediately contested the arguments.“It’s your own guidelines sent to the states,” CJI said, referring to A-G’s arguments on the liquor ban. “We have only asked you and the states to implement these guidelines, taking note of the fact that India is slowly becoming the accident capital of the world.”Chandrachud also demanded to know if the top court should “shut its eyes when something was in public domain or was important for social welfare”. “Can this court say we will not look into it though it is a matter of concern?”He cited a hypothetical example, saying that if a parliamentary panel recommends that the time period for medical termination of pregnancies be extended from the current 20 weeks to 25 weeks, can the court not take note of it if the government fails to act on it — especially when it is a welfare legislation.A-G then conceded that the court could interfere in areas such as preserving the ecology and environment.Justice Chandrachud praised fellow Justice AK Sikri for his recent order banning sale of crackers in Delhi-NCR till November 1, another court decision widely criticised for its dampening effect on trade and business. “The cracker sale ban order ensured that we could breathe fresh air even after Diwali,” Justice Chandrachud said, turning to Justice Sikri who was sitting next to him.Justice Chandrachud, who had earlier wondered whether the court could mandate that people stand up for the national anthem in movie theatres to prove their patriotism, also hit back at the government, saying: “All rights can be enforced.If the government has not enforced them, then it is an admission of failure on your part.” CJI then intervened in the debate, saying the court only uses its Article 142 powers to issue guidelines or urge Parliament to make a law when there are gaps in legislation.Dear Rick Perry,
Hi there, Governor Perry. I want to talk to you about SB5. As I write this, I'll make sure to use short words so that you can understand what I'm saying. Also, I'll avoid my customary use of itemized, numbered lists, since I know numbers confuse you, especially when there are at least three of them.
What I wanted to make sure you understand is that even if your special session allows this horrible, awful, regressive bill to pass, you still lose. There's no version of this where you come out on top. You will lose, and there's nothing you can do about it. Ultimately, you've already lost.
I know you seek to overturn Roe v. Wade and return us to the dark, horrifying days when women had to put themselves in very real and very terrifying danger from all quarters if they sought to have any agency over their bodies. I know you seek a return to a time where abortions weren't reduced in any meaningful number from where they are now, but where women were stigmatized and made to feel worthless on account of their "promiscuity." I know you seek to effectively enact Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
Moreover, I know you think you'll win. In every state that has tried these sorts of TRAP laws, nary a whimper has been raised against them (or so has gone the narrative), and women's reproductive rights have fallen by the wayside. In every state that has passed these laws, nobody ever really fought back against your breed of evil — not in any readily apparent way, at least. While activists on the ground spent their blood, sweat, and tears trying to stop you, either they were too few in number or they were betrayed by their elected officials, and so their fight went sadly unrecognized. For all intents and purposes, in every state, the voices calling for basic goodness and human decency have (as far as the national media is concerned, anyway) seemed to acquiesce with barely a whimper.
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Every state except one: your own.
The fight against SB5 means something more to us than I think you realize. This is our Alamo. This is our Wake Island. This is a probably-doomed fight against hopeless, overwhelming odds, but a necessary fight that will not be forgotten, and a fight we undertake gladly. This is a battle whose echoes won't be forgotten, the names of Davis, and Watson, and Van de Putte reminding us that heroes still exist in American politics. SB5 is our rallying cry, and it is one we will carry with us in every coming battle against politicians who seek to assert institutionalized oppression under the dubious guise of "traditional values."
And I have to say...we couldn't have done it without your help. You really gift-wrapped this for us in a lot of ways, didn't you? Your dirty tricks, your disrespect for the democratic process, your attempted use of strong-arm tactics against lawful protesters, and most of all, your blatant attempt to outright lie in order to get this bill passed (apparently forgetting about the whole "video evidence" thing) — well, that turned something important into something legendary, now didn't it? You've done us a great service, and for that small favor, we do need to thank you.
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What you fail to realize is that your time has come and gone. It's inevitable; the country's demographics are shifting in such a way that your day will meet its end as surely as the sun rises in the East and as inevitably as summer turns to autumn. Fifty years ago, we knew California and Illinois were battleground states. Twelve years ago, we knew Virginia and Colorado were reliably red states that could never go blue in two consecutive national elections. Imagine what we'll know five years from now?
Younger generations and people of color are no longer buying what you're selling...which is a problem for you, since every year, our influence waxes, and with it, yours wanes. Soon enough, it'll be your turn; within 15 years, Texas will be in play. Within 30, it will be as reliably blue as Illinois is now. Your reign of influence already comes with an expiration date — you just haven't realized it yet.
You may look at the Tea Party, and the unprecedented assault on women's reproductive rights, and see a new conservative movement on the rise. But you're only deluding yourself. Those of us who can see clearly see the last embers of an evil, doomed philosophy raging against the dying of the light. I look to the future and I see a world where you and yours will not be able to stop or even delay the march towards progress, towards a better tomorrow. I look forward and I see hope. The whole of human history is a corkscrew towards liberalism; it may double back on itself from time to time, but it moves inexorably forward. You could no more stop that than you could spit to extinguish the sun.
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So when your special session gets called, and you probably get this bill passed, be sure to celebrate. I want you to feel happy; really, I do. Because I know the truth: your time is coming, and when it does, there will be no loopholes to hide behind, no dirty tricks that will save your political career. Your poisonous ideology will fall, as did slavery, as did segregation, as did child labor, and as has or will every instance of bullying and demagoguery the powerful have ever foisted on those who your kind thought were powerless to resist you. So enjoy this hollow victory.
Just know that soon, you will look back on it as one of your last.
Sincerely, Everyone With a Soul
PS. Sorry I couldn't keep to my "short words" promise. If you need help understanding what I said here, you could probably ask an intern to explain it to you. Or any six-year-old.Robbie Russell was born in Ghana and lived in Sri Lanka. He has played professional soccer in Scandinavia and Salt Lake City. He can write Norwegian and read Icelandic. His father speaks on behalf of political cartoonists. He can trace his family roots to the founders of the Mormon Church. He has a sociology degree from Duke, with a minor in statistical analysis. He married an attorney, with whom he had a long-distance relationship for years, and lives on Capitol Hill. He became a dad last fall.
Now, MLS’s renaissance man is embarking on a new journey.
The D.C. United defender, in his 12th pro season, is retiring because he wants to become a doctor.
Russell, who turns 34 this summer, is beginning post-graduate work at Georgetown University, beefing up his math and science portfolio, and plans to enroll in medical school in about 18 months.
Russell and the team are expected to discuss his decision sometime today. (See update below.)
After appearing in 19 of 34 league matches last season — his first in Washington after 3 1/2 with Real Salt Lake — he re-signed with United in December with the intention of playing probably one more year.
Russell has entered just one of 10 matches, however, a six-minute stint at the end of United’s 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Union on April 21 at RFK Stadium. It was becoming clear early on he was not in the club’s immediate or long-term plans. So instead of waiting another year to open a new chapter in his life, he approached United officials about stepping away.
Russell’s departure will open a roster slot and clear a bit of salary cap space for a 1-8-1 team seeking help amid the worst start in its 18-year history. (Russell had taken a pay cut over the winter and was set to earn $75,000, according to MLS players’ union documents.)
Russell’s primary position is right back. Frankie Simek, a former U.S. national team right back who has spent his entire career in England, began a trial with the team Tuesday. The club also plans to address several other positions in the coming months.
UPDATE: Russell’s retirement is now official. He practiced today and will remain active for the rest of the week before turning full attention to Georgetown University’s Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Program.
“I’m very happy with my career – so, I’m just looking forward to going back to school, a little bit scared, but it’s really exciting and it’s a lot of fun.”
A complete story will appear in Thursday’s print edition (available online later today).Thai Man Found with 10,000 Pairs of Women’s Underwear
We all know about the secret world of fetishes, and for the most part, although they may not be for everyone, they are harmless.
While some fetishes may stretch the boundaries of the conventional, a man in Thailand who was arrested for possession of 10,000 pairs of women’s underwear pushed the envelope far beyond the realm of the acceptable.
Police found a horde that was not to be believed: 1,000 pairs in the man’s vehicle and more than 10,000 pairs in his home.
The 48–year-old man was arrested with an accomplice after he broke into a building located in Bangkok’s Chinatown.
The suspect admitted to police that he had been stealing and collecting panties since he was 18. But perhaps that’s not the worst of it.
“He smelled them all the time, even while driving,” said police Major General Saroj Promcharoen.
They could arrest him only for breaking and entering, but not for stealing property because no one has reported the underwear stolen, legally translating to the lack of a plaintiff.
It would seem that this tale of pilfered panties comes straight from the annals of the Guinness World Records, or better still, Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
A better trick might be stealing the panties from the women while they are still wearing them. Perhaps our man was brushing up for that finale.
The world may never know.
Go figure (and hang onto your panties).
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RedditShane Watson knows what to expect from England bowler Mark Wood should the pair meet in an Ashes Test this winter, after the bowler revealed his game plan on British radio.
Wood recalled an amusing anecdote from the 2009 Ashes tour when he was a net bowler for the visiting Australians in 2009, where their rivalry was fostered by a presumably giggling Mike Hussey.
"I had a famous incident with (Watson) in the Durham nets," Wood recalled on BBC Radio 5 Live.
"I remember Michael Hussey asking me to bounce Watson – to which I wasn't going to say no. I let him have one, he's gloved it, and he didn't give me the best of looks.
"Next ball, Hussey said: "Give it him again", so I've bumped him again, and this time he's absolutely smoked it, picked up the ball, threw it back down the wicket at me, called me a "net hero", and said that he would like to have a go at me.
"Well, he's going to get his chance, so I'd like to have a go at Shane Watson one more time, and let's hope he remembers me, because he's going to get a few more bumpers."
Watson celebrates a wicket in 2009 at Durham // Getty Images
In the seventh and final ODI on the 2009 tour, played at Durham's Chester-le-Street ground, Watson scored a four-ball duck as England claimed a consolation victory having lost the previous six games. In that match Watson edged seaming delivery from James Anderson to be caught at first slip.
Wood, now 25, was still in his teens and yet to make his first-class debut when the Australians visited in 2009.
He made his Test debut in England's drawn series with New Zealand last month, showing a skiddy style and willingness to work hard on lifeless pitches.
In two Tests he collected nine wickets at 33.22 and an economy rate just a touch over four an over. Known for his fondness of cavorting across the outfield atop his imaginary horse while fielding, Wood is keen to saddle up for another crack at Watson.
Wood 'rides his horse' at Lord's // Getty Images
"I'd like to think a few of the Australians don't know much about us and aren't looking forward to facing me," Wood said.
"I'll certainly stand up for myself if the Australians have a go. I won't be taking a backward step, but I'll still be trying to have some fun."
"I used to have a medieval joust with my Durham teammate Mark Stoneman. I had to feed my horse, pretend to carry him around and that was the joke."
Quick Single: No horsing around for Wood
While his horsing around might raise eyebrows, Wood, who has been restricted to just 26 first-class matches since his debut in 2011, says his international form should be no surprise.
"I would describe myself as a wicket-taker, a skiddy and athletic bowler," said Wood. "I've accepted the fact I've had injuries because I was developing as a bowler and developing as a bloke.
"I've always been a slight lad and, in the last couple of years, looking after my body has stood me in good stead.
"People might be shocked that I have been picked for England, but I always felt that if I could stay on the park, I would do well."Pope Francis met President Trump, first lady Melania Trump, first daughter Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at the Vatican on May 24. (The Washington Post)
During the Trumps’ meeting with Pope Francis on Wednesday, first lady Melania Trump wore a long-sleeved Dolce & Gabbana black dress and a black veil, following a tradition of many first ladies before her to wear black when meeting the pope. The other women in attendance, including Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, wore similar dresses and veils.
There was some confusion, however, over why the first lady wore a veil — or a mantilla — at the Vatican while she didn’t wear a headscarf in the Muslim country of Saudi Arabia.
[Melania Trump is Catholic, she confirms after Vatican visit]
Apparently Melania and Ivanka were forced to wear black abaya and veil in the Vatican (not Saudi Arabia) pic.twitter.com/D4Rgvzn2z5 — Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) May 24, 2017
So basicly a headscarf in the middle east is a sign of submission but when visiting the pope it's part of our culture? pic.twitter.com/bhcnY0Rt3x — Aafke (@aafkevultink) May 24, 2017
Ladies and Gentlemen, THIS is what hypocrisy looks like: Melania and Ivanka chose reverence for Western Christianity but not Muslim culture. pic.twitter.com/KSG7R46Ecm — Girls Really Rule. (@girlsreallyrule) May 24, 2017
Her spokeswoman wrote in an email that the first lady was following Vatican protocol where women who have an audience with the pope wear long sleeves, formal black clothing and a veil to cover the head. “There was no request/requirement for her attire in Saudi,” Stephanie Grisham wrote.
Foreign dignitaries typically follow a dress code when visiting the Vatican, although that dress code started to relax under Pope Benedict XVI, said Rocco Palmo, editor of Whispers in the Loggia, a site on church news and politics. Men typically wear a black suit, white shirt and black tie. Only Catholic queens and the princess of Monaco can wear white in the presence of the pope, Palmo said. Women tend to wear a veil as a kind of throwback to Catholic women who wore them in church before Vatican II in the 1960s.
[‘Pope Francis is literally my favorite angsty teen’: People are obsessed with this photo of Trump]
In this July 10, 2009 photo, Pope Benedict XVI meets with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. AP photo
Pope Francis has relaxed the expectation that bishops wear cassocks when meeting him, so now they wear clerical collars. And Francis famously stopped wearing the red shoes of his predecessor.
“It’s been part of his message of simplicity,” Palmo said.
Queen Elizabeth II wore a black dress with a veil under her crown several times when she visited the Vatican in previous decades, but in a 2014 visit, she wore a purple dress and hat. And if a first lady meets the pope outside the Vatican, the expectations are different; Michelle Obama wore a blue dress to meet the pope at the airport in Washington, D.C., in 2015.
1 of 67 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × See what Melania Trump has been doing since becoming first lady View Photos She recently moved to the White House from New York and has Washington waiting to see what she intends to do with her prominent position. Caption She recently moved to the White House from New York and has Washington waiting to see what she intends to do with her prominent position. July 14, 2017 First lady Melania Trump arrives for the traditional Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Yves Herman/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“The last place the White House would want to snub is the Vatican,” Palmo said. “Presidents who win the white Catholic vote win the White House. If she hadn’t worn a veil, people would’ve been reading into it.”
In Saudi Arabia, Muslim women are said to be required to wear a headscarf, but foreigners aren’t required to adhere to the same dress code. Some prominent women have worn headscarfs for official visits to Saudi Arabia, but it isn’t necessarily considered an insult to the country’s leaders to not wear one. Like Trump, former first ladies Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush also visited the country without wearing a headscarf.
“I think people are reading into it and misinterpreting it,” said Jane Hampton Cook, a presidential and first lady historian. “The pope is the head of a church. The king of Saudi Arabia is the head of state. There is a difference between seeing a religious leader vs. showing respect to a king who’s the head of state.”
(Clarification: Pope Francis is both a head of a church and a head of a state since Vatican City is a country.)
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump wave as they arrive in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 20. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
And while Trump did not wear a headscarf, she dressed in loose clothing with her arms and legs fully covered, fitting for Saudi Arabia’s standards for modesty, Cook said. Trump’s visit was not with religious leaders or at a house of worship, and while Saudi women cover their hair in public, many Muslim women around the world do not.
[On her first official trip, Melania Trump is dressed for control and containment]
Some have heralded Western politicians’ decisions not to wear headscarves in Saudi Arabia as revolutionary. Michelle Obama’s 2015 visit to the country with her head uncovered was called a “bold political statement” and one that sparked a backlash. At the time, President Trump criticized Obama’s decision by tweeting, “Many people are saying it was wonderful that Mrs. Obama refused to wear a scarf in Saudi Arabia, but they were insulted. We have enuf enemies.”
Then-President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama stand with Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz they arrive on Air Force One at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Jan. 27, 2015. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Some tweets show photos of Obama and Clinton in headscarves next to Trump not wearing a headscarf, but those photos of the former first ladies were taken in different Muslim countries (Obama was in Indonesia; Clinton was in Pakistan), not in Saudi Arabia.
Can you spot the difference? Thank you Melania for representing America with pride in Saudi Arabia. No PC, no headscarf. #RiyadhSummit pic.twitter.com/89GwxR6wkr — Steve Hirsch (@Stevenwhirsch99) May 20, 2017
“The headscarf misinterpreted by different people |
of thousands of tons of raw ash erupted into the river last week. The newly-confirmed leak is located about a third of a mile upstream of the pipe where last week’s major spill occurred.
Laboratory analysis of the discharge (visible on this map at point “D”) confirmed that it contains multiple pollutants that are characteristic of coal ash, including the toxic heavy metals arsenic and chromium. Arsenic concentrations measured.187 mg/L, more than 18 times the human health standard and more than three times the applicable water quality standard.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Duke Energy began vacuuming ash from last week’s spill out of the river, and pumping it back into the leaking impoundment.
On Thursday, Feb. 6, Waterkeeper Alliance attorney Pete Harrison patrolled the spill site and noticed an unusual discharge flowing down an embankment at the southwest corner of of the plant’s coal ash impoundment.
“This area caught my attention because the rocks were stained bright orange and there was water cascading down, right into the river,” Harrison said.
“When I paddled closer, I could see that the rocks had a thick, slimy coating, an indication of iron-oxidizing bacteria that is often present where seepage is bleeding out of coal ash pits.”
Harrison added, “The discharge concerned me because I’d reviewed the discharge permit for this facility and I knew that there wasn’t supposed to be anything coming out of the ash pond right there.” His team returned to the area four more times since last Thursday to see if anyone had attempted to stop it, but the discharge was still flowing unabated each time they went.
On Feb. 11, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) denied knowledge of any ongoing leaks when questioned about the newly-discovered discharge at a public meeting in Danville, VA. The officials, however, did not ask for additional details about the location or character of the seepage. Waterkeeper Alliance says it would provide its test results to officials working on the cleanup.
Prompted by the threat of enforcement lawsuits by Waterkeeper and several other organizations, DENR filed four lawsuits against Duke Energy in 2013, alleging illegal pollution from leaking ash pits at all 14 of Duke’s coal-fired power plants in North Carolina.
With respect to the Dan River Steam Station, DENR’s Aug. 16, 2013 complaint against Duke alleges that DENR had discovered illegal seeps flowing into the Dan River from “engineered discharges from the toe drains of the ash ponds.” DENR also accused Duke of contaminating groundwater near its ash impoundment with antimony, arsenic, boron, iron, manganese, TDS and sulfate. Six months after filing the suit, DENR has taken no action to force Duke to remedy the problems.
Because DENR’s court papers fail to identify the location of the “engineered discharge” at the Dan River facility, it remains unclear whether the ongoing discharge Waterkeeper identified is the same illegal outfall that DENR identified months ago, or if it is instead another leak in the impoundment that regulators failed to notice.
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Water pollution discharges like the one identified by Waterkeeper Alliance are prohibited by the Clean Water Act unless specifically authorized by a discharge permit, and an intentional or even negligent violation of the Act is a federal crime, punishable by imprisonment and/or criminal penalties.
Workers began removing coal ash from the Dan River on Wednesday. Rather than moving the spilled toxic coal ash to a safer, more secure location, Duke simply began to pump the sludge around the failed pipe from the riverbed back into the leaking ash pond from which it came. The confirmation that the same impoundment has been leaking heavily from another area raises questions as to why DENR failed to stop the discharge, or if the agency had overlooked the cascade—even as its staff responded to last week’s spill.
Waterkeeper Alliance Executive Director Marc Yaggi commented, “How can Duke’s cleanup plan possibly work if regulators are turning a blind eye to an ongoing leak like this? While Duke sucks up a small amount of the ash it spilled last week, arsenic and other toxins are still pouring unabated into the Dan River just upstream. If stopping the flow of heavy metals into the Dan River isn’t part of Duke's cleanup plan, how can the Dan River possibly recover from this travesty?”
Waterkeeper Alliance and other groups have called on the U.S. EPA to take over enforcement efforts from DENR, which has been accused of withholding information about the spill, misinforming the public about contaminant levels in the river, and failing to hold Duke Energy to the same standards as other regulated entities.
Duke Energy is now saying they released 30,000 to 39,000 tons of coal ash and 24 million gallons of polluted coal ash water. Both Duke and DENR have repeatedly been wrong: (a) they said their coal ash lagoons were safe and stable, not true; (b) they said their stormwater pipe was reinforced concrete, not true; (c) DENR said that the arsenic in the water met human health standards when it was four times the human health levels. Whatever the actual amount, Duke Energy continues to pollute the Dan River due to its reckless way of storing coal ash. Yesterday DHHS advised people not even to touch the water or to eat fish or mussels from the river.
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“This administration has allowed Duke Energy to act above the law,” said Yadkin Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks. “As long as we allow Duke to continue storing toxic coal ash in massive, outdated, unlined pits along our drinking water supplies across the state, it’s only a matter of time until the next disaster.”
Donna Lisenby, Global Coal Campaign coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance, said DENR has also neglected to stop illegal coal ash seepage discharges from Duke’s Riverbend Steam Station. There, toxic seepage flows into Mountain Island Lake about three miles upstream of an intake structure that supplies drinking water to more than 800,000 people in the Charlotte area. “There’s no reason to think that the leaky ash pits at Riverbend aren’t going to fail like Dan River just did. If that one goes, we’re going to have a serious crisis on a scale that would dwarf even the 2008 spill in Kingston.”
Visit EcoWatch’s COAL and WATER pages for more related news on this topic.Come check out Legit30s Next Huge Tournament Sponsored by Prototype Gaming Pc (http://www.prototypegamingpc.com/). We are giving away more than $8,000 In gear to our top 6 finishers. We offer this tournament after our great success in the Summer Showdown by increasing the prize pool significantly. We have also increased the amount of teams that are available to compete by making this a multi server event where we pay for your server transfer at finals. Thats right NA, EUNE, EUW and OCE will all be competing and be transferred to the NA server for finals. The registration fee is $25 which is very reasonable for the prizes we have put together as first receives over $5,000 in gear. Each server will compete in their own best of 3 (BO3) single elimination bracket. The winner of their servers finals will have paid server transfers by Legit30s (Riot couldn't give us free transfers sadly). The planned start date is August 9. Now what you really want to know... The Prizes
Sign Up Here ( http://www.legit30s.com )
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Follow Us on Facebook to see real time news and be entered in giveaways.Check Out our website1st Place: 5 Prototype Gaming Pc's with Full Gaming Peripherals Pick Your Own (Keyboard,Mouse,Headset)2nd Place: 5 Full Sets of Gaming Peripherals Pick Your Own(Keyboard,Mouse,Headset)3rd Place: 5 Gaming Headsets Pick Your Own4th Place: $20 RP + 5 Gaming Mouse Pads5th Place: $15 RP6th Place: $10 RPPlease leave a bump if you like this tournament as we would like to spread the word.We recently wrote about a guy who came up with a clever game to deal with his boredom when he went shopping with his girlfriend, but we should never forget the countless other men who, for one reason or another, weren’t so lucky. This is the goal of the Miserable Men Instagram account – to honor and memorialize their boredom and suffering.
Judging by their poses and facial expressions, these guys have been here for a while. Whether you’re a man or a woman, shopping with your significant other in a store where you don’t want anything at all is tough. Fiddling with your phone and reading all the advertisements will only get you so far before the mall music gets to you and you realize that you might be stuck there forever.
Let’s have a moment of silence for all the people trapped in shopping hell right now.
Source: InstagramFEDERAL HEIGHTS, Colo.—A bear wandering around a suburban Denver neighborhood has been tranquilized and will be taken back to the wild.
The bear was first spotted in a backyard in Federal Heights Monday morning. KCNC-TV (http://cbsloc.al/IDYlo0) reported that the bear climbed a fence and got into a neighbor’s yard before trotting down a sidewalk.
Wildlife officials warn that drought concerns could mean more bears may head into Colorado towns during the warm months this year.
In western Colorado, wildlife officers on Sunday euthanized a bear that had been labeled a nuisance. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials say the bear appeared unwilling to leave the city of Craig. The Craig Daily Press reports the bear was spotted in the yard of a home, and it left a hole in someone’s fence.
———
Information from: KCNC-TV, http://www.cbs4denver.comGeneva - Chinese group Haite will set up in the Tangiers-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region an industrial and residential park in the coming years, Ecofin Agency said on Monday.
Geneva – Chinese group Haite will set up in the Tangiers-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region an industrial and residential park in the coming years, Ecofin Agency said on Monday.
The project, which will initially cover 1,000 ha and later extend to 2,000, will host 300,000 people, the agency added, noting that China plans, under this project, to develop commercial and industrial activities in sectors such as textile, automobile or aeronautics.
“Due to its new economic model which aims to sustain internal demand by increasing wages and making China less attractive, economically, the country has to boost competitiveness in other countries, emerging ones especially,” said Morocco’s minister of industry, trade, investment and digital economy, Moulay Hafid Elalamy.
The park’s project will cost $10 billion. Through it, many Chinese companies should be able to establish in Morocco to produce and sell their products worldwide and in Africa especially.
Last month, in May, Morocco and China signed 15 PPPs (public-private partnerships) in the framework of a strategic partnership to provide China with a development base targeting Africa, the source said.
At the same time, the Haite group has agreed with Morocco-China International and BMCE Bank of Africa, to create $1 billion China-Morocco investment fund, while the Central Bank of China also signed a $1.54 billion with its Moroccan counterpart, the source added.While the hype around Sweden this year is a bit less than usual, their arch-rival underdog neighbours have a lot more hype than usual. Yes, the time has finally arrived for Finland, they say. After years of bringing teams that were well coached but lacking in game-breaking talent, the Finns finally look to have the makings of an offensive arsenal to rival the top nations in 2012. Now the key is to actually make that happen... they can't be blowing leads like they did against Russia last year in the quarterfinals, for example.
Last year's Finnish team was actually very good despite a 6th place finish. They were the only team in the entire tournament to go without a regulation loss, losing three times in OT/SO, so even just a little bit more offence could help them a lot. What this year's team has that last year's team didn't? Well, for starter's, the world's best hockey player outside the NHL, for one.
Yes, Mikael Granlund returns to the WJC's after missing last year's tournament due to injury. The show-stopping star of the men's World Championships was in the scoring lead of Finland's SM-Liiga when he left for the WJCs, which quite simply, DOES NOT HAPPEN. Teenagers don't lead top men's leagues in scoring, it's a well known fact. He brings his gold medal experience with him, something Finnish players don't have a lot of experience with, and he also gets to bring his younger brother Markus and long time linemate Teemu Pulkkinen. Yes, things are looking up for the Finns.
Matias Strozyk is a Finnish hockey writer for Jatkoaika.com, and also a contributor to the wonderful Elite Prospects website. He answered some questions about the Finnish WJC team for this preview.
So, is there suddenly pressure on this team to deliver a medal? Not really, says Strozyk:
It's actually fair to say that Finland never enters the WJC tournament under much pressure or high external expectations. There's plenty of media coverage, but it never goes overboard. The public interest is far from that of the Worlds and the WJCs are more for the hardcore fans... The most passionate hockey fans are up-to-date with the WJC, of course. It's one of the highlights of the year and the core of the young team Finland has this year can build the national interest in the next couple of years.
Of course, winning can change the attitudes of more casual fans in a hurry. We've seen Americans start to embrace the WJCs after the 2010 gold medal, although having the tournament four straight years in North America has also had a lot to do with that as well. And if Finland can continue to produce high-end skilled players, that'll increase interest in the tournament as well. So just why is this age group so special? Has Finland undergone a Sweden-style makeover of their skill development program? Not really, says Strozyk. "Finland uses a 'Nuori Suomi' (Young Finland) program (for all sports). A part of it is the kaikki pelaa (everyone plays) mentality, which means teams with players up to 11-13 years old give equal playing time to all players... the danger (is) that the most talented athletes might not get to play with other juniors of their level and the system kills its own products. Granlund and Joel Armia are two examples of kids who played thousands of hours in their own yard with friends to hone their technique." For whatever reason, the talent is emerging right now, but it doesn't sound like Finland has done much to change their program to accomplish this.
After the jump, we look at the makeup of Finland's best WJC roster in a generation:
Finland U20 - Forwards Name Pos Ht Wt DOB Club League Draft IIHF Exp. Miro Aaltonen C 5'10" 168 Jun 7/93 Blues Espoo SML Undrafted U18 (1) Joel Armia RW 6'4" 196 May 31/93 Ässät Pori SML Sabres (1/16, '11) U20 (1), U18 (1) Aleksander Barkov C 6'2" 205 Sep 2/95 Tappara Tampere SML Elig. 2013 none Joonas Donskoi LW 6'0" 187 Apr 13/92 Kärpät Oulu SML Panthers (4/99, '10) U20 (1), U18 (1) Markus Granlund C/LW 5'11" 172 Apr 16/93 HIFK Helsinki SML Flames (2/45, '11) U18 (2) Mikael Granlund C 5'10" 183 Feb 26/92 HIFK Helsinki SML Wild (1/9, '10) U20 (2), U18 (2) Petteri Halinen C/RW 6'4" 205 Apr 8/92 JYP-Akatemia Fin2 Undrafted U18 (1) Roope Hämäläinen C 5'10" 179 Aug 18/92 Jukurit Fin2 Undrafted U18 (1) Markus Hännikäinen LW 6'2" 183 Mar 26/93 Jokerit Helsinki SML Undrafted U18 (1) Mikael Kuronen F 6'0" 172 Mar 14/92 Ilves Tampere SML Undrafted none Otto Paajanen C 5'10" 179 Sep 13/92 HPK Hameenlinna SML Undrafted U18 (1) Teemu Pulkkinen RW 5'10" 198 Jan 2/92 Jokerit Helsinki SML Red Wings (4/111, '10) U20 (1), U18 (2) Alexander Ruuttu C/RW 6'2" 183 Dec 9/92 Jokerit Helsinki SML Coyotes (2/51, '11) none Miikka Salomäki LW 5'11" 198 Mar 9/93 Kärpät Oulu SML Predators (2/52, '11) U20 (1), U18 (2)
Beyond the Granlund brothers and Pulkkinen, there's some real strong depth here for Finland. Donskoi, Salomäki and Armia return to the team and bring a lot of skill, while the team also has scoring depth onto the third line, with 16 year old phenom Aleksander Barkov and Alexander Ruuttu giving Finland more options than it might know what to do with. All of these players are regularly playing in the SM-Liiga as well, which often isn't the case when it comes to Finland, who often have to draw players that are playing in their junior leagues. Sasha Barkov is just another indication of the strong next wave of Finnish junior talent. As Strozyk notes, "This season the SM-Liiga has seen a total of seven players of the skilled 1994 and 1995 age groups make their debuts. They also represent the high potential generation of Finnish juniors after some not-so-fruitful years of the late 1980s."
It's still strange to say this even with overwhelming evidence to back it up, but Finland's strength this year is in their talented forward corps.
Finland U20 - Defence Name Ht Wt DOB Club League Draft IIHF Exp. Jani Hakanpää 6'5" 218 Mar 31/92 Blues Espoo SML Blues (4/104, '10) U18 (1) Miro Hovinen 6'4" 209 Apr 29/92 Kiekko-Vanta Fin2 Undrafted U18 (1) Konsta Mäkinen 5'9" 165 Jan 19/92 LeKi Fin2 Undrafted U18 (1) Olli Määttä 6'2" 198 Apr 22/94 London OHL Elig. 2012 U20 (1), U18 (1) Julius Nyqvist 5'10" 181 Oct 29/92 Kiekko-Vanta Fin2 Undrafted U18 (1) Ville Pokka 6'0" 194 Jun 3/94 Kärpät Oulu SML Elig. 2012 U18 (1) Simo-Pekka Riikola 6'1" 183 Feb 3/92 KalPa Kuopio SML Undrafted U18 (1) Rasmus Ristolainen 6'3" 201 Oct 27/94 TPS Turku SML Elig. 2013 none
This is an interesting group. Only four players play in Finland's top league right now, and it has three 1994 born players in there, and I don't expect any of those three to get cut in favour of one of the more marginal 19 year olds. Määttä is the only returning player, and he and Hakanpää should be looked to as the leaders of this group. Strozyk likes Hakanpää's "great frame, heavy shot and good all-around skill." It'll have to be a more collective team effort this time around, though, as last year's group relied heavily on Sami Vatanen to carry the group. Strozyk sees that as a positive, noting that there is no "lone star with all the pressure" as a result. However, that means an increased role for the young 17 year olds, as Strozyk sees "Määttä (as) in charge of Finland's play in their own zone, (while) Ristolainen and Pokka are all-round defencemen with good puck-moving skills." Clearly, the other teams will try and exploit this lack of defensive depth by finishing their checks quite forcefully and hoping Finland's breakouts become adventures.
Finland U20 - Goaltenders Name Ht Wt DOB Club League Draft IIHF Exp. Sami Aittokallio 6'1" 181 Aug 6/92 Ilves Tampere SML Avalanche (4/107, '10) U20 (1), U18 (1) Chirstopher Gibson 6'1" 190 Dec 27/92 Chicoutimi QMJHL Kings (2/49, '11) none Richard Ullberg 6'3" 185 Jul 16/93 SaiPa Lapeen SML Undrafted U18 (1)
Goaltending is a traditional strength of Finnish teams, and while this year's team offers a duo of goalies with high potential, it only seems marginally better than average for the tournament as the whole. Aittokallio should have the starting job coming out of camp, while Christopher Gibson looks to be pencilled in for the backup role.
All that said, Finland has a solid chance at playing for a medal, even with a poor draw to contend with. They'll have to watch their backs with the Czechs in their group looking to play spoiler, but Finland finally seems to have the depth to do real damage against the likes of the Canadians and Americans. And they're doing it largely with homegrown players. As Strozyk notes, this is because of a strong national league making room for their youngsters:
Every team in (the SM-Liiga) has a spot or two for talented youngsters and if they choose to stay in Finland, their future is in their own hands. In Canada they get to play top-level junior hockey with prospects around their own age, instead of being 'the junior' of a team battling for the Finnish Championship. I don't think the SM-Liiga or its clubs have to worry about losing top juniors to Canada (in large numbers) any time soon, but for a player willing to take the risk and (is) capable of handling the big lifestyle change it could be beneficial when NHL teams finish their final shortlists for the draft (to play major junior, like Olli Määttä did).
Here is Finland's schedule:
Finland U20 Schedule Date City Opponent Result/Time Dec 19 Calgary Canada
L, 1-3 Dec 21 Calgary Slovakia
W, 3-0 Dec 26 Edmonton Canada
1:30 PM MST Dec 28 Edmonton USA
1:30 PM MST Dec 30 Edmonton Denmark
6:00 PM MST Dec 31 Edmonton Czech Rep.
2:00 PM MST
Prediction: 3rd in Group B.Why Bollywood still can't get over cultural stereotypes
The audience was in splits when Deepika Padukone, dressed in a half saree, her hair adorning a gajra, mouthed Hindi with a heavy south Indian accent in the recent blockbuster Chennai Express. Deepika's bokwaas Hindi, haallwai, mai idhar aati tum kidhar jaati lingo was meant to infuse humour in Rohit Shetty's over-the-top action comedy.
The humour, however, did not please everyone and once again brought to fore the long-standing debate of Bollywood's love for language and culture stereotypes.
Bangalore-bred Deepika is a south Indian. She said she would never spoof her own culture. Apparently, she had to put in some preparation into her role of Meenalochni Azhagusundaram. She mastered the Tamil-Hindi tone.
Deepika in the recent blockbuster Chennai Express. The actress, who is a south Indian, said she would never spoof her own culture
"I don't understand why people are jumping to conclusions. We all are south Indians - Rohit is a south Indian and I think except for Shah Rukh Khan, most of the crew was from the South. Why would we spoof our own culture?" she questioned.
"For years, our films have been based in Punjab but now a few films have started setting their stories in south India. I think people are not yet used to it. Chennai Express is a comedy and a largerthan- life film so the dialogues were meant to be funny," she added.
Deepika is trying to insist Bollywood films are making a gradual shift from an overdose of the Punjab flavour but she seems to miss the point that the films are not looking beyond accent and peculiarities while depicting different communities.
Sujoy Ghosh's Kahaani tried to present a slice of Kolkata through its characters, bylanes and local lingo. All through the film, heroine Vidya Balan's character Vidya Bagchi is called Bidya Bagchi (the letter V doesn't exist in Bangla and is pronounced as B), despite stressing her name begins with a V. Sujoy, a Bengali, was successful in capturing the linguistic malady without poking fun. Shoojit Sircar's Vicky Donor, a light-hearted comedy on sperm donation, has sensitively depicted the idiosyncrasies of Bengali and Punjabi cultures.
"The film depicts the clash between the two communities, yet we sensitively narrated the quirks of the communities," said Shoojit, about the portrayal of two families from distinct communities coming closer by marriage.
"Bollywood has been open about merging cultures and ethnicity. However it has always failed when it comes to blurring the northsouth divide," said Shiv Vishwanathan, prominent sociologist.
Films such as Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi set the comic tone but minus the caricature clichés
It has always been that way. Mehmood's clownish portrayal of a Tamil musician in the 1968 hit Padosan comes to mind, as does Kamal Haasan's struggle with the Hindi language in Ek Duuje Ke Liye. Johnny Lever's Pillai in Khiladi and Omi Vaidya's Chatur Ramalingam in 3 Idiots are other bizarre southern portrayals.
"The idea of stereotype is largely to present it playfully in films. However, the way most communities, rituals and languages are shown, it creates differences," added Vishwanathan, adding Bollywood has always worked at creating strong stereotypes related to language, accent, pronunciation, look and other idiosyncrasies of a particular community.
"A Bollywood film will invariably show a Tamilian as having a strange accent, a Goan as a habitual drinker while a Muslim is mostly a terrorist," says Vishwanathan.
Comedy in Bollywood is often created by poking fun at ethnic groups and their distinct mannerism. Chennai Express is only the latest in the long line of films to do so.
SOUTHERN SWING
Deepika Padukone's Meenamma and her extended family in Chennai Express, besides the film's Tamil Nadu background, is a recent example.
QUIRK FACTOR: Culture clash between north and south has always been a favourite idea for Bollywood filmmakers. However, barring a few most filmmakers fail to present it well. Mehmood's character of a southern music masterji in Padosan invited a lot of criticism when it released in 1968 for making a caricature of Tamils in order to induce humour.
The Kamal Haasan-Rati Agnihotri starrer Ek Duuje Ke Liye tried to ride high on language stereotypes to narrate the romance between a Tamil boy and a Marathi girl. Johnny Lever made a name in most of his films lampooning southern mannerism. One of his most memorable roles remains in Khiladi where he played an over-the top Malayali nariyal paaniwala. On the other hand, Abhay Deol as the Tamil bureaucrat Krishnan brought alive the nuances of the community without caricaturing the same in Dibakar Banerjee's Shanghai
PUNJABI BY NATURE
Almost every Yash Raj and Karan Johar film since the nineties has cashed in on Punjabiyat and has spawned me-too productions.
QUIRK FACTOR: The Punjabi community has ruled Bollywood scripts mostly because it allows room for lavish masala entertainment. Over-the-top Punjabi humour, extravagant weddings, glittering Karva Chauth ceremonies, Punjabi rap, Patiala peg, Patiala salwar, lassi and sarson ke khet are but a few musts in our films, all of it thanks to the success Yash Chopra and Karan Johar productions have seen. Imtiaz Ali tried giving Punjabiyat a quirky touch with the Shahid Kapoor-Kareena Kapoor starrer, Jab We Met.
The overwhelming Punjabification of Bollywood is evident from the fact that north India is mostly represented in our films by Punjabi characters and characteristics. Words such as mauja, munda, oye, rabba, and kudi are a few common ones that have become favourite with our lyricists.
PARSI BASICS
Bela Sehgal's Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi and the Vidhu Vinod Chopra-produced Ferrari Ki Sawaari have lately shifted the spotlight on Parsis.
QUIRK FACTOR: Bollywood has always portrayed Parsis as Bawa, Rustom or Batliwala. Our films have mostly cracked joked about their appearance, nature and style of talking.
Pearl Padamsee became the familiar face of the community in films of the seventies, with middle-ofthe- road Basu Chatterjee hits such as Baaton Baaton Mein and Khatta Meetha.
Chatterjee's films apart, crossover fare such as Pestonjee, Percy, 1947: Earth and Being Cyrus overcame the clichéd comic punch associated with the community and explored serious subjects.
Recent films such as Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi and Ferrari Ki Sawaari once again set the comic tone but minus the caricature clichés, though in the two films Boman Irani and Sharman Joshi respectively stuck to the hackneyed depiction of Parsi men as sissies who blindly obey their parents.
BONG CONNECTIONS
Seen lately in Sujoy Ghosh's Kahaani, Anurag Basu's Barfi! and Shoojit Sircar's Vicky Donor
QUIRK FACTOR: Kolkata's trams, bylanes, ubiquitous slums, Durga puja fervour and distinct Bengali pronunciation added to the mood of the thriller Kahaani. Sujoy Ghosh incorporated the flavour of the city in a manner that it elevated the film's drama quotient.
Similarly, Anurag Basu shot his film Barfi! in Darjeeling and Kolkata, and the Bong factor was appreciated by the audience. Saurabh Shukla as a police officer emerged as the most endearing character in the film because of his authentic Bengali accent.DAN ZIELINSKI, director of the planetarium at Jenks High School in Oklahoma, whizzes through his greatest hits. First he projects onto its dome a 3D image of a human heart; next comes the Sistine Chapel, then the solar system. The planetarium is an impressive asset for a high school, as is its aquatic centre, with an Olympic-size pool and grandstand seating. But there is a hitch, says Bonnie Rogers of Jenks Public Schools: filling the new buildings with teachers is much harder than erecting them.
At once bountiful and hard-pressed, the school district covers a well-heeled suburb of Tulsa and spans the Arkansas river to take in part of the city proper. The financial paradox has a simple explanation. The shiny facilities were paid for by municipal bonds, but teachers are financed by the state, and similar top-ups for their salaries are not allowed. In Oklahoma, state education funding has withered: since the crash of 2008 spending per pupil has been slashed by 27% in real terms, the biggest fall in America. Some districts run only four days of classes a week. Teachers earn much more across the border in Texas. The area is an extreme case of a wider trend, in which cities and their residents find ways to cope with miserly state governments.
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In Oklahoma, the squeeze is extreme. Cuts to income taxes, generous incentives for fracking companies and low oil prices have choked revenues. Overall, this year’s state budget is 15% lower than that of 2009; Medicaid and welfare have been pinched along with schools, as have state troopers, whose mileage is now circumscribed. Mary Fallin, the governor, acknowledges that something has to give. She wants to expand the tax base and raise rates on fuel and cigarettes. But the Republican-controlled legislature has yet to agree on a fix. The state’s voters are not helping: in a referendum last year they rejected a plan to add a percentage point to the sales tax to boost education spending. Gene Perry of the Oklahoma Policy Institute notes that rugged ideology is not the only obstacle. The state constitution specifies that revenue measures must be approved by 75% of both legislative chambers—requiring some bipartisan agreement—or by the people.
As G.T. Bynum, Tulsa’s new, babyfaced mayor, laments, his scope for manoeuvre is just as narrow. Oklahoma sets tight limits on cities’ use of property taxes, leaving them reliant on sales taxes. That is a volatile source of revenue—the dependence can lead, for instance, to police officers being laid off during a recession—and one now undermined by online shopping. Mr Bynum’s cousin and grandfather were also mayors of Tulsa, as, in the frontier years of 1899-90, was a great-great-grandfather: the six-shooter he carried is in a cabinet in Mr Bynum’s office. Not long afterwards Tulsa became the “oil capital of the world”, memorialising its glory in skyscrapers. Mr Bynum wants to revive the clout lost in the oil and telecoms busts.
Fiscal constraints make that tricky. Still, the state legislature is considering a change that would let cities raise property taxes to help pay for policing. Meanwhile Tulsa is making the best of a tough predicament through bond issues (like those in Jenks and other cities), as well as a sales-tax increase which, unlike the statewide proposal, was approved by local residents last year, when Mr Bynum was still a city councilman. As with other successful local referendums, it helped that the initiative came with concrete details about where the extra cash would go: on public transport, the police, and investments in museums and other public facilities. By the time of the vote, smiles Mr Bynum, “everyone was sick of hearing about it”.
The miniature culture wars fought between cities and states—such as North Carolina’s tussle with Charlotte over its anti-discrimination rules—are well known. The financial tensions between them are quieter but as important. “Money is usually the main problem,” says Larry Jones of the United States Conference of Mayors, and especially divisive in lean times.
In this stand-off Tulsa, like other American former boomtowns, benefits from the afterglow of industrial wealth. Several times its tycoons have ridden to its rescue: to supply its water, to build a bridge to connect it with oilfields, and to buy the land for its airport. These days country-music stars live in some of the oil barons’ grand villas but, by way of compensation for the economic pendulum, the paternalism lives on. “Philanthropy is an industry here in Tulsa,” says Mr Bynum.
The George Kaiser Family Foundation, for example, has renovated several blocks in the city centre, and set up a diversion scheme for female prisoners and an early-years education programme. It has contributed $200m for a new 100-acre park on the river, while raising the same amount from other donors. Riding around the muddy construction site, Jeff Stava, the project’s boss, points to where the splash zone, skate park and giant adventure playground will be, and the stretch of water where perching pelicans will soon be ousted by rafts and kayaks. After the huge growth of the 20th century, but a tentative start to this one—the population is stagnating at around 400,000—the aim is to make Tulsa a place professionals will move to. The city is stumping up the money for a footbridge near the park.Society
Raiding the raiders
Sikhs warriors of the 18th century adopted guerrilla tactics. They offered tough resistance to the invading Afghan armies of Nadir Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdali by looting them and freeing those enslaved by them
Maj-Gen Kulwant Singh (retd) b anda Singh Bahadur shook the foundation of the nearly 200-year-old mighty Mughal empire in seven years, from 1709 to 1715. Thereafter, the Mughals could never reassert their authority in areas north of Delhi. After Banda Bahdurs execution, the Sikhs went through extremely difficult times, suffering brutalities at the hands of Mughals. The hard core of Bandas army retreated to inaccessible areas of hill tracts, jungles and ravines to continue their struggle. The Sikhs developed and practised skilled guerrilla tactics. Denying the rulers vast resources of Hindustan formed an important strategy of Sikhs. Looting government treasuries, rich landlords and goods-laden Mughal convoys became favourite targets. Rattan Singh Bhangoo, in his Panth Prakash, which is based on oral evidence, sums ups the military implication of resources denial Mughals could not get enough land revenue, peasants refused to pay on the grounds that they had already been |
other’s effect. A model containing only one or the other measure of cold days may reveal a significant association with EWDs, but such a model has not been presented in this paper.
– The authors do not report the absolute numbers of EWDs – rather they report the number of EWDs as a proportion of the total population of over 65s (the rate of EWDs). While results do suggest a substantial decrease in the rate of EWDs over the last six decades, it is possible that there is little change in the absolute number of EWDs if the population of over 65s has grown substantially. Therefore, we don’t really know if the reduction in rate of EWDs is due to a decrease in absolute numbers of EWDs or due to an increase in the size of the population of over 65s.
– The dataset used a single geographic measure of temperature – that for central England. It is possible that this may have masked important regional temperature variations. The measure of numbers of deaths was also a general population measure – there may be regional variations in this too.
– The authors chose to measure cold days as those <5?C. Other definitions of cold temperature could have been looked at too, such as mean temperature over the whole winter, minimum winter temperature, etc.
– It is not clear whether the time periods they looked at separately were decided in advance or once the data had been looked at – if it is the latter then results are less robust.
– EWDs are measured in the over 65s. this was designed to account for demographic changes but may in fact introduce bias – the population of over 65s is not only much larger than in the 1950s but also healthier so may not all be at great risk of EWDs.
Glossary
EWDs = excess winter deaths
Before The Headlines is a service provided to the SMC by volunteer statisticians: members of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry(PSI) and experienced statisticians in academia and research. A list of contributors, including affiliations, is available here.
Experts respond
The UK Science Media Centre gathered the following commentary on the research from experts.
Commenting on the statistics:
Prof Kevin McConway, Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, comments:
“This paper makes some very interesting points, but the research that it reports does not really support the title of the paper. If it had been called “Climate warming may not reduce winter mortality”, I’d have been happier.
“Statisticians like quoting a few mantras, and this study breaks two of them.
“First, “Correlation in not causation”. The research is entirely based on correlations – situations where one quantity (say, excess winter deaths) goes up and down roughly in step with another quantity (say, flu activity). But you can’t conclude from such data that the changes in one quantity are causing the changes in the other one. There are always other possible explanations – maybe some other quantity, that wasn’t included in the study, is independently causing changes in flu activity and excess winter deaths. A study of correlation can indicate interesting things to investigate in researching what causes what, but it can’t show what is causing what.
“The second mantra, which isn’t confined to statisticians, is “You can’t prove a negative”. The paper’s title sounds as if the researchers have proved a negative. But all they have really shown is that it’s possible that climate warning won’t decrease winter mortality. In the paper itself, for instance, the researchers point out that climate change may lead to winters where the temperatures vary much more than they did in the past. They speculate that this increased variability might increase winter deaths – but, although that’s very plausible, they do not really have data to support it. Maybe this change will work alongside others so that winter deaths increase – or maybe they will decrease, or remain unchanged. We still don’t really know which.
“It’s good that these researchers have pointed out that winter deaths are related to more than just cold temperatures. But their work has made it clear the prediction of future winter deaths is difficult, because of all the factors potentially involved, rather than establishing for certain what the effect of climate change will be.”
Prof Patrick Wolfe, Professor of Statistics, UCL, comments:
“It’s important to remember that no amount of data analysis can prove a negative. The authors of this study are attempting to isolate the effects of the number of cold winter days on additional deaths during wintertime – and they rightly point out that a number of potential factors are at play, including improvements in housing and healthcare from the 1950s onward.
“But I think it’s very difficult to extract the signal from the noise in this situation, given the data the authors are working with relative to the problem they are tackling: a long-term decline in the incidence of excess winter deaths relative to the UK population aged 65 and above, and a number of potential factors that have shifted and varied over these same long-term time scales.
“And of course, just because the authors found no evidence in the data they considered does not mean for certain that no evidence exists. In light of these facts, I’d interpret this study as evidence that the association between cold winter days and excess winter deaths is worth a closer look. A finer granularity of data for recent years (concomitant with the declining incidence of excess winter deaths) might enable to enable a more comprehensive analysis, and help to tease out any potentially spurious associations.”
Commenting on the influenza aspect:
Dr Michael Skinner, Senior Lecturer in Virology, Imperial College London, comments:
“As a virologist I cannot argue with the conclusion in the paper that “particular attention should also be paid to public health initiatives to reduce the risk of infection with flu-like illnesses”, not because of the findings of this study about winter temperatures but because of what we have long known about influenza virus variability – in fact most of the influenza virus peaks shown here correspond to pandemic shifts or major seasonal influenza drifts in antigenicity. We would expect the impact of such outbreaks on the incidence of EWDs to be far higher than any of the complicated temperature-dependent changes on normal, seasonal influenza virus transmission or susceptibility.
“The authors say “Improving [inactivated influenza vaccine] uptake in the over 65s would be very beneficial”; although I cannot disagree with the sentiment, as a virologist I cannot see that this paper makes a significant contribution to the debate about how best to protect the vulnerable from seasonal influenza, and the paper they cite on this point is not intended to be an authoritative investigation of that particular issue.”
Dr Ben Neuman, Virologist, University of Reading, comments:
“Flu viruses are unwelcome and sometimes deadly winter guests. These findings show that while better housing, cheaper heating and government policy may have reduced winter deaths, flu-related deaths are the next challenge we need to meet. Modern flu vaccines are cheaper and more effective than ever. This study reinforces the importance of vaccination programmes, especially in elderly people who are most at risk of severe disease.”Do you know anyone who suffers from dementia? A person that keeps forgetting your name? In order to tackle neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, more neuroscientists are needed. Through discovering the current and future challenges that studying our brains offers, we aim to encourage young students to take part in our regional Aberdonian Brain Bee competition and develop a long-term interest in neuroscience.
Aberdeen Brain Bee is a local branch of a global non-profit initiative that fosters an interest in neuroscience and STEM in schools. What do we aim to achieve?
Create an interest of school students in neuroscience by encouraging participation in the competition
Provide students with practical lab experience in neuroscience
Broader knowledge of neuroscience as well as having fun in the process
Provide them with an opportunity to meet with neuroscientists and university students and explore a career in STEM
The competition will challenge students' knowledge about the brain, neuroscience research, neurochemistry and neurophysiology. Students will have an opportunity to widen their knowledge and prepare for the competition with materials provided for each school.
The educational nature of the Brain Bee event will help to change public misconceptions about the brain and, by bringing neuroscience experts and the public together, it will help bridge the gap between public and science. Additionally, science competitions improve reasoning and critical thinking skills and also fosters friendship and teamwork.
We need a financial help to support our regional competition. We will use the money for materials used in a competition, prizes for the winners, and travel expenses for the winner to attend the national competition in London.
Meet the Team
Ludmila Kucikova, Aberdeen Hub Project Manager
Ludmila is an MA Psychology student at the University of Aberdeen, currently taking extra courses in neuroscience and neurophysiology. She wants to specialise in neurodegeneration, namely Alzheimer's, so she started by assisting with the prospective memory research and she aims to be the best neuroscientist in the world,.... or just a scientist, maybe.
Pavel Juranek, Aberdeen Hub Project Manager
Pavel studies MA Business Management at the University of Aberdeen. He reads a lot of books, it doesn't matter if it is science or fiction, he will read it all. In his free time, he likes dogs and changing the world (he started by organizing this competition and the strategy for Aberdonian Brain Bee, help him out!).
Vilma Pullinen, the Promotion Team Leader
Vilma is an MA Psychology student at the University of Aberdeen. Several years of extensive volunteering roles, including eye-tracking research, or working with individuals with mental health difficulties, has taught her the importance of a scientific education. A nice cup of tea with plenty of sugar keeps her so active.
Zuzana Suchomelova, the Funding Team Leader
Zuzana studies MA Psychology at the University of Aberdeen. She is a future clinical psychologist with a deep interest in the neurological basis of mental disorders. Zuzana is passionate about working with children of various ages, guiding them through their education and free-time activities; so she is patient, most of the time.Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular disease that attacks motor neurons until muscle weakness, atrophy and paralysis lead inexorably to death. Victims of this monstrous malady could be forgiven for feeling unlucky.
How, then, can we explain the attitude of the disease's namesake, baseball great Lou Gehrig? He told a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium: "For the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth." The Iron Horse then recounted his many blessings and fortunes, a list twice punctuated with "I'm lucky" and "That's something."
Clearly, luck is a state of mind. Is it more than that? To explore this question scientifically, experimental psychologist Richard Wiseman created a "luck lab" at the University of Hertfordshire in England. Wiseman began by testing whether those who believe they are lucky are actually more likely to win the lottery. He recruited 700 subjects who had intended to purchase lottery tickets to complete his luck questionnaire, which is a self-report scale that measures whether people consider themselves to be lucky or unlucky. Although lucky people were twice as confident as the unlucky ones that they would win the lottery, there was no difference in winnings.
Wiseman then gave subjects a standardized "life satisfaction" scale, which asks individuals to rank themselves on how satisfied they are with their family life, personal life, financial situation, health and career. The results were striking. "Lucky people are far more satisfied with all areas of their lives than unlucky or neutral people," Wiseman reveals in his charming and insightful book, The Luck Factor (Miramax Books, 2003). Does this satisfied state of mind translate into actual life outcomes that someone might call lucky? It does. Here's how.
Wiseman gave subjects the "big five" personality scale, which measures "agreeableness," "conscientiousness," "extroversion," "neuroticism" and "openness." Although there were no differences between lucky and unlucky people on agreeableness and conscientiousness, Wiseman found significant differences for extroversion, neuroticism and openness.
Lucky people score significantly higher than unlucky people on extroversion. "There are three ways in which lucky people's extroversion significantly increases the likelihood of their having a lucky chance encounter," Wiseman explains: "meeting a large number of people, being a'social magnet' and keeping in contact with people." Lucky people, for example, smile twice as often and engage in more eye contact than unlucky people do, which leads to more social encounters, which generates more opportunities.
The neuroticism dimension measures how anxious or relaxed someone is, and Wiseman found that the lucky ones were half as anxious as the unlucky ones--that is, "because lucky people tend to be more relaxed than most, they are more likely to notice chance opportunities, even when they are not expecting them." In one experiment, Wiseman had volunteers count the number of photographs in a newspaper. Lucky subjects were more likely to notice on page two the half-page ad with the message in large bold type: STOP COUNTING--THERE ARE 43 PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS NEWSPAPER.
Wiseman discovered that lucky people also score significantly higher in openness than unlucky people do. "Lucky people are open to new experiences in their lives.... They don't tend to be bound by convention and they like the notion of unpredictability," he notes. As such, lucky people travel more, encounter novel prospects and welcome unique opportunities.
Expectation also plays a role in luck. Lucky people expect good things to happen, and when they do they embrace them. But even in the face of adversity, lucky people turn bad breaks into good fortune. Consider the example set by one of the longest ALS sufferers in history, Stephen W. Hawking, who writes: "I was lucky to have chosen to work in theoretical physics, because that was one of the few areas in which my condition would not be a serious handicap." Unable to move and confined to a wheelchair, Hawking has capitalized on his fate by using it as a chance to transform our understanding of the universe, which he has. That's something.The book will feature artwork from over 60 artists, many who have worked on acclaimed film properties such as; The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, Mad Max: Fury Road, King Kong, Chappie, Chronicles of Narnia, Avatar and District 9.
Their names are also often found on the credit lists of prestigious companies such as; Weta Workshop, Valve, Blizzard Entertainment, Wizards of the Coast, Dark Horse Comics, Paizo Publishing, Fantasy Flight Games, Pikpok Games, Spectrum Fantastic Art and Imagine FX. (to name just a few)
* View more of our artist work at the bottom of the campaign.
White Cloud Worlds Volume 3 will profile each artist with a collection of their professional and personal artwork and be accompanied by text written by the artist themselves. Here they will share the stories behind their work, what inspires them, the realities of working as a freelancer and their artistic techniques.
Take a closer look at "Alfie" - Video Link Here
These prints are available as part of the "Print Package" and "Premium Print Packages".
The "Hipster Horror" Prints shown below are available as part of the "Tom Robinson" Art Package. See Rewards section for more info and full package details.
"White Wrym" print shown below is available as part of the "Paul Tobin" Art Package. See Rewards section for more info and full package details.
"Earth"and "Water" samples from Johnny Fraser-Allen's Package. These are samples only. Backers will have their on exclusive commissioned piece created for them by Johnny. See Rewards section for more info and full package details. Each piece is approx 21cm x 29cm (8.3" x 11.4")
"Earning her Stripes" shown below is available as part of the "Rebekah Tish" Art Package. See Rewards section for more info and full package details.
"Guady" and "Window Seat" prints shown below are available as part of the "Adam Tan" Mega Art Package. See Rewards section for more info and full package details.
"The Grey" and "Migration" prints shown below are available as part of the "Andrew Baker" Mega Art Package. See Rewards section for more info and full package details.
"Lupus Gloopus" shown below is available as part of the "T-Wei " Original Art Package. See Rewards section for more info and full package details.
Just a small sample of artwork from the book. We will be profiling all the artists via updates throughout the campaign.
From left: Monique Hamon (Layout Artist), Kate Jorgensen (Project Manager), Isaac Hamon (Marketing) and Paul Tobin (Founder/Editor).
Paul and Kate's first book together was 'The Crafting of Narnia' in 2008 for Weta Workshop, with Paul employed as a Concept Designer and Kate as the Design Studio Manager. Kate would then go on to become Weta's first Publishing Manager and teamed up with Monique on 'The Art of the Adventures of Tintin' and 'The Hobbit Chronicles' book series. Meanwhile outside of their day jobs, Paul and Kate produced the first volume of White Cloud Worlds in 2010 and would follow up with volume two in 2012, joined by Monique. They are all reuniting once again this year to complete the trilogy!
To quote Andrew Baker from our video, (who is quoting Charles Bukowski) "You have to love it, you really have to love it!". For our team, this publication is primarily a labour of love. We love the art, we love the artists and we love the fans of the genre and that is what drives our small team to bring these publications to life.
“Given it's natural beauty and the burgeoning talent pool, I'd happily make an argument for New Zealand being a perfect hothouse for fantasy artists."- Wayne Barlowe, vol 2
“As varied as the land they inhabit, is the mind of the artists contained in ‘White Cloud Worlds’. They'll transport you to the Uchronisms of a WWI landscape traversed by giant robots, the painful, delicate love story of a Centaur and its lady and the heroics of Barbarians and female warriors among many others - these are images to get lost in.” - Guillermo Del Toro, vol 1
"From epic heroism of wizards in conflict to whimsical interpretations of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales to costumed creatures of etiquette, the artists of White Cloud Worlds wield draftsmanship, compositional design, and colour like master storytellers." - Donato Giancola, vol 2
“You get the feeling that they didn’t dream this stuff up: it looks like they actually visited the worlds they are portraying, and that they are bringing home first reports from the edge of imagination.” - James Gurney, vol 2
“It’s all creativity and just plain elbow grease. Flights of fancy and pencil stubs. Software crashes, midnight coffees and the dreams one works hardest at, patiently building worlds of the mind in White Cloud Worlds.” - John Howe, vol 1
“Here is a collection - hopefully the first of many - of artworks representing the rich and diverse talents of some real movie heroes and heroines. Wonder and enjoy!” - Alan Lee, vol 1
“The images in volume two of 'White Cloud Worlds' take after their island home. Some of them are generous, witty, welcoming, about as dark as a light bulb. The next page - WHAM! Apocalyptic nightmares clobber you.”- Iain McCaig, vol 2
"Their collective magic, skill and emotional intelligence leads you, wonder-struck, out of this world and into theirs, never ceasing to challenge, amaze and inspire. The pages are quite literally medicinal"- Andy Serkis, vol 2
“Within the pages of this book readers will find examples in which the artist has gone beyond simply the creation of a beautiful painting and has embedded a truly unique idea into their art.” - Sir Richard Taylor, vol 1
You are not mistaken. All rewards include free shipping which means there are no hidden costs and surprises for you. Again, you have not misread - All shipping is free!
We have a proven history in production and have every confidence in our printers and delivery systems. The printing of the book is the only aspect that is outsourced. All project management, including shipping is handled in-house by our team.Blackie, ship’s cat on HMS Prince of Wales, witnessed one of the most momentous events of World War II, the Atlantic Charter Conference with Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt. Talk about brush with fame says Able Sea-cat Bart, story curator of seafaring felines, the sailors’ pest controllers, shipmates, mascots and pets.
Churchill patted cat the wrong way
London, 22 September 1941 (AP) — Cat, monthly publication of the Cats’ Protective League, chided Prime Minister Churchill today for fondling a cat during the Atlantic meeting with President Roosevelt.
Referring to pictures of the prime minister patting the cat on the head, Cat said cats abhor head patting and added “He should have conformed to the etiquette demanded by the occasion, offering his hand and then awaiting a sign of approval before taking liberties”.
Blackie, ship’s cat and mascot on HMS Prince of Wales, was a witness to one of the momentous events of the Second World War. He was there for the Atlantic Charter Conference – the first top secret meeting between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt held off the coast of Newfoundland between 9–12 August 1941. Which explains why the crew decided to rename him “Churchill”.
His ship, HMS Prince of Wales, was a 35,000-ton King George V class battleship commissioned in March 1941 and attacked and sunk along with HMS Repulse by a strong force of Japanese high-level bombers and torpedo planes on 10 December 1941 just days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 8 December 1941. Over 830 lives were lost. Churchill was among the survivors who made it to Singapore, but could not be found when orders came to evacuate Singapore two months later in February 1942. It’s believed he was hunting and gathering. ◈
A pat on the back
To my mind War Office official photographer, Captain William Horton, deserves a big pat on the back for this shot. The Cat Protective League comment on the other hand seems petty to me. I can completely understand Churchill, who was under great pressure, reaching out to give the ship’s cat an impulsive pat on his way to this very important meeting. Human brain studies show that simply petting a cat raises the levels of three key chemicals that help people feel more relaxed – serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin. And Winston Churchill needed to go into that first meeting with FDR on top of his game and as calm as the proverbial cucumber. There was a lot at stake. I like to think that Blackie’s friendly approach to the great man at this pivotal moment in history played a key role in in contributing to the successful outcome of the Atlantic Charter Conference. ◈
Whiskipedia
The Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was negotiated at the Atlantic Charter Conference (code named RIVERA) by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, aboard their respective war ships in a secure anchorage site just several hundred yards from land near a small community called Ship Harbour, Newfoundland. It was issued as a joint declaration on 14 August 1941 and is considered to be one of the key steps toward the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.
The opening paragraph reads: “The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.”
The eight points were in brief:
no territorial gains sought by the United States or the United Kingdom territorial adjustments must be in accord with wishes of the people the right to self-determination of peoples trade barriers lowered global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare freedom from want and fear freedom of the seas disarmament of aggressor nations, post-war common disarmament.
The governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, and representatives of General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, unanimously adopted adherence to these common principles at the subsequent Inter-Allied Meeting in London on 24 September 1941. ◈
ILLUSTRATION Ad Long and Ky LongThis is a vanity post.
I know, I know, I’ve made fun of vanity posts before.
A vanity post is about a tree that is close to being finished but looks ragged and, by the expert application of technique and the miraculous artistic skill present in the artists hands, will magically transform itself into a masterful work of bonsai art.
Well, maybe…..there are too many bonsai professionals and longtime bonsai practitioners who say that ficus trees are unsuited for serious bonsai.
Which I don’t understand.
Never mind that the oldest documented tree, planted by man, is a ficus (specifically, the Sri Maha Bodhi tree, a sacred Bo tree or ficus religiosa, that was planted in 288 BC and is said to be a cutting from the very Bo tree that the Buddha gained enlightenment under).
And even though I call this a vanity post, I promise that I’ll actually let you know what I’m doing and explain the techniques I’m using and give you horticultural and artistic reasons for what my gnarled hands are accomplishing.
And never mind that it’s not a pine or a juniper, it’s still a pretty tree at the end.
And one more thing, the transformations in vanity posts are not really magical, but just a consistent application of bonsai basics.
Opa Banyan Style!
The banyan style doesn’t really use a banyan tree (which is generally thought to be ficus benghalensis, although the word “banyan” is more used now to describe the habit of growth instead of the species…..more about that habit later).
The word banyan actually comes from the Indian traders who set up their markets underneath the trees and are known as the “Bania”.
Jeez, such a long winded essay without any pics.
Do you feel cheated?
Here’re four pics for you then:
Front, side, side, and back.
Pretty rough, right?
Here’s a view of the trunk.
I had this tree in my uncovered greenhouse shoved in a corner and as a result I lost this branch in the back.
Which illustrates a perfect point.
Even though the tree was outside (technically, an uncovered greenhouse) and part of the tree was getting full sun, the part that was shaded weakened and die back occurred.
And this is a ficus, a so-called indoor bonsai.
The lesson: if you want to develop a bonsai to its fullest potential, you need full sun. It might survive but it won’t thrive.
This tree has a big bald spot I have to fill in now.
I had thought about repotting the tree, it is pushing some roots out of the pot…
But poking around in the soil, it doesn’t seem too rootbound.
I’ll hold off another month (it’s April) and see what the leaves growth tell me to do.
I’ll just clip the hanging roots off.
It is a pot, although it looks like a slab, doesn’t it?
I don’t know who made it but it’s cool.
Perfect for a banyan style tree.
So, what is banyan style?
It is a tree form that features a short, wide tree, usually wider than tall, with an expansive canopy and low, spreading branches.
And quite often those branches have aerial roots dropping into the soil.
My tree doesn’t have an abundance of aerial roots but just enough to be tasteful.
The consensus is still out on the purpose of these aerial roots; a few ideas are they are “prop” roots to hold up the branches or the soil the tree grows in is too dry (in the rain forest) and it’s trying to find water.
I’m not sure.
I know that I can encourage them to grow if I have a tree in a shallow amount of soil and I shade the trunk. I’m sure humidity plays a role too but I don’t have to worry about that, me being in Florida and all.
The humidity is so high here when I travel to other states I feel like Spongebob when he gets trapped on land.
Anyway, desiccated sponges aside, the next operation is called the comb-over.
To begin, defoliate and prune extraneous branches.
The above pics show three things: the leaf removal, with bud retention, it shows pruning the branches with two branches on each junction, and it shows that my hands still get dirty (it particularly shows my dirty hands for my doubting friend, Chef, who needs to go cook some pork belly now!).
I’m finding it very important with this fine detail wiring that a visible bud needs to be at or near the end of the branch or that branch will most likely die back to an existent bud.
One more series-
As I prune higher up in the tree (which “higher” is a relative term for a this banyan, it’s only about a foot tall) the standard formula of “cut off the branches growing up, down and leave only two at each junction” changes.
A banyan is obviously not a pine tree style, it has more of a deciduous tree habit. The branches don’t necessarily angle down at the approved 27 degree angle.
Which leads us into a pet peeve of mine, namely, what’s so hard about allowing a tropical category in major shows?
Mr. Valvanis has the only major “Best Tropical” award at his National Show.
Face the fact that the bonsai world is changing and most of the new participants seem to come from more tropical environs, if bonsai is to continue to grow and not be a mere horticultural folk art from Japan we should embrace new ideas, forms, species etc.
Let me remind everyone that the art we are trying to create is to make a small, relatively young plant look like an old, big tree.
And, in my opinion, a banyan tree looks positively decayed and ancient.
Like finding a forgotten civilization or a lost world or something.
Phew.
After that rant, as if I haven’t caused enough trouble, we got a naked tree to deal with now.
Sweet cheeks! It’s a sexy beast!
And a beast it is,too, gotta tame it with some wire.
Whoops, forgot to prune that ugly knob off.
I think a the he-tree has become a she-tree.
And she needs a little discipline I think.
Or, as we say, wire…
I need some thicker gauge wire to move some of the bigger branches.
I prefer to place the big branches and then wire out the little ones.
And now the little branches….
Hold on, before I finish, I’m gonna need two beers, a bottle of water, and some shrimp cocktail. Maybe a bag of chips.
The next operation is gonna take a while, I need some provisions to get me through.
Better yet, make that four beers.
Onward!
As I mentioned earlier, this tree needs a “comb over” treatment.
Maybe it’s still a he-tree after all.
Anyway, the bald spot….
…do you see it?
Now you don’t!
Well, after I wire it out that is.
One of the main themes of the banyan tree form is an expansive, dome-like canopy.
The goal of wiring is to fill in the upper canopy.
And you could have two or three or four “apexes”.
And what I mean by apex is really a crown of upper branches creating a rounded dome-like effect.
Just like on a deciduous tree.
Ok now, I admit it, it took a full six pack to finish this tree but, by utilizing diligent and meticulous effort, I persevered and finished the beer….uh, wiring.
Are you ready?
Wired, but before branch placement.
Side view, after branch placement-
The other side…I broke on through…
The rear-
And the front-
And since I’m a nice guy, I’ll give you the progression again.
And for the Instagram users out there, a short video for a giggle.
click me for the video!
The aftercare is easy, I fertilize heavily but I watch the water, it being leafless and all.
And just wait for it to grow.The U.S. Civil War destroyed a substantial fraction of southern wealth and emancipation transferred human capital to the formerly enslaved. The prevailing view of most economic historians is that the southern planter elite was able to retain its relative status despite these shocks. Previous studies have been hampered, however, by limits on the ability to link individuals between census years, and scholars have been forced to focus on persistence within one or a few counties. Recent advances in electronic access to the Federal Census manuscripts now make it possible to link individuals without these constraints. In this paper, we exploit the ability to search the full manuscript census to construct a sample that links top wealth holders in 1870 to their 1860 census records. Although there was an entrenched southern planter elite that retained their economic status, we find evidence that the turmoil of the 1860s opened greater opportunities for mobility in the South than was the case in the North, resulting in much greater turnover among wealthy southerners than among comparably wealthy northerners.Gzip compresses by replacing text with pointers to earlier parts of the text. Here’s a visualization of what actually happens when you decompress “The Raven”. It highlights the bits of text that are copied from previously in the poem.
I showed this as a Thursday talk at Hacker School today :) I really like how you can see the rhyming inside the poem like (rapping… tapping) come out in the compression algorithm.
No sound, just gzip.
You can try it out if you want by cloning https://github.com/jvns/gzip.jl and checking out the ‘visualization’ branch.
Edit: Thanks to a suggestion in the comments, here’s the whole poem and Hamlet.
Edit: Some clarifications, for the interested:
I implemented gunzip from scratch to learn how it works. This visualization is a small hack on top of that, just adding some print and sleep statements. You can see the source code that produces it.
This in fact shows how LZ77 compression works, which is the first step of gzip (or DEFLATE) compression. The second step is Huffman coding and isn’t shown in the video at all :). If you want to know more, try this excellent but very long page.Kenneth Howard Delmar (born Kenneth Frederick Fay Howard,[1] September 5, 1910, Boston, Massachusetts – July 14, 1984, Stamford, Connecticut) was an American actor active in radio, films, and animation. An announcer on the pioneering radio news series The March of Time, he became a national radio sensation in 1945 as Senator Beauregard Claghorn on the running "Allen's Alley" sketch on The Fred Allen Show.[2] The character Delmar created was a primary inspiration for the Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn.
Early life and career [ edit ]
Delmar was born September 5, 1910, in Boston, but moved to New York City in infancy after the separation of his parents. His mother, Evelyn Delmar, was a vaudevillian who toured the country with her sister. Kenny Delmar was on the stage from age seven. His first screen appearance was in the D. W. Griffith film Orphans of the Storm (1921), in which he played the Joseph Schildkraut role as a child.[3] During the Depression he left the stage to work in his stepfather's business. After running his own dancing school for a year he married one of his ballet teachers, Alice Cochran,[1] and decided to try a career in radio.[4]
Radio [ edit ]
By the late 1930s, Delmar was an announcer on such major radio series as The March of Time and Your Hit Parade. He played multiple roles in The Mercury Theatre on the Air's October 1938 radio drama The War of the Worlds.[2] His main role was that of Captain Lansing, the National Guardsman who collapses in terror when confronted by the Martian invaders, although he also is noted for his address to the "citizens of the nation" as the Secretary of the Interior, in which role he spoke in a stentorian, declamatory style deliberately reminiscent of then-President Franklin Roosevelt.[4][5] Cavalcade of America featured him in their repertory cast,[6] and also was heard as Commissioner Weston on early episodes of The Shadow.
Delmar is notable for creating the character Senator Beauregard Claghorn on Fred Allen's radio program Allen's Alley, which he did while also serving as the show's regular announcer. Senator Claghorn made his radio debut October 7, 1945, and six months later was called "unquestionably the most quoted man in the nation" by Life magazine.[4]:61 The role inspired the Warner Bros. animated character Foghorn Leghorn,[7] first seen in the Oscar-nominated cartoon Walky Talky Hawky (1946).
"During the late 1940s, Mr. Delmar captivated 20 million radio listeners every Sunday night with his burlesque of a bombastic, super-chauvinistic legislator who drank only from Dixie cups and refused to drive through the Lincoln Tunnel," wrote The New York Times. "His stock expression, 'That's a joke, son,' was for many years one of the nation's pet phrases, mimicked by children and businessmen alike.... The windbag character, he said, was inspired by a Texas cattle rancher who had picked him up while he was hitchhiking and barely stopped talking."[2] Delmar was later heard by a later generation of television watchers via the animated character called The Hunter which he voiced using his Senator Claghorn inflections, including, "That's a joke, son." "The Hunter" was a dog detective whose nemesis was The Fox, a criminal fox who attempted bizarre capers, usually huge in scope (such as attempting to steal the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty or, in one episode, the State of Florida). The Hunter ran as an ancillary segment of the cartoon series King Leonardo and his Short Subjects, produced by Total Television Productions.
At the height of his popularity, Delmar also starred as Claghorn in a theatrical feature film, It's a Joke, Son! in 1947.
Delmar was also announcer and voice performer on The Alan Young Show in 1944. One of the characters that he played |
,” Jenczyk said. “We need to be visible. And we need to be in all corners of life. This is sacred ground. People who gave the full measure of devotion to their country are honored not only on Memorial Day, but every day. LGBT people need to be sure that we are there.”But, Mr. Vance added, “It’s booming here and pushing both species of elephants to the brink of extinction.”
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Indeed, the case reflects an unsettling trend. Last year, more than 24 tons of ivory was seized around the world — the product of an estimated 2,500 elephants — making it the worst year for elephant poaching since an international ban on commercial ivory trading began in 1989, according to Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network.
From 2002 to 2006, 4 of every 10 dead elephants were killed by poachers, but today, poachers are responsible for 8 of 10 elephant deaths in Africa, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which the United States has signed.
Poaching of Asian elephants, which the United States listed as an endangered species in 1976, is not as closely monitored. African elephants were listed as a threatened species, a slightly less serious designation, in 1978.
Much of the ivory being harvested by poachers leaves Africa through Kenya and Tanzania and is destined for China and Thailand, the network said.
Prosecutors said the ivory seized in Manhattan came from two shops: Raja Jewels, at 7 West 45th Street, and New York Jewelry Mart, at 26 West 46th Street.
Mukesh Gupta, owner of Raja Jewels, pleaded guilty before Judge Larry Stephen of Manhattan Criminal Court to one count of illegal commercialization of wildlife; his company pleaded guilty to two counts.
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The other businessman, Johnson Jung-Chien Lu, pleaded guilty to one count of the same charge, as did his store, New York Jewelry Mart.
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The case began when an off-duty inspector for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, whose job is checking cargo and baggage at Kennedy International Airport, spotted ivory merchandise while she was shopping, said Neil Mendelsohn, acting special agent in charge of the service’s Northeast region.
Mr. Lu was arrested in January and Mr. Gupta in June, officials said. Mr. Gupta, who investigators said had more than $1 million in ivory on hand, agreed to $45,000 in fines and other payments. Mr. Lu, whose illegal goods were valued at about $120,000, agreed to a $10,000 fine. All of the money will go to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Lt. John Fitzpatrick, an investigative supervisor in the State Department of Environmental Conservation, who went under cover as a shopper during the investigation, said Mr. Gupta produced invoices from the 1970s from Hong Kong in an attempt to show that he had bought his ivory when it was still legal to do so. But much of his stock of items had packaging showing that they had been made in India, and he had no invoices for those, Lieutenant Fitzpatrick said.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
District Attorney Vance emphasized that under state law, retailers must have a license from the department to sell ivory items. The licenses require that they be able to prove that their goods were legally procured before the ban went into effect.
Mr. Vance noted that state law treats illegal ivory sales as a relatively minor felony. As a result, neither Mr. Gupta nor Mr. Lu faced the likelihood of prison. Under plea agreements, both agreed to pay fines and forfeit the ivory, which filled 70 boxes. Mr. Vance said it would be used to train other investigators.
That training could be useful, given that ivory smuggling is persistent in New York.
In 2008, six people were charged by federal prosecutors with smuggling multiple shipments of African elephant ivory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars past customs agents at Kennedy Airport in elaborately disguised packages.
All were convicted and received sentences ranging from a year’s probation to 14 months in prison.
Mr. Vance urged state officials to consider amending the law to provide harsher penalties for the sale of larger amounts of ivory.I’m lucky enough to get to land yet another Battle for Zendikar card, and it’s a sweet one. I have always been of the opinion that Magic plays better when your lands do cool things, as you get to play more lands as a result. That means you get mana screwed less often, while the effects of the lands you play also help prevent mana flood, and the payoff is more good games. That also may lead you to think that I’m talking about another addition to the cycle of lands that turn into creatures, but that isn’t exactly the case.
The card I get to show you today does interact with creatures, and even leads you to casting more of them (for multiple reasons), but it’s a whole new thing, one that works in a very specific deck.
Take a look at this:
Ally Encampment [collapse]
Previews have already shown us that Allies are coming back, so it only makes sense that they’d have a camp to hang out in.
Ally Encampment does some very cool things, all of which a dedicated Ally deck is interested in:
It’s a 5-color Ally land. That power should not be underestimated, as having good mana is key. Ally decks tend to be at least three colors, and often would like to play more, which Ally Encampment could make possible. Between this land, fetchlands from Khans, and the cycle of battle lands, Allies could assemble from every corner of the color pie (I guess pies don’t technically have corners, but you get the idea). Allies is the kind of deck that needs to hit a critical mass, and having access to Allies of every color is going to help a ton with that. It lets you save your Allies from removal. When your opponent goes to kill an Ally, you can trade in your land instead, which lets you straight-up turn lands into more spells. When your 5-color land also makes your long game better, you are getting a very good deal. It lets you return and re-trigger your Ally abilities. Tons of Allies trigger when you play an Ally, and you can use Ally Encampment even if your opponent isn’t trying to kill your Allies. Paying a couple mana to let all your Allies go off again makes for more late-game power, and can help a deck that tends to need help when its hand is empty (more so than other decks, because it’s so reliant on synergy).
There were Ally decks last time we visited Zendikar, but a truly strong alliance was never formed. Ally Encampment may change that this time around, and I like how much it supports a very cool theme.
LSVFriendswood FFA Show Cattle Team member wins State Show
Gracie Kempken, a member of the Friendswood FFA Show Cattle Team, recently attended the Texas Junior Brangus Breeders Association State Show in Bryan. Gracie Kempken, a member of the Friendswood FFA Show Cattle Team, recently attended the Texas Junior Brangus Breeders Association State Show in Bryan. Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Friendswood FFA Show Cattle Team member wins State Show 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
PRESS RELEASE
Gracie Kempken, a member of the Friendswood FFA Show Cattle Team, recently attended the Texas Junior Brangus Breeders Association State Show in Bryan. Gracie brought her 17-month-old Black Brangus heifer to compete with other Brangus cattle owners and breeders from all over Texas to participate in this yearly four-day event.
DK Miss Loretta 594C (aka Doodlebug) was named the 2016 TJBBA Grand Champion Brangus Female. Gracie's oldest brother Dakota Kempken owns the Dam, KK Miss Ebony and the Sire, Mr. 101 LTD Slugger 915Z11 is from Diamond K Show Cattle. In addition to this impressive win Gracie was awarded first place in the Intermediate Public Speaking contest and placed in the top six in Intermediate Showmanship.
This was Gracie's first state show but not her first Grand Champion title as Doodlebug was also named the 2016 Overall Grand Champion Breeding Beef at the Galveston County Fair and Rodeo in April. Doodlebug is Gracie's first calf to raise and show.A 66-year-old man was found dead yesterday inside a block of cement in his Jersey City apartment, the Jersey Journal reports.
The man, identified as William Marshall, was found around 3:35 p.m. when the super of his Corbin Avenue building noticed a foul odor emanating from the apartment. Police were called to the scene and discovered Marshall's decomposing remains buried under a pile of clothing and some "hardened cement," the paper said. Firefighters eventually unearthed Marshall's body inside a black garbage bag.
While authorities have not ruled the death a homicide, they say foul play was potentially involved, CBS reports. Marshall had recently lost both his wife and job, according to neighbors, and though he lived alone, a young man—possibly a stepson or son-in-law—had been staying with him.
Suspiciously, a neighbor said they hadn't seen Marshall since he returned from "a rehabilitation center" in July, and his rent checks were no longer signed by Marshall himself. Furthermore, another neighbor had reportedly complained of rice and roaches, but the relative insisted that spraying was unnecessary.
Stranger still: In 2001, a woman was found dead in the basement of the very same building, her body stuffed in a garbage bag and bound with rope and tape. Her boyfriend was charged with the murder.When we posted a gallery of comics cover art drawn from Tony Isabella’s 1000 Comic Books You Must Read, some Wired.com readers got pretty riled up about excluded titles.
It was just supposed to be a sampling, people: We obviously couldn’t include all 1,000 of the titles in Isabella’s cool book. Nevertheless, readers’ comics picks proved pretty fascinating.
Ranking the fan blowback by writer, Sandman creator Neil Gaiman topped the readers’ choice list. Alan Moore was widely lauded for Watchmen as well as Swamp Thing and From Hell. Frank Miller and Grant Morrison rounded out the top four for a variety of their bold franchise reinventions.
A few commenters went epic-length. FlipM cited 24 titles “off the top of my head” that deserved must-read status. Others went deep with major love for a specific issue, like reader pjbeisser, who promised that Walking Dead No. 48 “will make you both sick to your stomach — and potentially cry like a little girl.”
For a close-up of fan favorites including Wanted, pictured above, check out comments and graphics in the comic book cover art gallery that follows.
Images courtesy Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Vertigo, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics
Animal Man No. 5
The series took a minor DC character with the cheesy power of gaining the abilities of any nearby animal, and turned it into a clever, esoteric spin on superhero comics. Issue 5 features a Wile E. Coyote-type character breaking the fourth wall to escape an endless cycle of violence. Animal Man No. 26 is also excellent, as he learns about his fictional nature and confronts his author. –hokum
I would go for the 24 issues of Animal Man written by Grant Morrison. The mix of meta-linguistic, reality-warping, suburban superhero fantasy made more for me than four years studying psychology. –Lisandro
The Bone
I would be very disappointed if Bone by Jeff Smith isn’t somehow mentioned in the book. The series lasted 55 issues over the course of 10 years or so. Delightfully funny fantasy adventure. –avenger534
Y: The Last Man
I loved Y: The Last Man. A world without men is very thought-provoking, and I think Brian K. Vaughan did a good job imagining what it might be like. –Zometh
The Red Star
The Red Star, created by Christian Gossett, has to be on my top five list of all time…. In addition to being a phenomenal comic, [it] is also trying to drop the European comics model into the American scene and, unfortunately, suffering for it. Where the American market expects monthly deliveries of generally OK products, the European model supports more lengthy creations that often deserve the title of graphic novel. This is also a more humane model for the artists, who get to realize a complete vision from start to end, as well as for the readers, who are able to buy a complete story when it’s published in a single unit, instead of parsed out in pamphlets. –pyar
Walking Dead No. 48
I have personally enjoyed Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s Walking Dead. Also Kirkman and Ryan Ottley’s Invincible is one of my favorites right now. –joshriddell
Looking for a particular issue that will make you both sick to your stomach — and potentially cry like a little girl? First thing that comes to mind is probably, “No.” After reading comics for 20 years, I thought I had … read it all, seen it all, done it all. Then came Walking Dead #48 (2008)…. For those unfamiliar, it’s a black-and-white monthly book about a group of survivors who are struggling to make it day to day after a majority of the populace become zombies…. Intense! I finally got to meet Robert Kirkman earlier this year at the Baltimore Comic Con. Everyone in front of me had a stack of books for him to sign. This is the only one I had in hand. –pjbeisser
The Eternals and Jack Kirby
Get some Jack Kirby artwork under your eyes. In particular, notice his particular use of shadow, which might be termed “Kirbyoscuro,” and often looks not unlike biomorphic circuitry. I got to read a lot of his ’70s series. An outstanding series was his one for Marvel: The Eternals, about what happens when giant, ancient gods return to Earth. –Osirisrise
The Preacher
Preacher combines Clint Eastwoood’s Unforgiven with David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Great stuff. –featuring_dave
Invincible
I feel comics are having a renaissance. Here are some titles I recommend to the old-school comic geek and the new readers alike:
Invincible, Image Comics, Robert Kirkman
Y: The Last Man, Vertigo (DC), Brian K. Vaughn
Powers, Image Comics, Brian Michael Bendis
The Walking Dead, Image Comics, Robert Kirkman
Hawaiian Dick, Image Comics, B. Clay Moore
Fables, Vertigo (DC), Bill Willingham –csmallfield
Hellboy
After my comic-book-collecting high-school years, Hellboy was the only thing that kept me reading comics! –monkut
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison. So sick. –sammyvicious
Sandman
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is a masterpiece of this or any other medium. –MrJM
My suggestion: The Sound of Her Wings by Neil Gaiman, Sandman No. 8. –ianderthal
Sandman. Nuff said. –noodlelpugerine
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman … especially Brief Lives. –kaylan
Definitely need to read the entirety of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. –fencerf
The Morningstar Option, Parts 1-3. It’s a spinoff of Sandman without Gaiman writing but it’s fantastically written for the character. –Lucifer 00
Fables
Vertigo’s Fables, can’t believe that nobody has mentioned them yet. Twelve Eisners and counting. Also Hellboy, Sandman and Transmetropolitan are all required reading before you visit the casket. –kloudykat
Miracleman
I’d add a vote for Miracleman — though not sure which issues I’d include. Still amazed at how he took a character that was about as dorky as it gets (basically Captain Marvel/Shazam) and rework it into something really dark and chilling and intense. –ronb
Must reads, just from the top of my head, and in no particular order:
The Maximortal No. 3 by Rick Veitch
Nexus: God Con (Nos. 93 and 94) by Mike Baron and Steve Rude
Miracleman No. 15 by Alan Moore and John Totleben
Miracleman No. 19 by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham
Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker
Planetary No. 1 by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday
The X-Men No. 143 by Chris Claremont and John Byrne
Ronin No. 1 by Frank Miller
Sin City No. 1 by Frank Miller
Marvel Comics Presents No. 72 Weapon X Part 1 by Barry Windsor-Smith
Strange Tales No. 178 — Who Is Adam Warlock? by Jim Starlin
Sleeper No. 1 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Animal Man No. 5 by Grant Morrison and Chas Truog (special mention to Brian Bolland’s cover)
American Flagg! No. 1 by Howard Chaykin
Human Target No. 1 by Peter Milligan and Edvin Biukovic
Tyrant No. 1 by Steve Bissete
Moonshadow No. 1 by J.M. DeMatteis and Jon J. Muth
Eightball No. 22 by Daniel Clowes
Sandman No. 8 by Neil Gaiman and Mike Dringenberg
Cages No. 1 by Dave McKean
From Hell No. 1 by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
Big Numbers No. 1 by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewickz
Paul Auster’s City of Glass adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzuchelli
Daredevil No. 227 by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli
And the list goes on. –FlipM
Wanted
Wanted by Mark Millar. Much better than the movie. –jhnshft
Superman No. 75
Death of Superman –jhnshft
Transmetropolitan
I feel like everyone should read Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis. A lot of the subject matter is amazingly funny, but there’s one cryogenics story that is pretty hard-hittingly sad. –Sliver
Transmetropolitan was fun, and I haven’t read Maus yet but want to someday. I quick-read Marvels at the comic shop earlier this year and it was excellent as well. –baccaruda
From Hell by Alan Moore and Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis were both excellent reads. –kwikdraw
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Sorry, but this list is too constrained for my tastes…. The most influential comic in the history of the genre, The Dark Knight Returns, wasn’t even mentioned, except in a post by another reader! There’s a complete world of very cool stuff out there that just went — zip! — right over this guy’s head. So here’s my list: Any issue of Heavy Metal with stories/art by Enki Bilal or Jean Giraud/Moebius; Shirow’s Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell ; Adam Warren’s Dirty Pair (if you have time for only one, go with Sim Hell ); Frank Miller’s Return of the Dark Knight. I close with my fave line from Warren: “Girls with guns! Crucial realm!” –rpbird
Green Lantern
Gonna have to go with the Adams/O’Neil run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow. Beautiful art and some hard-hitting tales make these classic books. Also worthy of seeking out is the Grant Morrison/Steve Yeowell series Zenith, taken from U.K. publication 2000 AD. Light-years ahead of its time. –jeemie
One of the best has to be Green Lantern/Green Arrow Nos. 85 and 86 with Speedy’s drug addiction. –Magician216
One of my all time favorites is Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn. It’s one of the first comics I read and still one of the best. Also, Kurt Busiek’s Marvels is amazing. –gpmeyer2
Valiant Comics
I loved the Valiant Comics with first 12 issues of Magnus, Robot Fighter, Rai, X-O, Dr. Solar, Turok, Archer & Armstrong, Harbinger and Eternal Warrior. Anything before Unity 2. –halkyra
Watchmen
What about the Watchmen? Rorschach’s character alone represents the living embodiment of paranoia. –mrnonel
Watchmen by Alan Moore, no doubt. –LupinYonsei
It may be a graphic novel but it has changed the world of literature and everyone needs to read it. –JordanEast
1) Alan Moore’s Watchmen — one of Time magazine’s top 100 novels of the 20th century
2) The Long Halloween
3) A Dame to Kill For — the best in Frank Miller’s Sin City series
4) Batman: Year One
5) For all you zombie fans: The Walking Dead series. –iamhouli
I’ve gotta say that Alan Moore’s Watchmen is a must-read. Definitely one of the greatest graphic novels of all time. –navoghosh
See Also:MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) – Bahrain's special security court on Thursday sentenced a protester to death for killing a policeman, and gave doctors and nurses who had treated injured protesters during the country's uprising earlier this year lengthy prison sentences, a lawyer said.
Attorney Mohsen al-Alawi said the tribunal, set up during Bahrain's emergency rule, convicted and sentenced 13 medical professionals each to 15 years in prison. In addition, two doctors were sentenced to 10 years each while seven other medics convicted on Thursday got shorter prison terms of 5 years each.
Thursday's harsh sentences suggest the Sunni authorities in the Gulf kingdom will not relent in pursing and punishing those they accuse of supporting the Shiite-led opposition and participating in dissent that has roiled the tiny island nation.
Earlier this year, the same special court sentenced two other protesters to death for killing a police officer in a separate incident.
Al-Alawi, the lawyer, said the 22 medical professionals, who were charged with various anti-state crimes, and the protester who got the death sentence on Thursday can appeal their verdicts.
Hundreds of activists have been imprisoned since March when Bahrain's rulers imposed martial law to deal with protests by the country's Shiite majority demanding greater rights and freedoms.
More than 30 people have been killed since the protests began in February, inspired by Arab uprisings elsewhere. The Sunni monarchy that rules this strategically important Gulf nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, responded with a violent crackdown.
Thursday's sentences came a day after the tribunal upheld sentences for 21 activists convicted for their roles in the protests, including eight prominent political figures who were given life terms on charges of trying to overthrow the kingdom's Sunni rulers.
The court's decision reflected the authorities' unwillingness to roll back punishments for those considered central to the anti-government uprising, although officials have taken some steps to ease tensions. They include releasing some detainees and reinstating state workers purged for suspected support of the seven-month-old protest movement.
The doctors' trial has been closely watched by rights groups, which have criticized Bahrain's use of the security court, which has military prosecutors and both civilian and military judges, in prosecuting civilians.Mysterious Russian ‘Killer Satellites’ Spring Back To Life After Two Years Of Inactivity, And We Have No Idea Why
Tim Collins, had an article in the May 19, 2017 edition of The Daily Mail Online, warns “Russia could be preparing for a space war, after reactivating a group of satellites that military observers believed were inoperative. The objects first attracted attention for their usual maneuverability, which led some to suspect they were weapons; but, they appeared to lay dormant for almost two years. Now, the spacecraft have sprung back into action,” Mr. Collins writes, “raising concerns that the Kremlin is stepping up its space [weapons] race.”
“The agile craft, dubbed Kosmos-2491, -2499, -2504, were smuggled into space under the cover of the routine launch of communications satellites,” Mr. Collins wrote. Then this March, “Kosmos-2504 suddenly resumed its maneuvers, showing the first signs of life since October 2015,” he noted. “Last month, the craft passed within 1,183 meters of a defunct Chinese weather satellite, extremely close in astronomical terms. And, Kosmos 2499 was also seen undertaking some strange movements of its own in recent months,” he wrote.
Dr. Laura Grego, a space expert with the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a recent interview with, The Daily Beast: “I do find it very interesting that the satellite would go dormant for two years; and then, come back to life to maneuver. One strategy to keep satellites stealthy, is to pretend they are debris, i.e., not to have them maneuver at all at first, and then come to life later. To be confident this works, you might want to test if your equipment works, after being idle for months or years.”
Mr. Collins writes that “the three unusually nimble craft are able to get within a few dozen feet of other orbiting satellites; and, are able to potentially spy-on, hijack, or even destroy other satellites/spacecraft. It is clear from their capabilities that they have the potential to become anti-satellite weapons.” “Looking at the history of space technology, it often starts with a small and cheap satellite that’s easy to launch, then the same technology gets incorporated into something larger,” said Anatoly Zak, a Russian-born journalist and space historian. “You can probably equip them with lasers, maybe put some explosives on them,” he added. “If [one] comes very close to some military satellite, it can probably do some harm.”
And, Russia is not alone of course in militarizing space. The U.S., Japan, China, and Sweden — yes, Sweden — have all tested space assets with similar characteristics — “all in the name of satellite maintenance,” Mr. Collins wrote.
“Why The Next Pearl Harbor Could Happen In Space”
There are numerous articles almost daily on the prospects or warning of a ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor;’ but, there is the potential for such an event in space. Indeed, Jonathan Broder had an article in the May 4, 2016 edition of Newsweek, with the title, “Why The Next Pearl Harbor Could Happen In Space.” And,a recent Defense Science Board study on the vulnerability of our space assets, especially those dedicated for military and national security purposes. No doubt, such an event — unless accidental, or an act of nature — would be considered an act of war. So perhaps, the chances of such an event are low probability, but high consequence — though some of you may argue with low probability.
Mr. Broder wrote at the time that, “Chinese President Xi Jingping paid a high profile visit last month [April 2016] to Air Force headquarters in Beijing, where he ordered his generals to sharpen the country’s defensive, and offensive capabilities in space — in preparation for what many Chinese military analysts believe is an inevitable war in space with the United States.” At the time of Mr. Broder’s article last year, he cited a Pentagon statement that “Beijing continues to ramp up its military capabilities in space, launching 142 satellites to provide intelligence, navigation, communications, and weather forecasting that can “limit, or prevent the use of space-based assets by adversaries during times of crisis or conflict.”
The Pentagon spent $2B in 2016 to upgrade and enhance its space assets security and ‘survivability,’ and/or, ensure minimum operational capability; but, the threat to these same assets is increasing faster and more profoundly than we can adjust to. As Mr. Broder noted in his article, the $2B the Pentagon was spending in 2016 on protecting and countering space assets, was “set to soar to $22B,” this year. The Pentagon is “stressing resiliency, and broadening the use of defenses already on some of our military satellites,” he wrote. “They range from adding a thick shutter to a spy satellite’s camera for protection against laser attack, to boosting a satellite’s signals to prevent [overcome] jamming. Other methods [steps], include frequency hopping, which enables satellites to transmit data on other frequencies, if some are jammed,” or unavailable. The military [Pentagon] has also diversified its information sources, by acquiring data [streams] from neutral countries and commercial satellites.”
And, it is well known and publicized, that the Pentagon has been actively studying, and seeking alternatives to the Global Positioning System (GPS) Navigation, as well as the overhead constellation that supports strategic nuclear defense, as well as support for/to conventional and special operations communications and surveillance operations.
Naturally, those in charge of protecting these assets; and, ensuring at least the minimum necessary needed for critical; mission support, some Pentagon planners and strategists have been urging that we adopt a strategy of disaggregation, or placing many more, smaller satellites up in orbit to ensure redundancy and resiliency.
“As the Pentagon explores new ways to protect its satellites, America’s fallback policy remains deterrence by threat of retaliation,” Mr. Broder wrote. :Depending on which satellites are attacked, the U.S. could confine itself to taking out the enemy’s equivalent satellites. But, if Chiba or Russia destroyed the Pentagon’s nuclear early-warning and strategic communications satellites, military strategists say, it’s unlikely the U.S. [military] response would stay ;[remain confined]in [to] space..
“In their techno-thriller, “Ghost Fleet,” authors Pete Singer and August Cole describe a cataclysmic world that begins with a Chinese attack against the U.S. in space,” Mr. Broder wrote. “First, soldiers at China’s Cyber Command Headquarters in Shanghai, hack into the Pentagon’s network of GPS satellites and scramble their signals. The cyber attack sows chaos throughout among U.S. forces, which can no longer activate accurately, track targets, or hit them with precision munitions.”
“Then from a space station orbiting 200 miles above Earth, Chinese astronauts train a laser gun on three dozen U.S. satellites the U.S. military relies upon for virtually all of its communications and critical surveillance. By the time the Chinese are done, America’s technological edge [advantage] on this new, 21st-century battlefield has been reduced to the predigital levels of World War II.”
“Scenes such as this [the above], [that] play out in Ghost Fleet, which is now required reading for military planners in the U.S. Space Command, as well as the military services and the CIA,” Mr., Broder wrote. With respect to Ghost Fleet, Mr. Singer remarked, “It’s a novel,” and a thriller, but it’s a realistic look at how a war might play out when we lose the opening battle in space,” Singer says, adding……”Let’s hope it stays in the realm of fiction.”
One thing that Mr. Broder did not refer to is a white paper publication that has been out a couple of years by China’s military strategists, “Unrestricted Warfare,” whereby Beijing is conducting and practicing simulated warfare exercises — disconnected from their networks. Perhaps they aren’t entirely sure that they can make us ‘deaf,dumb, and blind,’ without us doing the same to them. If that is the case, or close to ground truth, then that underscores the need for U.S. military strategists and warfighters to have at least a portion of their wargame exercises include being disconnected from their networks.
The U.S. also used to plan to win a two-war scenario. The thinking behind that strategy was, to a large degree, to deter adversaries who were not part of one conflict the U.S. was engaged in — from seeking to take advantage of this situation and initiate hostilities elsewhere. One does wonder if our overhead satellite constellation is knocked out, or crippled, what is our best guess as to the consequences of that dynamic, for those darker angels who may well seek to take advantage of this situation — and, who are not involved in the main conflict. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, no one really knows. But, have we ever war-gamed that kind of scenario so that we might have at least some idea of what others might seek to do, while we are engaged in a principal conflict, where our networks are down, or severely compromised.
And finally, China is currently deploying an ‘unhackable,’ encrypted satellite constellation in space that also could give them a significant strategic edge in space. V/R, RCPStory highlights Nagin "did a belly flop" on the witness stand, observer says
A federal jury convicts Ray Nagin of 20 of 21 corruption counts against him
Prosecutors had accused him of running a kickback scheme from his office
"We did our best," Nagin's attorney says
Ray Nagin came into the mayor's office in New Orleans as an avowed scourge of corruption and led the city through the worst disaster of its modern history.
He left a federal courthouse a convict Wednesday, after a jury found him guilty of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and other favors from businessmen looking for a break from his administration. Of the 21 counts against him, he was convicted of 20.
"He got a lot of media attention as being a reformer, a non-politician, first run for office -- a businessman who was going to come in and get it right," said Pat Fanning, a veteran New Orleans lawyer and no fan of the former two-term mayor.
After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, the onetime cable television executive would reassure people queasy about sending taxpayer money to a state with an epic history of corruption by telling them, "Google me. You're not going to find any of that in my record," Fanning said, quoting Nagin. "Well, Google him now."
Nagin, who left office in 2010, had little to say as he left the courthouse Wednesday afternoon, telling reporters only, "I maintain my innocence." A small knot of supporters yelled, "Keep your head up" and "He's just a patsy," CNN affiliate WDSU reported.
His lead attorney, Robert Jenkins, told reporters his client would appeal the verdict.
"We did the best we could do," Jenkins said.
Prosecutors argued the 57-year-old Nagin was at the center of a kickback scheme in which he received checks, cash, wire transfers, personal services and free travel from businessmen seeking contracts and favorable treatment from the city. He faces up to 20 years in prison, but Fanning said a 14- to 17-year term was more likely.
A January 2013 indictment detailed more than $200,000 in bribes to the mayor, and his family members allegedly received a vacation in Hawaii; first-class airfare to Jamaica; private jet travel and a limousine for New York City; and cellular phone service. In exchange, businesses that coughed up for Nagin and his family won more than $5 million in city contracts, according to the January 2013 indictment.
During the two-week trial, prosecutors brought to the stand a string of businessmen who had already pleaded guilty to bribing Nagin. His defense did little to challenge their stories, Fanning said.
"It was too painful actually to watch. They just swamped him," he said. And when Nagin took the stand in his own defense, "He did a belly flop," often answering questions on cross-examination by saying he couldn't recall who paid for a trip or perk.
"He just looked terrible," Fanning said.
The earliest of the charges date from before Katrina, which struck when Nagin had been in office for about three years. The hurricane flooded more than three-fourths of low-lying New Orleans and left more than 1,800 dead across the region -- most of them in Louisiana.
Supporters credited Nagin's sometimes-profane demands for aid from Washington with helping reveal the botched federal response to the storm -- a fiasco that embarrassed the George W. Bush administration and led to billions of federal dollars being poured into Gulf Coast reconstruction efforts.
But Nagin also had his detractors: Fanning called his performance during the storm "a meltdown," a congressional committee criticized him for delaying evacuation orders, and his frantic description of post-storm New Orleans as a violent wasteland with up to 10,000 dead turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
As he sought re-election in 2006, with much of the city's African-American population displaced by storm damage, Nagin was blasted for insisting that New Orleans would remain a "chocolate" city.
"I have given my pound of flesh," he said.
Nagin sought to have the charges dismissed in October after another federal judge blasted what he called the "grotesque" misconduct of prosecutors in the post-Katrina shootings of unarmed civilians by police at the Danziger Bridge.
The judge tossed out the convictions of five cashiered cops after ruling that members of the U.S. attorney's office tainted their 2011 trial by anonymously posting "egregious and inflammatory" comments at online news sites.
Nagin argued that he was the target of the same underground effort, citing "a continuum of pejorative statements and demeaning racial epithets" aimed at him. The U.S. attorney's office said none of the prosecutors involved in the Danziger Bridge case played a role in the Nagin investigation.Egypt’s parliamentary ethics committee recommended on Monday that MP Osama Sharshar be banned from attending house sessions until the current term ends over allegedly "sending sex videos of another MP on Whatsapp," Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.
The case dates back to June 2016 when Sharshar reportedly posted a sex video allegedly involving another MP on the parliament's Whatsapp group.
Members of the parliament expressed anger over Sharshar's actions.
Sharshar explained that his "Whatsapp was hacked and the inappropriate videos were sent to instigate conflicts with other MPs," according to media reports.
Sources told Al-Ahram Arabic news website that other punishments against the independent |
– that certain scenes in Lynette’s play about a sexual assault on a young Indian student must be deleted, for fear of causing offence.
Vincent, in the story, “Curry Muncher 2.0”, roughed up in the train following a racist attack (an echo of the many reported attacks on Indian students in Australia some years ago), baulks at making a police complaint as it might jeopardise his stay in the country. In “Dignity of Labour”, the bruises Deepak’s self-esteem suffers, as he works at “stacking shelves” in the supermarket when he could well have had a better job in India, drives him to violence towards his wife.
There aren’t many stories about Indians in Australia. Not in the vein of Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories in Interpreter of Maladies and her Unaccustomed Earth, or even Akhil Sharma’s Family Lives, for example, that look at immigrant Indians’ lives in America. It could be almost axiomatic, but as a community acquires for itself decision-making powers on a wider level, and a greater confidence within and without, it also gains the freedom and fluidity to tell its own stories. In that sense, Roanna Gonsalves’s stories may well be a beginning.
The Permanent Resident, Roanna Gonsalves, University of Western Australia Publishing.90 degrees Fahrenheit—June scorches the Earth with its stagnant summer swelter. To make the heat worse, I’m dressed in a restrictive, black, wool-blend two-piece, hot lights and the judge’s stare beating down on my counsel table—the relative temperature of which could probably boil water—but of course the coup de grâce on top of all this discomfort is the fact that I’m absolutely freezing. And not because I grew up in Svalbard or Barrow or McMurdo Station or something, but because to compensate for the heat some well-meaning Court Clerk has decided to go ham on the thermostat and set the A/C from chill to kill.
So there I sit—and despite feeling more glacial than pre-thaw Captain America, I still manage to tensely sweat.
Or perhaps it really is the just the heat. I don’t know; it’s been a long morning.
Some background:
My client had been accused of misdemeanor battery, meaning he allegedly hit someone—in this case, his wife. Allegedly. The facts remain murky, but from what I was able to parse from my client was that him and his wife were home one snowy, winter day, when she asked him to take a dead car battery in to get fixed. Not having a car himself, this would have meant him walking several blocks through cold, knee-deep snowfall—which in-and-of-itself sounds inconvenient, but add to it the fact that he had to work in less than an hour and, based on his testimony at least, it all sounds like a pretty inconvenient trip. But she wanted him to take it. Sounds like cabin fever to me.
In any case, they fought. Blows were allegedly thrown, though based on what I could gather it was virtually impossible to know who struck whom. But—and this isn’t my take on some sort of gender issue; it’s just the truth in 2017 urban society—he was the man, so he got arrested when the cops eventually showed up.
In short, this case was a battery… over a battery. Yes, I find more humor in that than I should.
To get back to the point though, a deal couldn’t be reached in pretrial proceedings. So the case went to trial.
Now, conducting a trial—especially a criminal trial—especially a solo criminal trial—especially a solo criminal trial having never chaired a trial before—is somewhat akin to running with scissors. Only instead of running it’s more like wakeboarding on asphalt, and instead of scissors it’s more like a desperately wriggling electric eel writhing in allegorical representation of an ever-loosening grasp on my career and my client’s all-important civil liberties. My mind has just spent four solid hours operating on formula-one overdrive, paneling a jury, reciting well-rehearsed opening statements, cross-examining prosecutorial witnesses, and guiding my client through cobbled direct examination—all this while hurriedly scribbling notes every time the prosecutor so much as casts a conspicuous glance because I’ve deluded myself into thinking that if I miss anything it’s going to come back to bite me and we’re all going to maximum-security lockup for the rest of our lives.
Oh yes, did I mention? Sitting directly to my left is my client, but sitting across the isle to my right is a 6’3”, blonde, 28-ish year old state-sponsored Amazon with a penchant for throwing shade and a degree of intelligence so sharply adept that even my most perfectly logical legal arguments crumble face-first into the ground below her flowery heels.
And this person is being paid to ardently subvert my every step. I mean, the least she could do is smile every once in a while.
But adversarial systems exist indifferent to interpersonal pleasantries—logic, reason, and rationalism being Justicia’s true arsenal, infinitely more transcendent than simple scales and scabbard. Justice is angelic beacon—the shining societal ziggurat atop which rests humanity’s ideal. Justice is blind, but sees boundless potential. Justice is law, but also its practice. Justice is pursuit of truth, our hope for utopian tomorrows. Justice is love. Justice is freedom. Justice is our future.
It is not my terror-stricken expression when I open my trial binder and realize I’ve forgotten to write a closing statement. Heck, not even notes. No, my closing folder is completely empty.
Not the District Attorney’s, though—the lattermost part of her trial notebook is rife with ideas. At least, that’s what I’m assuming, given that she’s right in the middle of making her own closing statement.
Now, I’m a fast writer. I’m a faster thinker. And—casting humility aside—I’m a phenomenal speaker, capable of rapidly concocting well-spoken, accurate, theatrically convincing monologues even in the eleventh hour. But coming up with a cogent, responsive, and trustworthy closing statement while the DA is wrapping up her own? That’s more like the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute.
But the DA is stepping down now, her grim commands to convict my nefarious, violent, Mephistophelean crime wave of a client still hanging in the air over what I desperately pray is a remarkably pliant open-minded jury. So what else can I do? They’re waiting. It’s sink or swim, and I’m jumping in with a lead parka if I don’t give them something better than the 1990’s graffiti-style letter “S” sketched poorly into the last page of my legal pad.
In other words, I’ve got to wing it.
When I was a law student, the courtroom felt gargantuan—miles away I observed, distantly taking notes as the judge sat on his high throne, leering with scrutinizing eyes at counsel on each side of the wide isle as they grasped the podium and spoke with impassioned fervor at the sea of attentive jurors.
Actually standing at the lectern, though, is much the opposite. I’m wrought with claustrophobia, because the elevated judge is staring at what must be the top of my head, the jury is so crowded-elevator near that speaking to them feels practically rude, and given her wingspan I’m positive that the DA is well-within striking distance.
I cede control as my falsely confident voice travels past my lips.
“A famous advertiser once said that you have to see something seven times before you begin to notice it; that if I’m selling you a product, I have to show you at least seven commercials before you begin to believe that my product is going to work.”
Now, I firmly believe in subjective truth—that universal relativity obfuscates strict objectivity, and though broad perceptions and scientific observation may be generally agreed-upon, in the end fact is surprisingly malleable. But what am I saying? Seven-time advertising? Even completely pure subjectivity could at best maybe qualify this barely-provable assertion.
So here I stand, my client’s founders-fought-for-it freedom on the line, and the first words of my closing statement are an apocryphal, sourceless, questionably verifiable and likely inaccurate quasi-factoid. Nonetheless, I continue.
“By advancing its singular view of the facts over and over and over again, what the state is attempting to do is advertise to you. It’s trying to make you believe, through severally repeated exposure, that its version of the facts must be the truth.”
Broca’s Area: the region of the frontal lobe responsible for speech production. Often, I feel like this part of my brain is nothing more than infinite monkeys attempting to reproduce Shakespeare.
But as broken clocks are right twice a day, so too must Hamlet eventually spew from those simian typewriters. And so, standing behind a lectern on a hot midsummer day, a miracle occurs.
Ok, that’s an embellishment. Producing a spontaneous but cogent closing statement hardly makes me Jesus. But that doesn’t mean I won’t take my victories where I can. And as I stumble with startling grace through the remainder of my closing statement, I actually find myself rather proud, because in the end I’ve managed to concoct a fairly sound legal argument against conviction.
Of course, this pink cloud begins to dissipate the moment I resume my seat and look over at the scowling DA. And by the time the judge finishes reading his eons worth of jury instructions—the barely-awake jury nodding with unreadable expressions and unknowable levels of prejudice—I’m once again crushed by what I feel must be my total inaptitude for competent representation. So much so that as the jury marches their fatalistic, funeral-somber exit and my client looks to me for reassurance, the only words I can manage to honestly respond with are, “I have no idea.”
Not exactly what a potentially innocent man threatened with months of jail time wants to hear.
(A brief aside: at this point, I feel it necessary to express a get-down-on-my-knees-and-give-praise level of gratitude toward this client, because despite the fact that I was understudied, underprepared, underpaid, and underpracticed, he continuously made it clear that, regardless, he greatly appreciated the undertaking, and even more importantly, that he understood.)
The jury deliberates for more than two hours, and the down time carries with it a uniquely interesting air—much like the calm before a storm, fate teetering unknowingly between calm, soon-forgettable drizzle and life-altering, tempestuous oblivion. It’s possible this is due to the setting of our waiting area—Anywhere, U.S.A. Literally. Miscarriages aside, the justice system is surprisingly trusting when it comes to those presumed innocent, and hypothetically the only thing standing between my client and a one-way ticket to Mexico was an inexpensive signature bond and an easily-snipped ankle monitor. For all the jury knew, by the time they finished deliberations my client and I were halfway to Indiana.
But alas, I guess today isn’t a day for Shawshankian pursuits, and so rather than high-tailing it I’m waiting with my lunch on a bench outside, finally out of the A/C icebox and graciously warming myself in the sun. I think my client went to 7-11.
My phone buzzes. We have a verdict.
Back in the courtroom, the players file in. Perhaps 5 minutes pass, but the seconds crawl like a slug through thick caramel. Even when the jury returns to the room—each taking their seat in turn—it’s like waiting for an evening concert to begin. Except instead of a popular artist we’re waiting for a 12-person panel, and instead of performing the latest hits they’re going to potentially revoke my client’s weekend plans for the next 9 months.
“Have you reached a verdict?” the judge asks.
“Yes, we have,” responds the foreperson juror.
“Would the bailiff please deliver the verdict form from the foreperson.” Good gracious, SKIP THE FORMALITIES AND JUST LET US KNOW.
It seems like hours as the bailiff meanders to the foreperson and takes the folded form from his hand, delivering it to the judge, who patiently unfolds it and begins to read.
“For the crime of misdemeanor battery, the jury finds you”—pause. I stop breathing; I can’t breathe; my chest feels like it has wasps swarming inside.
I can’t imagine how my client feels.
“—Not guilty.”
The force of my relieved sigh could have set the ships of Troy asail. Da Vinci could barely have captured the alleviated tones of mollified release on my client’s face.
“For the crime of disorderly conduct—“ oh yeah. That too. “—The jury finds you… not guilty. This court stands adjourned.”
There it is. Innocent of all charges. Lottery winners feel not such song in their heart. I want to scream across the rooftops; tell everyone I know. As Robin Williams so accurately says in The Birdcage, I'm doing an eclectic celebration of a dance. I'm doing Fosse, Fosse, Fosse! I'm doing Martha Graham, Martha Graham, Martha Graham! Or Twyla, Twyla, Twyla! Or Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd! Or Madonna, Madonna, Madonna! And I'm barely managing to keep it all inside. I glance across the isle at the DA—flustered, but accepting—and then back at my client, to which he asks me a pivotal question that I will never forget:
“So, can we go now?”
Years of law school. Sleepless nights and hours upon hours of arduous study, nose buried in gargantuan legal volumes—academic osmosis, the scrupulous parsing of critical constitutional precedent from sundry, extraneous juridical fluff. Blood, sweat, and tears—significant periods of my life voraciously consumed by tedious, circumlocutory text and intense dedication to complete legal immersion. Copious courtroom notes; involvement in clinics, jobs, and public defender appointments; practice upon practice in trial preparation and procedural formalities. All to transform my sharp mind into a zenith of reasoning, logic, and jurisprudence—a biological supercomputer of statutory information and absolute ability: The ultimate zealous advocate.
So no, naturally, I have zero idea whether we can go now. Seems like there should be some sort of sign-out process, doesn’t it? I mean, seconds ago he was on trial, liberty on the line, and now he’s just free to walk out the door?
So, can we go now?
“Yeah,” I respond, already beginning to dart from my seat. “I think we probably should.” You know, before someone comes along and tells us we can’t.
###
This is the story of how I won my first trial. And it’s brimming with rookie mistakes, nervous errors, and incredulous gaffes. But in the end, I still won.
None of us are perfect, and if you’re anything like me, chances are when you do succeed you feel that someone probably did something wrong. But if there’s anything I learned from all of this, it’s that, as lawyers, we’re often much more capable than we give ourselves credit for. So take that procedural snafu in stride—you’re probably much more competent that you think.A 7-year-old boy appears to have fatally shot himself in the head Sunday afternoon in the Englewood neighborhood on the city's South Side, police said.Devon Lofton, a first-grader at D.S. Wentworth Elementary School, was shot at about 3:50 p.m. in the 6700-block of South Aberdeen Street. The gun has been recovered and police are trying to determine who owns the gun, as that person could faces charges."We loved him," said neighbor Claudia Harris. "He just graduated from kindergarten last year and he was a happy little boy."The boy was transported to University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital in critical condition, where he died shortly afterward."This family is hurting and it's a very tough time for them, said Andrew Holmes, community activist. It's just finding out where this gun came from."The boy was shot in his home, where he lived with his mother, grandmother and four siblings."If you going to have a gun in the house, they need to be secure. They need to be in lock boxes or little locks on the triggers, and away from children," Ald. Toni Foulkes (6th Ward).See Which Nintendo Characters Are Totally Gay For Each Other
John Oliver is finding his mojo on his weekly HBO news satire show Last Week Tonight.
On the fourth installment of the program last night, he noted that Saturday was the 10th anniversary of Massachusetts becoming the first state in the US to legalize gay marriage.
Which is pretty amazing considering how much traction the fight has gained in a relatively short amount of time.
Except the real world gains haven’t quite made their way into the Nintendo universe, as John cheekily remarks.
Imagining the world of Mario with marriage equality, the graphics department at Last Week Tonight got the best assignment ever — animate some same-sex loving using Nintendo characters.
There’s Mario and Link’s lip lock:
Princess Peach getting down with Princess Zelda:
The nuptial tongue penetration of Toad and Yoshi:
And sadly, Bowser grieving the loss of his partner, Donkey Kong:
Here’s the full clip:Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Aileen Clarke explains how the fraudulent voting occurred
Officials at the referendum count in Glasgow have said they are investigating 10 cases of suspected electoral fraud at polling stations.
It is thought to be related to possible cases of personation, where people pretend to be someone else and cast a vote, then the real person turns up.
The 10 suspect votes were cast at a variety of different polling stations across the city.
Glasgow City Council said police had been called earlier on Thursday.
Each ballot paper has an individual number attached to it, so officials will now have to sort through the ballots and attempt to find these 10 papers.
They will then be removed, and kept separately from the more than 486,000 ballot papers being counted in Glasgow.
Colin Edgar, head of communication at Glasgow City Council, said the search for the ten ballot papers "will not delay the count".
Police Scotland said any crime committed would be appropriately investigated.
A spokesman added: "Police Scotland takes the safety and security of the independence referendum extremely seriously and is working with partner agencies including local authorities to ensure the integrity of the ballot."UPDATE: Universal just made this official. The studio release is at the bottom of the original break.
BREAKING: Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam has officially been set to play Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, the Universal Pictures and Focus Features adaptation of the runaway bestselling book series. Hunnam, who had been rumored for weeks, more recently starred in the Guillermo Del Toro-directed Pacific Rim. Author EL James made the casting official on her Twitter page. Sam Taylor-Johnson is directing a script by Kelly Marcel and Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti are producing along with the author.
This follows by minutes the official casting of Dakota Johnson to play the role of Anastasia Steele. Grey is the young, wealthy industrialist with a dark past who favors S&M relationships. His loyalty to the dominant-submissive subset is tested when he meets the young college graduate Anastasia Steele, who seems like the perfect girl for him.
Related: Dakota Johnson Lands ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Role
Kelly Marcel To Write ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ For Universal And Focus
The British actor is best known for playing Jax Teller in Kurt Sutter’s Sons Of Anarchy. I met him when I moderated the Sons panel that closed Comic-Con. I found him to be a very personable and charming guy, but in Sutter’s series, Hunnam has shown the ability to summon a dark edge which will come in handy in playing the emotionally damaged Christian Grey over the course of three movies.
He is repped by CAA and Brillstein.George Takei and his husband Brad Altman urge same-sex couples to complete the 2010 census and show America how many of them are in a marriage or consider themselves married even if not legally wed.
Takei, complete in a Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan uniform, urged fellow gay couples to participate in the census. “[You may ask] why I’m still wearing this Starfleet uniform,” he said. “It’s to get you to actually listen to this important message, that affects how our community and marriages such as ours are viewed by this nation. Be counted!”
“This is the first time in history the census is counting marriages like ours,” said Altman.
“It doesn’t matter whether you have a legal marriage license or not,” said Takei. “It only matters if you consider yourself married. That’s what the census is asking for, for people to identify how they view themselves.”
Takei then explained how to fill out the census, showing which box to check off for those couples who consider themselves married, and which box to check off for those couples who although they are in a relationship, don’t consider themselves married.
“So fill out the census, and let’s show America how many of us are joined in beautiful loving marriages,” said Altman.
Source: SheWired.comIn the United States, the blood-alcohol limit may be 0.08 percent, but no amount of alcohol seems to be safe for driving, according to a University of California, San Diego sociologist. A study led by David Phillips and published in the journal Addiction finds that blood-alcohol levels well below the U.S. legal limit are associated with incapacitating injury and death.
Phillips, with coauthor Kimberly M. Brewer, also of UC San Diego, examined official data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). This dataset includes information on all persons in the U.S. who were involved in fatal car accidents -- 1,495,667 people in the years 1994 to 2008. The researchers used FARS because it is nationally comprehensive, covering all U.S. counties, all days of the week and all times of day, and, perhaps most important, reports on blood-alcohol content in increments of 0.01.
All the accidents included in FARS are, by definition, severe. But the authors looked at different levels of accident severity by examining the ratio of severe injuries to minor ones.
"Accidents are 36.6 percent more severe even when alcohol was barely detectable in a driver's blood," Phillips said. Even with a BAC of 0.01, Phillips and Brewer write, there are 4.33 serious injuries for every non-serious injury versus 3.17 for sober drivers.
There are at least three mechanisms that help to explain this finding, Phillips said: "Compared with sober drivers, buzzed drivers are more likely to speed, more likely to be improperly seat-belted and more likely to drive the striking vehicle, all of which are associated with greater severity."
There also seems to be a strong "dose-response" relationship between all these factors, the authors write: The greater the blood-alcohol content, the greater the average speed of the driver and the greater the severity of the accident, for example.
The findings persist even when such potentially confounding variables as inattention and fatigue are excluded from the analysis.
In general, accident severity is significantly higher on weekends, between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. and in the summer months, June through August. But when the researchers standardized for day of the week, for time of day and for month, the relationship between BAC and more dangerous car accidents also persisted.
"Up till now, BAC limits have been determined not only by rational considerations and by empirical findings but also by political and cultural factors," Phillips said, citing as evidence that the U.S. national standard of 0.08 is relatively recent and that BAC limits vary greatly by country. In Germany, the limit is 0.05; in Japan, 0.03; and in Sweden, 0.02.
"We hope that our study might influence not only U.S. legislators, but also foreign legislators, in providing empirical evidence for lowering the legal BAC even more," Phillips said. "Doing so is very likely to reduce incapacitating injuries and to save lives."
The research was funded by the Marian E. Smith Foundation.The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that, despite global side effects and long-term consequences, geoengineering techniques involving solar radiation management (SRM) should be maintained:
“If SRM were terminated for any reason, there is high confidence that global surface temperatures would rise very rapidly to values consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing.” [emphasis in original]
“Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis,” (referred to as “AR5”) supercedes the former report published in 2007. [1] The IPCC’s first Assessment Report was published in 1990.
The discussion in the Summary for Policymakers and in the body of AR5 commends solar radiation management over carbon dioxide removal methods, which are limited in their efficacy on a global scale, yet admits that neither are ideal, and that both geoengineering techniques will have long-term consequences.
“While the entire community of academia still pretends not to know about the ongoing reality of global geoengineering,” comments Dane Wigington at Geoengineering Watch, “the simple fact that they are now discussing geoengineering in the latest IPCC report indicates that the veil is beginning to lift.” [2]
Solar radiation management comprises various techniques aimed at reflecting or diverting solar radiation back into space, essentially increasing the planet’s albedo (reflectivity). Many geoengineers, along with the IPCC, prefer solar radiation management methods to carbon dioxide removal as a climate fix, given the planet’s complex carbon feedback loops, and the much cheaper and quicker method of spraying our skies with albedo-enhancing particles.
“Block the sun but continue to spew billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” is how Eli Kintisch characterizes SRM in his 2010 book, Hack the Planet. [3] In a world run by sanity, we would forego fossil fuels for free and abundant solar energy, coupled with Tesla’s development of free electricity, to meet the world’s energy needs, without destroying our nest by extracting and burning fossil fuels.
Solar radiation management has “three essential characteristics,” notes the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC). “It is cheap, fast and imperfect,” [4] Citing geoengineering activist, David Keith, the IRGC explains that by injecting 13,000 tons of sulphate aerosol into the stratosphere on a daily basis, they would offset the radiative effects of a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This compares to having to remove “225 million tons per day of CO2 from the atmosphere for 25 years.”
Were reason to prevail, we would capture solar energy, not block it; we would shun fossil fuels, not wage ecocidal wars to seize remaining supplies. In today’s world, however, policymakers have diverted billions of dollars into blocking the sun. Efficient systems cost around $10 billion a year, “well within the budgets of most countries,” notes the IRGC.
In addition to warning policymakers in its Summary that chemtrails must continue, the IPCC also denies that such programs exist. Buried within Chapter 7, the IPCC simply states, “SRM methods are unimplemented and untested.”
It’s an odd statement, given the warning that to stop SRM would heat the planet. Plus, the IPCC admits in AR5:
“New and improved observational aerosol datasets have emerged since AR4. A number of field experiments have taken place.”
One of the programs listed, the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment, covered the Northern Hemisphere, measuring aerosols originating in Asia and crossing the Pacific into North America, then continuing across the continent, across the Atlantic Ocean and into Europe. Headed by the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project, these flights ran in 2004 and 2006, and reportedly numbered less than four dozen.
Another “experiment,” the European Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interactions project, started in January 2007 and ended in December 2010 – running for a full four years, and included Africa.
In addition to the joint regional projects, several nations also perform similar field trials within their own borders. India admits to running SRM programs for over ten years.
Surely, field trials move way beyond “experiments” when they cover continents and cross oceans and are performed over a period of years.
Another inconsistency in AR5 is its discussion of persistent contrails. Despite the dire warning in the Summary urging policymakers to continue with their solar radiation management programs lest the planet’s surface cooks, the body of AR5 sees persistent contrails as responsible for only a very slight increase in radiative forcing (where solar energy is radiated back into space).
Overall, the IPCC has “medium confidence” that these persistent contrails and their induced cirrus clouds do not change surface temperatures on the planet. This contradicts what scientists found during the 3-day grounding of all US planes after 9/11 (except those scooting Saudis out of the country). Ground temperatures increased 2-3 ºC during the absence of contrails, persistent or not.Australian politics has been markedly wild the last few weeks, culminating in Prime Minister Tony Abbott's admission that he broke key election promises. Given how long it's taken for us to get to this point - where to go from here?
Let us not beat around the bush - Abbott is now, well and truly, Australia's George W Bush. But before we delve into the implications of this, we should note that this is hardly a newly apt title.
For one thing, this is not the first promise which Abbott has broken. In a now infamous interview on public television the night before his election, Abbott made a series of promises to voters: "No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the [goods and services tax] and no cuts to [the public broadcasters] ABC and SBS."
In office, Abbott's government cut $80bn earmarked for schools and hospitals, pursued policies which would increase the costs of tertiary education, sought to change pensions, and is now cutting funding to the public broadcasters.
"Politicians make promises," I hear you say, "and they break them. Nothing new".
Not inconsequential
Yes, although these aren't inconsequential or small promises to break. Perhaps more importantly, though (at least in a political sense), is that Abbott ran his 2013 election campaign on trust.
Abbott's opponent in 2013, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (once ousted by his deputy, Julia Gillard) was looked at with suspicion by voters due to the internal turmoil within his party. Further to the theme of trust, when in opposition, Abbott was unwavering in his attack on Gillard's broken promise to not introduce a carbon tax scheme, which she later did.
So Abbott might have dug his own grave, it seems; his popularity has plummeted; several of his proposed cuts have failed or proven intensely difficult to pass through parliament; and even light-hearted breakfast television interviews with jolly holiday decorations in the background don't turn out well. Perhaps this is the story of how the Grinch stole Christmas? If so, what will be the carol that brings the Grinch back with Australians' pensions, education, health, and the rest?
A key feature of Australia's parliamentary system is that it allows for the forced removal of prime ministers - along with anyone else holding public office. This is in stark contrast to the presidential system in the United States, for instance, where no matter how unpopular a current president, only the likes of impeachment have such potential. And while US conservatives might regularly threaten such proceedings against President Barack Obama (should he enact particular executive orders to advance his policies), only three sitting presidents have had articles of impeachment brought before them. Such proceedings are also not designed for removing unpopular presidents, only those who have allegedly committed a crime while in office.
Meanwhile, in Australia, there are two possible ways for removing unpopular leaders, and neither method require them to have allegedly committed an offence.
Potential for change
First, the more likely: As was the case for the leadership spills or "coups" which befell Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard at different times, and caused them to be removed as prime ministers of Australia, it is possible (and probably politically preferable) for their caucus to hold a formal ballot. A simple majority in the caucus decides the matter, and is often prompted by unfavourable polling or dissent among the caucus ranks.
To stay in power, Abbott's party may need to change leader. Whether they do or not, though, the Australian public has already made it clear that the conservative government's significant, proposed cuts were a step too far.
In this case, the potential for change relies upon Abbott's party. While such a change may be beneficial for the party in the short-term, insofar as ridding the negative image of Abbott, it might not be an opportune moment for such a change. Part of what saved Gillard's party from defeat in the 2010 election was her replacing Rudd (who was unpopular at the time) and immediately calling a fresh election, capitalising on the political honeymoon period which followed the leadership swap.
For this reason, Abbott's party may remain strategically patient, waiting to pounce at a more appropriate time. Nevertheless, even if they did decide to change leaders, they don't have many good options - two of the main contenders, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, have been implicated with the harsh budget and Abbott's broken promises.
The second and more controversial way to oust a sitting prime minister is for the governor-general, the Queen's representative in Australia, to dismiss the prime minister, as happened to Gough Whitlam in 1975 - much to his displeasure. Given how bitterly contentious this method became after it was first used against Whitlam, and how many - including, allegedly, the Queen herself - were concerned about its use, it is very unlikely that it would be used again. However, according to Australia's constitution, it remains possible.
International ramifications
To stay in power, Abbott's party may need to change leader. Whether they do or not, though, the Australian public has already made it clear that the conservative government's significant, proposed cuts were a step too far. Accordingly, if the government wishes to remain the government, they will need to move their policies towards the centre of the political spectrum to regain public support.
If, for example, Abbott is replaced by someone like Turnbull, the world could expect a few key changes in how Australia engages in international politics. For one thing, Australia would no longer be a non-contributor to climate change reduction efforts, such as those recently announced by the US and China. Turnbull is a vocal supporter of action on climate change, whereas Abbott is a climate change denier and once described the related science as "crap".
Another possibility is that other prominent moderates could influence change to Australia's asylum seeker policies, which the United Nations have repeatedly condemned for their inhumanity.
When and if these changes eventuate is open to speculation, but what most certainly is not is that Abbott's government has had a bad few weeks and is likely to have a few more. Stay tuned for the carols.
Tom Burns is an Australian writer who studies bioethics and neuroscience. His work has been featured online and in print in Australia and abroad.Union Station’s Madison Street entrance will be closed for repairs and inspections “until further notice,” Metra announced Thursday.
The closure comes days after chunks of concrete fell from the ceiling and struck a commuter on her head, fracturing her skull.
“[The closure] is connected to the inspections that began after [the rocks fell],” said Metra spokesperson Michael Geillis, adding that Amtrak is responsible for the repairs.
Tracks five, seven and nine on the north concourse will remain out of service through Thursday evening, officials said. Customers can use the Adams, Canal or Clinton entrances.
Geillis said Amtrak is responsible for the inspection and repairs.
Amtrak said in a statement the move is "out of an abundance of caution" to "ensure the continued safety of all customers."
"The Madison Street entrance at Chicago Union Station is being temporarily closed so that inspections may continue to verify the integrity of the non-railroad owned structures above the tracks," the statement read. "Amtrak is working as quickly as possible to identify any issues and make repairs so the entrance and all tracks can be reopened. Customers should allow additional time to reach the trains. Customers who normally enter or exit Union Station from Madison Street should use the entrance on Adams Street and should allow additional time to reach the trains."What if we could elect a real, live drug policy reformer to Congress? A candidate who has that background — and unabashedly advocates the legalization of cannabis nationwide — is running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Washington state, and he has an excellent chance to win.
Washington state Rep. Roger Goodman had in February initially announced he would run in the 8th District against Rep. Dave Reichert, a right-wing Republican, but now that Rep. Jay Inslee is vacating his seat in the House to run for Governor, Goodman will be running for that open seat in the reliably liberal 1st District where he lives, the candidate told Toke of the Town in an exclusive interview Friday afternoon.
“My number one priority is planetary health,” Goodman told me. “We need to pay attention to that, and we need to foster justice in our society.
“Cannabis policy reform is actually a part of both of those major issues, and my training as a lawyer, an environmentalist, a former Congressional chief of staff, a state agency director, and now as a legislator and reformer for years, qualifies me not just on cannabis reform but on qualify of life issues and on true progressive leadership,” he said.
“Drug policy so strategically connects to other policies, and people don’t realize it,” Goodman said. “Safe streets, good education, reasonable taxes…
”Nationwide, about 7 or 8 billion dollars is spent just on marijuana enforcement,” he told me. “That money could certainly be better used. But I don’t stress the savings; I’m really more concerned about public safety, children and families.
“Our marijuana policies allow illegal markets to deliver an unregulated product, and that’s just not safe, for patients or for anyone else who might want to use it,” Goodman said. “My primary concern is public safety, health care, and wellness.
“And yes, let’s make some money from this,” Goodman said. “Let’s tax it and use some of that money for health care.”
Roger’s Got A Killer Resumé
Rep. Goodman isn’t just frontin’ when he talks about drug policy reform. The man served as the executive director of the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission in the late |
outside the Chrome Web Store you should migrate them to the Chrome Web Store as soon as possible."Jordan Smith was Vancouver Whitecaps’ only new squad addition during the recent summer transfer window.
While their MLS rivals splashed the cash and brought in a variety of big name stars of various ages, Carl Robinson continued his more measured approach of adding young talent to his group, in the shape of 24-year-old Costa Rican right back Smith.
Smith comes to Vancouver on loan from Costa Rica’s Primera División side Deportivo Saprissa until the end of the year, with the option to buy or extend the loan deal.
A Costa Rican international at both youth and senior level, it’s fair to say that the right back comes to the Whitecaps, and to MLS, as something of another unknown quantity unearthed by Robinson’s scouting network.
We got our first look at Smith at training on Tuesday and what a first look it was.
He was only on the pitch for an hour, but it was a very impressive hour. Sure, you can’t read too much into what happens on the training pitch, but first impressions are that the Whitecaps may have unearthed another Costa Rican gem to follow in the footsteps of fellow Tico Kendall Waston. And we’ve all seen what a major impact he’s made in the league.
Playing alongside Waston, Christian Dean and Sam Adekugbe in the backline for some scrimmages, the 6″1′ Smith cut an imposing figure. Calm, quick, athletic and one hell of a tackler.
His tackles were fierce, but controlled and precise, including two top drawer ones that picked the ball cleanly away from Octavio Rivero and Kekuta Manneh.
On top of that, he hit a golazo of a strike from 30 yards out that took a wicked swerve in midair and beat Paolo Tornaghi all ends up. Robinson described it as a “rocket” and was happy with what he saw from Smith in his first training session as a Whitecaps and felt it was a good indication of just what the right back can bring to his squad.
“We only did a bit of light stuff with Jordan today,” Robinson told reporters after Tuesday’s training session. “You see the size of him. He’s a big boy. He’s athletic, he’s very comfortable on the ball, which I knew, and obviously he scores a couple of goals as well. It’s nice to have him in the group. It’ll provide a little bit of competition in the right back area for us and keep Beita on his toes.”
Music to our ears, as ones who don’t feel Steven Beitashour is giving the ‘Caps what they need in that position, but who has no real challenger to his starting spot. But that’s for another time.
Smith spent five seasons with Saprissa, playing alongside Waston the last couple of years. It’s a pairing that Robinson will hope will see them rekindle a spark and understanding for the Whitecaps.
Waston is delighted to have his countryman in town and has already been pivotal in helping Smith settle in to his new surroundings.
“I played a long time with Kendall in Saprissa there and also played with national team as well,” Smith told reporters through a translator (He understands English but is more comfortable answering in Spanish for now). “He’s been great. He’s a great resource. He’s helped me. Showed me the city, showed me around the stadium, took me around to his house, so it’s really nice to have that familiarity once you step into a new environment.”
So how did the new arrival find his first training session with his new club?
“It’s been great,” Smith added. “It was a short training session but it was really good. I’m glad I was able to get in here. It’s nice. Seems like everybody is part of a big family here, so I’m just waiting to continue going.”
If he’s going to go in with those hard tackles and bang in some impressive goals, he’s going to fit in just fine. With nine goals in 105 regular season appearances for Saprissa, has he hit one as good as that first training goal?
“In Costa Rica I have goals like this,” he laughed. “Two or three. I’m happy with this one.”
Smith joined up with his new teammates for the first time in Kansas City on Saturday and took in the dramatic 4-3 loss at Sporting Park. It was certainly some introduction to his new club and his new league.
“It was a great game,” Smith said. “The first half was really great. The team came out flying with a two goal lead, then in the second half, we all know what happened. It was an unfortunate result but we turn the page and we look forward to Saturday. We’ve got a big game against Dallas and that’s all that matters right now.”
Yup, settling in just fine already.
As we’ve talked about many times before, Major League Soccer and Latino players seem to be a very good fit and although this will be Smith’s first time playing in domestic games in the US and Canada, he is familiar with MLS from what he’s seen on TV back home. And when he got the chance to come and play in a league alongside the likes of Kaka, Pirlo, Lampard and Gerrard, he jumped at the chance.
“In Costa Rica, we all watch football,” Smith said. “We watch football from Mexico, from Spain, from MLS. Here in the league there’s a lot of bigger players coming over from Europe. It’s just an opportunity to grow. Once the opportunity came, it was one of those things that I didn’t have to think too much about it. It was a good opportunity.”
Smith was originally lined up to come to Vancouver during the offseason, but a number of factors, including the chance to free up a roster spot by shipping Erik Hurtado off to Norway on loan, contributed to let Robinson pull the trigger on the deal a bit earlier.
“I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to get Jordan,” Robinson admits. “I know there was a little bit of interest in him between now and maybe January. The idea was to bring him in in January and have him on board then.
“But ala Kendall last year, we brought him in a little bit earlier and we get to look at him between now and the end of the year, and hopefully kick on next year as well. He brings a competitive edge to that back line for us.”
Smith will take up an international spot when he is officially added to the roster, which he hasn’t been as of yet. The Whitecaps don’t have any currently available, but Robinson confirmed to AFTN last week, that won’t be an issue when the time comes, which will be at some stage this week.
So could Smith be available to play either this week in MLS action against Dallas or midweek in the Canadian Championship clash with Montreal?
“He could be, yeah,” Robinson said. “Whether he will is another question. I’ve got 23 guys there and they’re all desperate to play in this next big game for us. He could be available. We’ll just wait and see.”
For Smith himself, he’s already just itching to get out on the pitch when the time comes.
“I’m ready to go,” he said. “It’s up to the coach to let me know when it’s my opportunity and then once I get that opportunity, make the most of it.”
First impressions matter and on the evidence of ours, you get the feeling that he’ll be doing just that.In a direct message conversation on Twitter published by Donald Trump Jr. between himself and WikiLeaks — the publisher linked him to a website with a header that now states, “My Name Was Seth Rich.”
“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks said in the conversation, directing to the president’s son to the link “wlsearch.tk.”
Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/SiwTqWtykA — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017
Trending: Conservative Journalist Jacob Engels Suspended On Twitter For Calling Out Radical Islam
At the time of the messages, the site served as a search tool to dig through the WikiLeaks archives. Now, when you click on the side menu, the only option is a category titled “Seth Rich.” The link takes users to a page that reads, “You finally found me! I’m the source of the John Podesta/DNC Email hacks. I’ve been waiting so long for you to join me.”
The message makes it clear that the site has been edited since the conversation by referring to the exchange with Trump Jr. It is unclear if the site was hacked, re-registered or if it was deliberately edited by someone associated with WikiLeaks.
“Thanks to Wikileaks and Trump Jr you’ll all soon know why Hillary Clinton and John Podesta had me killed,” the website reads. “As you can see I’m no Russian agent. I was just a proud DNC staffer who believed in the system until I found out Hillary Clinton and the DNC rigged the primaries against my candidate Bernie Sanders. That’s when I decided to take action and release these emails to Wikileaks.”
The home page continues on to assert that “John Podesta was determined to make an example out of me and had me taken care of. Why did you think they didn’t let the FBI examine the DNC servers? Yep, those servers would have lead them straight to me. John couldn’t let that happen.”
The website continues on to claim that Podesta is a pedophile.
“Thanks again Wikileaks for upping my reward to solve my murder. I wonder why you’d do that for me? Oh, you are trying to tell the world I was your source. Whoops cat’s outta the bag now,” the page concludes.
A WHOIS search shows that the website is currently registered to a domain mill called the Freedom Company. When contacted by Big League Politics and asked if they post content on the websites they have registered to them, they explained that they only provide free domains.
The.tk country code stands for Tokelau — a tiny island of about 1,300 people in the Pacific Ocean. People in the nation were unaware of the internet and their right to a country code until Joost Zuurbier of Amsterdam found them and explained so that he could eventually launch the Freedom Registry. Tokelau receives a cut of the Freedom Registry’s earnings which now makes up one-sixth of their economy.
“Freedom Registry makes money through ads on expired domains. Zuurbier says registration and renewal are free for users, but when they abandon the site or don’t meet the minimum requirements of 25 unique visitors every 90 days, the domain gets ‘parked.’ That means the URL still exists, but the content is replaced with ads tailored to the original site,” CNN reported of the service.
The first mention of the website that is still currently available on Twitter was from October 12, 2016 — by WikiLeaks. The tweet came nine days after the link was sent to Trump Jr. The website is also currently copyrighted 2016.
WikiLeaks made headlines in 2016 when they offered a $20,000 reward for information on the murderer of the slain DNC staffer. The website’s founder Julian Assange also mentioned Rich during an appearance on Dutch television.
“Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often significant risks. There was a 27-year old that works for the DNC who was shot in the back… murdered.. for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington,” Assange said during an interview with Dutch TV last year. When asked by the host if he would suggest that Rich was involved, he stated that “we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources face serious risks… that’s why they come to us so we can protect their anonymity.”
Additionally, as Kim Dotcom began to assert that he knows for a fact that Rich was the leaker, Assange sent out an ominous tweet using the hashtag #SethRich. He asserted that while he would never name a leaker, sometimes others may.
WikiLeaks has never disclosed a source. Sources sometimes talk to other parties but identities never emerge from WikiLeaks. #SethRich — Assange Defence (@AssangeDefence) May 22, 2017
Rich was shot in the back in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016, near his home while he was on the phone with his girlfriend — 12 days before the publication of the DNC emails by the controversial publisher. The police initially ruled that it was a botched robbery — but his wallet, watch, and necklace were still on his person when he was discovered by police.
Big League Politics has reached out to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for comment and will update this story if more information becomes available.WASHINGTON– College students were among the crowd of over 1,000 attendees at Friday’s Road to Majority conference, a weekend-long event that was sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump headlined the event at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, prompting many supporters to sport their red “Make America Great Again” hats, as well as their Trump-themed graphic T-shirts.
“I’m going to do everything in my power to see he’s elected,” Matthew Morris Jr. says.
The engineering student from The University of Maryland says he supports Trump even though he “gets some dirty looks” on campus.
Brian Mulligan, who also studies mechanical engineering at The University of Maryland, says his grandpa, who was a veteran, would have voted for Trump if he were here today.
“I always like to live like the way my grandpa liked to live,” Mulligan says. “We need to get our fight back.”
Echoing Trump’s belief that America should not accept any more incoming refugees, Mulligan says Americans “need to make sure we take care of our own people” before accepting more refugees.
Hunter Estes who studies international politics at Georgetown University says he has “personally grappled” with the idea of allowing refugees to come to the United States.
“The most Christian thing to do is not to bring the country in because you’re not addressing the problem.”
At first, Estes was hesitant to support Trump, but says he believes the candidate is transitioning and “hopefully speaking more eloquently” after Trump’s “2 Corinthians” mispronunciation.
“I was worried when he came out in the beginning and said he’s never asked for forgiveness,” Estes says.
Last year, during a Q&A at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump told moderator Frank Luntz that he hasn’t asked God for forgiveness, but that he – instead — tries to “make it right.”
This week, Trump clarified that statement, adding that he hopes he does not have to ask for “much forgiveness.”
Estes says that he now feels Trump is now starting to understand how to reach an evangelical audience.
But not all college students in attendance had positive feelings toward the candidate and his “hateful” rhetoric. Some protesters interrupted Trump during his speech chanting, “Stop hate. Stop Trump.” The crowd responded by chanting “Trump” and “USA,” booing the protesters as they were escorted away by security.
“We think it’s horrifying he could end up in our White House,” Rebecca Green, a sociology student at Northeastern University tells Accuracy in Media.
After Trump finished his speech, protesters from Code Pink, a women-initiated movement, gathered outside, waving signs that read “Thou shalt not be a misogynist” and “Islamophobia is un-American.”
Alli McCracken, who studied political science and religious studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, says she is “sick of choosing between the lesser of two evils” and that she is “deeply worried about the rhetoric that’s spewed by Donald Trump.”
Aniqa Raihan who studies international relations at George Washington University also stood outside to protest with Code Pink and says she “is not going to sit around” during this election.
“Who has he not offended?,” she asks. Raihan says she and the others want to “disrupt these damaging narratives” crafted by Trump.
“We need to build bridges instead of walls,” Raihan says.Consumer protection agencies are getting worried about cryptocurrencies. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an investor alert today warning about the risks of investing in bitcoin and other virtual currencies such as Peercoin, Dogecoin, and Minacoin.
This is actually the SEC's second cryptocurrency-related alert. The first was issued last summer after the agency prosecuted a man for running a pyramid scheme in the virtual currency. Meanwhile, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) recently issued a similar alert, while the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) added virtual currencies to its list of top 10 investor threats for 2013.
The SEC issues investor alerts a few times a year about popular schemes that cause people to part with their money. "A new product, technology, or innovation – such as bitcoin – has the potential to give rise both to frauds and high-risk investment opportunities," the agency says. "Potential investors can be easily enticed with the promise of high returns in a new investment space and also may be less skeptical when assessing something novel, new and cutting-edge."
"Potential investors can be easily enticed with the promise of high returns."
There are a few reasons why virtual currencies are especially risky, the SEC says. Most cryptocurrencies have irreversible transactions, which can make it more difficult to recover money. The services that function as banks for virtual currencies are also not required to have insurance. Meanwhile, fraudsters have identified the virtual currency community as a ripe target.
The SEC also notes that bitcoin and other currencies are very volatile, vulnerable to hackers, and may be restricted by governments. "As a recent invention, Bitcoin does not have an established track record of credibility and trust," the agency says.
There is no shortage of horror stories about people who have lost money investing in bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The recent closure of the Japan-based Mt Gox exchange resulted in frozen accounts with no guarantee of reimbursement. Even the lovable Dogecoin has been hacked, although people recovered their money thanks to donations. As the SEC says, do your research before handing over your money. Even if someone promises you a 32,000-fold return.Before & After Photos Prove The US Is Funding A War On Human Rights In Syria
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The images of Syria before and after the U.S. intervened with its “freedom and democracy” serve as reminder that it’s time to end the “War on Terror.”
The United States’ intervention in Syria has been fueled by the notion that the U.S. must save the Syrian people from the oppressive government under Bashar al-Assad. As the war wages on, Americans should be asking the question: Has U.S. intervention helped the human rights of the Syrian people, or has it turned Syria into yet another case of failed regime change sponsored by American taxpayers?
Aleppo has become known as one of the most infamous war-torn cities in Syria, since the United States began funding the rise of the “Free Syrian Army” in 2011. Former President Obama pushed for the action at the time, insisting that it was the only way to fight back against Assad’s regime.
When it was time put the United States’ mission to arm and train prominent groups of Syrian rebels on the backburner, the public focus shifted towards fighting the newly trained and funded “Islamic State of Iraq & Syria.” The U.S. was joined by a coalition that included Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in 2014.
The following photos show Aleppo’s historic citadel from Aug. 28, 2008 to Dec. 13, 2016.
In March, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that in the six years since the start of Syria’s civil war, nearly half a million people have been killed or have gone missing.
The Observatory claimed that more than 321,000 were killed, and more than 145,000 people have been reported as missing, including 96,000 women and children.
The latest reports out of Aleppo claim that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces “blocked the water from the Euphrates Dam that feeds into the Khafsa Pumps, halting the supply to people of Aleppo City,”which has “obstructed water to over 1 million residents of Aleppo City.”
One of the most impactful images from Aleppo depicts the quality of life of the women in the city. The following images show the transformation of Syrian women in Aleppo in 1968, to Syrian women in ISIS-occupied Aleppo in 2016.
As the U.S. warns of a possible chemical attack on behalf of Assad’s government, it should be noted that the U.S. is blatantly ignoring the role it has played in the deterioration of what was once a sovereign nation.
In addition to blaming the Syrian government for an alleged chemical attack with no investigation and no proof in April, the U.S. has ramped up its bombing campaign, and has killed nearly 500 Syrian civilians in the last month.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.Here’s today’s Final Jeopardy (in the category Comic Books) for Thursday, September 21, 2017:
Told to create a character called this, Len Wein learned the real animal is short, hairy & will attack an enemy 10 times its size
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Diane Esemplare, an engineer from Riverdale, New Jersey
Thom Page, an OB/GYN doctor from Auburn, Maine
Betsy Knudson, an attorney from Salt Lake City, Utah (2-day total: $38,601)
Today’s contestants:
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Click/Tap Here for Final Jeopardy! Correct Response/Question What is Wolverine? [collapse]
Tragically, Len will not get to see this Final Jeopardy! clue; he passed away on September 10; he was 69 years old. His obituary appeared in the New York Times.. His most famous creations include both Wolverine and Swamp Thing.
Tributes came pouring in from far and wide. Hugh Jackman, in a tweet, said “from his heart, mind & hands came the greatest character in comics”.
Blessed to have known Len Wein. I first met him in 2008. I told him – from his heart, mind & hands came the greatest character in comics. pic.twitter.com/cFqL1uy0JV — Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) September 11, 2017
Outside of the world of comic books, Len Wein holds special significance to a number of my friends and a number of members of the Jeopardy! family. He was the husband of Christine Valada, who won four games back in October of 2009 and also reached the Tournament of Champions. Also into trivia himself, he was a member of LearnedLeague for almost four years and even played as best as he could through the health problems that would end up taking his life.
On his introduction in 1974, Wolverine was introduced as a small-statured superhuman agent of the Canadian government. He eventually became popular as a member of the X-Men, and ended up getting his own comic series in 1988.
Remember, you can also now get the following products (and others!) from our new store! Here are our top sellers; all prices are in US dollars!Contestant photo credit: jeopardy.com
When commenting, please note that all comments on The Jeopardy! Fan must be in compliance with the Site Comment Policy.Supersets, or performing sets of two different exercises back to back, could be the oldest of strength training techniques. Unfortunately, they also hold the dubious honor of being among the most frequently misunderstood and misapplied methods, right next to partial reps, cheat reps, and the "it's all you bro" forced rep extravaganza.
In the case of supersets, overzealous trainees often slap together arbitrary exercises in an attempt to make their workout more "intense," thereby rendering the supersets – and the workout – largely ineffective beyond simply tiring them out. Oh, for shame.
To that end, here are my thoughts on how to properly design and use supersets in your training.
The Classic Approach
The classic superset approach is the basic antagonistic superset. Do a set of biceps curls and then hit the triceps pressdown with no rest in between. Or bench press for 10, followed by some seated rows. It works – you get the heart rate up while promoting a little "balance" in your training. Not atom-splitting complexity, but decent. Yet not perfect.
The problem with the classic approach is that it tends to overlook issues like pre-fatigue, reciprocal inhibitions, and spine health. If you're a guy with any muscular or structural imbalances (I bet you are, since I haven't met one who wasn't), this stuff can only lead to more problems down the road. Let's look at these issues.
Pre Fatigue
The most common area that falls victim to pre-fatigue is the core, namely the abs and low back. One can argue that there are very few "good" movements the core isn't at least indirectly involved in. They act as huge players in many exercises, and their responsiveness and strength should always be piqued when preparing for big movements.
To that end, we'd be well served to assess our movement selections to determine whether we're just asking for injuries by supersetting the wrong movements together.
Sample Bad Pre-Fatigue Superset
A1. Barbell Front Squat (or Back Squat)
A2. Ab Wheel Rollout
I see this superset (or ones like it) a lot: a core isolation exercise paired with a big movement like squats, deadlifts, or standing press. However, doing Swiss ball rollouts, suspended fallouts, or hanging leg raises does nothing but decrease your potential core strength. Remember, exercise breaks muscle tissue down – we want to avoid doing so when it's most inconvenient within our workout.
Superior Alternative
Instead of thinking exercises, it would be wise to think of "weak links." So rather than pre-fatiguing muscles that could act as contributors to the movement, wouldn't it make more sense to target muscles that tend to get "loose" during movements to keep them primed? The end result would assist, not hamper, the big movement in the superset.
A good example is the scapular tissue. In the barbell squat, the lifter's back often can't stay as tight as desired. A wise move would be to work on momentarily decreasing the ROM of the scapular muscles by doing a few reps to get them tighter. This way, their shortened range will make for a more effective squat, since the chest will be able to stay higher for a greater portion of the set.
Antagonists Revisited
Antagonistic supersets are tricky. Many lifters and coaches make the mistake of just thinking of one side of the body versus the other. for example, chest to back, quads to hamstrings, biceps to triceps, etc. Sometimes, however, training a muscle that's opposite another can create a strain that can add to the stress of another group or joint.
Sample Bad Antagonistic Superset
A1. Bent Over Row, T-Bar Row, Deadlift, or other exercise that's demanding on the low back
A2. Walking Lunge, Split Squat, Squat, or other exercise that's demanding on the quads
While each of the A2 exercises hit the "posterior chain" to some degree, they also all hammer the snot out of the quads. Because of this, the hip flexors and rectus femoris can decrease in ROM and cause forward momentum, creating an anterior pelvic tilt.
It's even worse if you already have a quad-dominant muscular imbalance. Here, adding exercises where you need to maintain constant low back extension can make for considerable trauma to the vertebral segments of the low back. It's important to think about what effect each individual exercise in the superset has on the skeleton.
Superior Alternative
A good alternative would be to change the plane of motion. A floor press would be ideal to alleviate back stress from the pulling movements mentioned above. This would also be a suitable time to incorporate a hamstring curl, as the muscles of the hamstrings contract in a direction opposite the low back. This will allow the pelvis to be neutralized once more if we get tighten it.
Some Good Stuff
Here are a few take home points to consider when it comes to selecting proper supersets:
Spine Health: Compression Versus Decompression
Spinal segments can get compressed quite easily. Barbell squats, standing presses, deadlifts, etc., all create a lot of force on the spine. This, in turn, can contribute to limited blood flow through the spinal column, lowered electrical stimulus to muscles, and even injuries like herniated discs.
So when choosing a superset, deciding pull versus push is only half the battle as both the pulling and pushing exercises could be compressing the vertebrae.
Some Compressional Movements Some Decompression Movements Squat (All Variations) Pull Up Deadlift Pulldown Bent-over Row Dip (Parallel Bars) Standing Press Hanging Leg Raise Sit Up Cable Pullover/Stiff-Arm Pulldown Loaded Carry Reverse Hyper Jump Hamstring Curl
From a health perspective, anything on the left side of this list can be supersetted with anything on the right side as a means to handle spinal compression issues. Muscular fatigue aside, your spine will thank you.
Recruitment Patterns
The order in which you choose your supersets matters as well. We could be accomplishing the opposite of what we really want if we perform the wrong exercise first. The goal is to find ways to make our muscles work together for a desired outcome, not work against each other at the expense of our joints and connective tissue.
Here's an example. A "chest and back" workout is a classic upper body superset. With exception to the compression stuff mentioned previously, I recommend doing pulling exercises before pushing exercises, especially with back and chest.
A simple set of rows or rear flies can go a long way towards helping the scapular muscles contract and stabilize the shoulder capsule. This also helps lengthen the pec minor (and major), which assists with maintaining proper posture. Skipping this simple advice can lead to a faulty recruitment pattern or exacerbate a muscle imbalance.
When you're about to do a lower body superset, it's wise to consider the correct firing pattern of the muscles of the posterior chain. Ideally, in a walking or running stride, biomechanics dictate that the glutes fire first, the hamstrings second, and the low back third.
That would make it smart to do a posterior chain-dominant exercise first (like a deadlift, Romanian deadlift, or reverse hyper) before a quad dominant exercise (like a leg extension, hack squat, or leg press). Doing them the other way around encourages the issues mentioned earlier, i.e., the hips shortening, giving them control of the pelvis. That can create overarch and compensatory issues in the posterior chain's firing ability.
Miscellany
Some random things to make life easier when applying supersets:
Remember the difference between a superset and a compound set. Compound sets involve back to back exercises for the same muscle group.
and a set. Avoid pairing two exercises that require you to make a fist the whole time. It's much harder to superset two exercises that involve pulling (like a hanging leg raise and a seated row), than it is a pairing where your grip catches a break (such as a row and a press). It'll make for better quality sets in the long run.
Avoid pairing lengthy movements like farmer's walks or Turkish getups with other big movements. The cumulative effect of the energy output will be too great, resulting in either compensating your form and technique or lowering the weight, resulting in a diminished training effect.
A Sample Workout Week
Putting all this into practice, a workout week could look something like this:
Day 1 – Vertical Push/Pull
Exercise Sets Reps A1 Barbell Back Squat 4 10 A2 Chin-Up or Lat Pulldown 4 10 B1 Standing Barbell or Dumbbell Press 4 10 B2 Hanging Leg Raise 4 8 * C1 Romanian Deadlift 3 8 C2 Dip (Parallel Bars) 3 10
* slow eccentric
Day 2 – Horizontal Push/Pull
Exercise Sets Reps A1 Seated Mid-Grip Row (Underhand Grip) 4 12 A2 Barbell Flat Bench Press 4 10 B1 Glute Hamstring Raise
or
Reverse Hyperextension 4 8
12 B2 Leg Press 4 12 C1 Face Pull 3 12 C2 Suspended Fallout 3 10
Day 3 – Vertical Push/Pull
Exercise Sets Reps A1 Trap-3 Raise 4 12 A2 Barbell Deadlift 4 10 B1 Barbell Z-Press 4 6 B2 Lat Pulldown 4 10 C1 Rear-Leg Elevated Split Squat (Bar on Back) 4 8 * C2 Suicide Push-Up Feet elevated, hips high, forming pike position 4 12 D Goblet Squat 2 * *
* per leg
* * max reps with heavy dumbbell
A sound method would be to hit this program every other day. Add two interval training sessions per week and one recovery day. While not a suitable program for size training, it's an ass-kicker in building general conditioning and stripping body fat.
It's Not That Complicated
The big point here is to use supersets intelligently – to encourage the muscles to do the right thing by using one movement to assist the other.
In other words, the key is to train smart. Thinking about the way your body works as a unit is quintessential to putting it through a proper workout.
So if you're a guy who has good technique but still gets joint stress and chronic pain, the answer may lie in the way you decide to combine your exercises. Put this info to good use, and you'll tap into your muscles' potential – your body will thank you for it.The booming, broken `New York of Nigeria'
Lagos is a fast-growing city of exhilaration, rage, frustration and boredom -- beloved by those who live there.
"Lagos is like the New York of Nigeria," he says. "It's a jungle where a lot of things can happen. Things that don't happen anywhere will happen in Lagos: the unexpected."
Like many Lagosians, Immortal appears nonplused if you ask him what he loves about the raucous mega-city he calls home. He has a passion for Lagos, yet seems wary of questions, in case they're not kindly meant.
"I just come here to relax," says Immortal Emenike, 40, from his unexpected haven in Trinity Cemetery in Olodi Apapa neighborhood. "I like the serenity, the fresh air. It's very hard to find in Lagos." Nearby, a goat named Sikira nibbles on the vegetation. Outside is a wall of sound: buzzing motorcycles, car horns and traffic.
His name is Immortal, and he sells life insurance. He says he is waiting for an angel.
LAGOS, NIGERIA — Away from the noise and hustle and stink, the shriek of energy, the never-ending buzz that is Lagos, a man reclines on a gravestone, serenely reading a book.
Lagos is one of the planet's fastest-growing mega-cities, with people drawn not only from rural Nigeria but also from all over West Africa to hack out a living. Depending on your point of view, it's either a center of irrepressible entrepreneurialism or a nightmarish city of unplanned chaos, a cautionary tale on what not to do.
No one is sure whether the population is 9 million, as last year's house-to-house census claimed; 16 million, as estimated by the U.N. Population Fund; or 17 million, as the Lagos state government insists. The United Nations agency has predicted that Lagos will be the world's third most-populous city by 2015, with 23 million people.
It's not a place for the fainthearted. From the first wallop of steamy air on alighting from a plane, Lagos is a plunge pool of intense exhilaration, jumbled with measures of shock, frustration, rage and boredom.
Despite poverty, intractable social problems, mind-boggling corruption and dire failures of planning and infrastructure, "I think this total doomsday scenario that Lagos is going to be this total Dickensian horror place is not right either," says Daniel J. Smith, a demographic anthropologist at Brown University. "Nigerians have lived with the failure of their government to provide leadership and infrastructure for a long time, and so they have adapted all these ways to make things work.
"There's this incredible ethic and tradition of entrepreneurship, and maybe that's related to living in a place where you can't count on the government to provide services and amenities."
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has argued that the mega-cities of the future will look like Lagos: chaotic and spontaneous with planning solutions improvised on the run rather than following some master plan.
Even arriving can be a shock. "Lagos airport? In a word, don't," cautions the Lonely Planet Bluelist of destinations to avoid at all costs.
Borne downward on the airport arrival hall escalator, international visitors arriving for the presidential inauguration at the end of May found themselves trapped, with a solid crowd bottlenecked at the bottom. They crashed into a wall of backs, tripped, stumbled, even leaped over the sides, literally falling into Lagos with a thunk.
Then there's the metal jigsaw of rickety trolleys pressed around the baggage carousels and sometimes a wait of hours to collect as huge bags of traders' goods are unloaded.
Outside, license plates proclaim that you've arrived in "Lagos: Center of Excellence."
The jostling thoroughfares are much more than mere arteries for the choking traffic. The roadside is an open-air market, a car sales yard, a photo studio; a truck depot, pool hall, butcher's; a lumber yard, an office, a sheep yard; a place to hang laundry on the highway sidings, or to nap on any available surface.Terminal power users already know that a log of all the commands you execute are kept in history. (Go ahead, type history to see them.) Last week we saw that you can sudo your previous command using the!! (bang-bang) notation. Well, you can also search your command history as you type using the very useful Ctrl+R key combination.
Sudo!! the previous command Click to view Our latest featured reader screencast comes in from Dana, a system administrator who … Read more Read
Give it a try: in the terminal, hold down Ctrl and press R to invoke "reverse-i-search." Type a |
horse even though no horse has wings, so I can attach existence to God in my thought even if no God exists.
This involves false reasoning. From the fact that I can’t think of a river without banks, it does not follow that a river with banks exists anywhere, but simply that river and banks – whether or not there are any in reality – are inseparable. On the other hand, from the fact that I can’t think of God except as existing it follows that God and existence are inseparable, which is to say that God really exists. My thought doesn’t make it so; it doesn’t create necessities. The influence runs the opposite way: the necessity of the thing constrains how I can think, depriving me of the freedom to think of God without existence (that is, a supremely perfect being without a supreme perfection), like my freedom to imagine a horse with or without wings.
Nor must it be alleged here as an objection, that it is in truth necessary to admit that God exists, after having supposed him to possess all perfections, since existence is one of them, but that my original supposition was not necessary; just as it is not necessary to think that all quadrilateral figures can be inscribed in the circle, since, if I supposed this, I should be constrained to admit that the rhombus, being a figure of four sides, can be therein inscribed, which, however, is manifestly false. This objection is, I say, incompetent; for although it may not be necessary that I shall at any time entertain the notion of Deity, yet each time I happen to think of a first and sovereign being, and to draw, so to speak, the idea of him from the storehouse of the mind, I am necessitated to attribute to him all kinds of perfections, though I may not then enumerate them all, nor think of each of them in particular. And this necessity is sufficient, as soon as I discover that existence is a perfection, to cause me to infer the existence of this first and sovereign being; just as it is not necessary that I should ever imagine any triangle, but whenever I am desirous of considering a rectilinear figure composed of only three angles, it is absolutely necessary to attribute those properties to it from which it is correctly inferred that its three angles are not greater than two right angles, although perhaps I may not then advert to this relation in particular. But when I consider what figures are capable of being inscribed in the circle, it is by no means necessary to hold that all quadrilateral figures are of this number; on the contrary, I cannot even imagine such to be the case, so long as I shall be unwilling to accept in thought aught that I do not clearly and distinctly conceive; and consequently there is a vast difference between false suppositions, as is the one in question, and the true ideas that were born with me, the first and chief of which is the idea of God. For indeed I discern on many grounds that this idea is not factitious depending simply on my thought, but that it is the representation of a true and immutable nature: in the first place because I can conceive no other being, except God, to whose essence existence [necessarily] pertains; in the second, because it is impossible to conceive two or more gods of this kind; and it being supposed that one such God exists, I clearly see that he must have existed from all eternity, and will exist to all eternity; and finally, because I apprehend many other properties in God, none of which I can either diminish or change.
But, indeed, whatever mode of probation I in the end adopt, it always returns to this, that it is only the things I clearly and distinctly conceive which have the power of completely persuading me. And although, of the objects I conceive in this manner, some, indeed, are obvious to every one, while others are only discovered after close and careful investigation; nevertheless after they are once discovered, the latter are not esteemed less certain than the former. Thus, for example, to take the case of a right-angled triangle, although it is not so manifest at first that the square of the base is equal to the squares of the other two sides, as that the base is opposite to the greatest angle; nevertheless, after it is once apprehended. we are as firmly persuaded of the truth of the former as of the latter. And, with respect to God if I were not pre-occupied by prejudices, and my thought beset on all sides by the continual presence of the images of sensible objects, I should know nothing sooner or more easily then the fact of his being. For is there any truth more clear than the existence of a Supreme Being, or of God, seeing it is to his essence alone that [necessary and eternal] existence pertains?
And although the right conception of this truth has cost me much close thinking, nevertheless at present I feel not only as assured of it as of what I deem most certain, but I remark further that the certitude of all other truths is so absolutely dependent on it that without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything perfectly.]
For although I am of such a nature as to be unable, while I possess a very clear and distinct apprehension of a matter, to resist the conviction of its truth, yet because my constitution is also such as to incapacitate me from keeping my mind continually fixed on the same object and as I frequently recollect a past judgment without at the same time being able to recall the grounds of it, it may happen meanwhile that other reasons are presented to me which would readily cause me to change my opinion, if I did not know that God existed; and thus I should possess no true and certain knowledge, but merely vague and vacillating opinions. Thus, for example, when r consider the nature of the [rectilinear] triangle, it most clearly appears to me, who have been instructed in the principles of geometry, that its three angles are equal to two right angles, and I find it impossible to believe otherwise, while I apply my mind to the demonstration; but as soon as I cease from attending to the process of proof, although I still remember that I had a clear comprehension of it, yet I may readily come to doubt of the truth demonstrated, if I do not know that there is a God: for I may persuade myself that I have been so constituted by nature as to be sometimes deceived, even in matters which I think I apprehend with the greatest evidence and certitude, especially when I recollect that I frequently considered many things to be true and certain which other reasons afterward constrained me to reckon as wholly false.
But after I have discovered that God exists, seeing I also at the same time observed that all things depend on him, and that he is no deceiver, and thence inferred that all which I clearly and distinctly perceive is of necessity true: although I no longer attend to the grounds of a judgment, no opposite reason can be alleged sufficient to lead me to doubt of its truth, provided only I remember that 1 once possessed a clear and distinct comprehension of it. My knowledge of it thus becomes true and certain. And this same knowledge extends likewise to whatever I remember to have formerly demonstrated, as the truths of geometry and the like: for what can be alleged against them to lead me to doubt of them? Will it be that my nature is such that I may be frequently deceived? But I already know that I cannot be deceived in judgments of the grounds of which I possess a clear knowledge. Will it be that I formerly deemed things to be true and certain which I afterward discovered to be false? But I had no clear and distinct knowledge of any of those things, and, being as yet ignorant of the rule by which I am assured of the truth of a judgment, I was led to give my assent to them on grounds which I afterward discovered were less strong than at the time I imagined them to be. What further objection, then, is there? Will it be said that perhaps I am dreaming (an objection I lately myself raised), or that all the thoughts of which I am now conscious have no more truth than the reveries of my dreams? But although, in truth, I should be dreaming, the rule still holds that all which is clearly presented to my intellect is indisputably true.
Thus I see plainly that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends strictly on my awareness of the true God. So much so that until I became aware of him I couldn’t perfectly know anything. Now I can achieve full and certain knowledge of countless matters, both concerning God himself and other things whose nature is intellectual, and also concerning the whole of that corporeal nature that is the subject-matter of pure mathematics.
SIXTH MEDITATION: The existence of material things, and the real distinction between mind and body
The remaining task is to consider whether material things exist. Insofar as they are the subject matter of pure mathematics, I perceive them clearly and distinctly; so I at least know that they could exist, because anything that I perceive in that way could be created by God.
(The only reason I have ever accepted for thinking that something could not be made by him is that there would be a contradiction in my perceiving it distinctly.) My faculty of imagination, which I am aware of using when I turn my mind to material things, also suggests that they really exist. For when I think harder about what imagination is, it seems to be simply an application of the faculty of knowing to a body that is intimately present to it – and that has to be a body that exists.
To make this clear, I will first examine how imagination differs from pure understanding.
When I imagine a triangle, for example, I don’t merely understand that it is a three-sided figure, but I also see the three lines with my mind’s eye as if they were present to me; that is what imagining is. But if I think of a chiliagon, although I understand quite well that it is a figure with a thousand sides, I don’t imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present to me. When I think of a body, I usually form some kind of image; so in thinking of a chiliagon I may construct in my mind – strictly speaking, in my imagination – a confused representation of some figure. But obviously it won’t be a chiliagon, for it is the very same image that I would form if I were thinking of, say, a figure with ten thousand sides. So it wouldn’t help me to recognize the properties that distinguish a chiliagon from other many-sided figures. In the case of a pentagon, the situation is different. I can of course understand this figure without the help of the imagination (just as I can understand a chiliagon); but I can also imagine a pentagon, by applying my mind’s eye to its five sides and the area they enclose. This imagining, I find, takes more mental effort than understanding does; and that is enough to show that imagination is different from pure understanding.
Being able to imagine isn’t essential to me, as being able to understand is; for even if I had no power of imagination I would still be the same individual that I am. This seems to imply that my power of imagining depends on something other than myself; and I can easily understand that if there is such a thing as my body – that is, if my mind is joined to a certain body in such a way that it can contemplate that body whenever it wants to – then it might be this very body that enables me to imagine corporeal things. So it may be that imagining differs from pure understanding purely like this: when the mind understands, it somehow turns in on itself and inspects one of its own ideas; but when it imagines, it turns away from itself and looks at something in the body (something that conforms to an idea – either one understood by the mind or one perceived by the senses). I can, I repeat, easily see that this might be how imagination comes about if the body exists; and since I can think of no other equally good way of explaining what imagination is, I can conjecture that the body exists. But this is only a probability. Even after all my careful enquiry I still can’t see how, on the basis of the idea of corporeal nature that I find in my imagination, to prove for sure that some body exists.
As well as the corporeal nature that is the subject-matter of pure mathematics, I am also accustomed to imagining colours, sounds, tastes, pain and so on – though not so distinctly. Now, I perceive these much better by means of the senses, which is how (helped by memory) they appear to have reached the imagination. So in order to deal with them more fully, I must attend to the senses – that is, to the kind of thinking that I call ‘sensory perception’. I want to know whether the things that are perceived through the senses provide me with any sure argument for the existence of bodies.
To begin with, I will (1) go back over everything that I originally took to be perceived by the senses, and reckoned to be true; and I will go over my reasons for thinking this. Next, I will (2) set out my reasons for later doubting these things. Finally, I will (3) consider what I should now believe about them.
(1) First of all then, I perceived by my senses that I had a head, hands, feet and other limbs making up the body that I regarded as part of myself, or perhaps even as my whole self. I also perceived by my senses that this body was situated among many other bodies that could harm or help it; and I detected the favourable effects by a sensation of pleasure and the unfavourable ones by pain. As well as pain and pleasure, I also had sensations of hunger, thirst, and other such appetites, and also of bodily states tending towards cheerfulness, sadness, anger and similar emotions. Outside myself, besides the extension, shapes and movements of bodies, I also had sensations of their hardness and heat, and of the other qualities that can be known by touch. In addition, I had sensations of light, colours, smells, tastes and sounds, and differences amongst these enabled me to sort out the sky, the earth, the seas and other bodies from one another. All I was immediately aware of in each case were my ideas, but it was reasonable for me to think that what I was perceiving through the senses were external bodies that caused the ideas. For I found that these ideas came to me quite without my consent: I couldn’t have that kind of idea of any object, even if I wanted to, if the object was not present to my sense organs; and I couldn’t avoid having the idea when the object was present. Also, since the ideas that came through the senses were much more lively and vivid and sharp than ones that I formed voluntarily when thinking about things, and than ones that I found impressed on my memory, it seemed impossible that sensory ideas were coming from within me; so I had to conclude that they came from external things. My only way of knowing about these things was through the ideas themselves, so it was bound to occur to me that the things might resemble the ideas. In addition, I remembered that I had the use of my senses before I ever had the use of reason; and I saw that the ideas that I formed were, for the most part, made up of elements of sensory ideas. This convinced me that I had nothing at all in my intellect that I had not previously had in sensation. As for the body that by some special right I called ‘mine’: I had reason to think that it belonged to me in a way that no other body did. There were three reasons for this. I could never be separated from it, as I could from other bodies; I felt all my appetites and emotions in it and on account of it; and I was aware of pain and pleasurable ticklings in parts of this body but not in any other body. But why should that curious sensation of pain give rise to a particular distress of mind; and why should a certain kind of delight follow on a tickling sensation? Again, why should that curious tugging in the stomach that I call ‘hunger’ tell me that I should eat, or a dryness of the throat tell me to drink, and so on? I couldn’t explain any of this, except to say that nature taught me so. For there is no connection (or none that I understand) between the tugging sensation and the decision to eat, or between the sensation of something causing pain and the mental distress that arises from it.
It seems that nature taught me to make these judgments about objects of the senses, for I was making them before I had any arguments to support them.
(2) Later on, however, my experiences gradually undermined all my faith in the senses. A tower that had looked round from a distance appeared square from close up; an enormous statue standing on a high column didn’t look large from the ground. In countless such cases I found that the judgments of the external senses were mistaken, and the same was true of the internal senses.
What can be more internal than pain? Yet I heard that an amputee might occasionally seem to feel pain in the missing limb. So even in my own case, I had to conclude, it was not quite certain that a particular limb was hurting, even if I felt pain in it. To these reasons for doubting, I recently added two very general ones. The first was that every sensory experience I ever thought I was having while awake I can also think of myself as having while asleep; and since I don’t believe that what I seem to perceive in sleep comes from things outside me, I didn’t see why I should be any more inclined to believe this of what I think I perceive while awake. The second reason for doubt was that for all I knew to the contrary I might be so constituted that I am liable to error even in matters that seem to me most true. (I couldn’t rule this out, because I did not know – or at least was pretending not to know – who made me.) And it was easy to refute the reasons for my earlier confidence about the truth of what I perceived by the senses. Since I seemed to be naturally drawn towards many things that reason told me to avoid, I reckoned that I should not place much confidence in what I was taught by nature. Also, I decided, the mere fact that the perceptions of the senses didn’t depend on my will was not enough to show that they came from outside me; for they might have been produced by some faculty of mine that I didn’t yet know.
(3) But now, when I am beginning to know myself and my maker better, although I don’t think I should recklessly accept everything I seem to have got from the senses, neither do I think it should all be called into doubt.
First, I know that if I have a clear and distinct thought of something, God could have created it in a way that exactly corresponds to my thought. So the fact that I can clearly and distinctly think of one thing apart from another assures me that the two things are distinct from one another – that is, that they are two – since they can be separated by God. Never mind how they could be separated; that does not affect the judgment that they are distinct. So my mind is a distinctApr 5, 2013 - DeeJ
Spring is in the air that hovers over the majestic Pacific Northwest, which has us aglow with warm feelings of goodwill.{{more}} Or, are we mistaking the sensation of renewed access to the daystar as it makes a triumphant return to our skies? No matter the reason, it’s a great time to be happy, healthy, and making a kick ass game together.
Some of us have even donned some daring spring fashions to observe the change in the weather. Or, is that the required uniform for what is becoming our annual foray in the Men in Kilts fashion show? Last year, we were the decisive victor in a popularity contest to benefit the Ronald McDonald House. In a bid to extend our winning streak, we’ve put the band back together.
This is not about competition, of course. We will rock the tartan to help seriously ill children keep the company of their families. We love a good cause at Bungie, even if it isn’t World Domination. That said, this is a contest, and it’s natural for gamers like us to play for keeps. That’s where you come in, dear community. If you want to throw your combined strength behind our clan, make your way to their website and cast a vote in our favor. Did we mention this was a fundraiser?
A chance to help us make the world a better place is not the only thing to love on Bungie.net. To reap the rest of the bounty, we must open the Sack.
SonOfTheShire If we ask questions about Destiny, will we actually get proper answers, or are you still not allowed to talk about most of it yet?
Are we there yet?
We’ve only begun to introduce you to our brave new world. There’s a lot more to discover, and we’ll continue to lead the expedition here on Bungie.net over the next few weeks. While we’re no longer dark, it can’t exactly be said that we’re burning bright. Our hands are on that dimmer switch, though, and we’ll be turning up the heat slowly but surely over the coming months.
What was it that Joe Staten said to bring our GDC talk to a close? Ah, yes. Here it is: “See you at E3!”
In the meantime, we’ll have to do the old metaphorical dance.
Old Monarch What meal would you use to describe Destiny?
A knuckle sandwich.
Elliott Gray, Graphic Designer
Medium-rare filet mignon, but with marshmallows on top.
Leland Dantzler, Tester
Macaroni and cheese with gold leaf foil.
Mat Noguchi, Programmer*
A three gravy poutine flight, with watermelon lemonade and Snow Phoenix Scotch on the side. In other words: Savory, bright, and intoxicating.
Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead
Destiny is like having catering delivered from your favorite restaurant. The table is set before you with a ton of different entrée options, and you can have whatever you’re in the mood for at that particular moment.
Josh Eash, Release Manager
From my wife’s repertoire: Fried Rabbit. It’s the new black.
CJ Cowan, Story Design Lead
Dim Sum. You never know what to expect and it just keeps coming.
Jake Lauer, Web Development Engineer
Christmas Dinner with the whole family, there is so much to choose from, everything is delicious and there are presents to boot.
Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer
An all you can eat wedding buffet.
Jonty Barnes, Production Director
A seven-course meal with portions of awesome, camaraderie, and victory.
David Johnson, Engineer
Hive Central What can you tell us about the Hive? Are they an organized hierarchy? How did they establish themselves as a threat in the universe of Destiny? Are they Zombies? Cyborgs? Zombie-borgs?
These are all great questions. And we will answer them, but not in the Mail Sack. By the way, Zombie-borgs? C’mon, man. That’s just silly. And I’m being sincere when I say that. I’m not saying it in an ironic way, like “Zombie-borgs confirmed for Destiny.”
ibex1001 How much of an affect do new scientific discoveries have an effect on your games? For example what would happen if they found fish on Europa?
We would attempt no landing there. As for scientific discoveries, Bungie has an interplanetary scientist on speed-dial who is sworn to alert us as soon as new discoveries come to light. In all fairness, his Non-Disclosure Agreement is probably thicker than ours, so all we really do is swap snarky emails with each other.
xgeua How much work do you do from home?
Only when I do the mocap laundry.
Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead
Does waking up count? That’s sometimes hard work.
Leland Dantzler, Tester
None. Except for those ideas that manifest into being in that weird place between being awake and asleep that make me excited to go back to work and put them in to action.
Kurt Nellis, Technical Cinematic Lead
Regularly. I typically bring my laptop home, turn on some smooth jazz, and work from my kitchen table in my underwear.
Drew Smith, Producer
I own several services that require occasional after hours attention, but the work is usually monitoring and minor bug fixes. I heartily prefer doing real work at the office, so I come in for anything major.
Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer
When we were supporting the Halo back-end, I worked from home quite a bit to help keep things stable.
Michael Williams, Senior Engineer
I find that I’m often thinking about how to solve difficult problems even while away from our pristine towers.
David Johnson, Engineer
Enrathe When Destiny comes out, will we encounter Bungie Employees while we are adventuring like you?
Most certainly. Have you ever heard that we make games that we want to play? Destiny is being designed to deliver chance encounters on the road to adventure, so you can expect that some of our encounters will be with you.
GREEDY39 Is the "competitive" side of destiny getting as much work put into it as the campaign/live world? Or is it more of an afterthought?
Destiny will provide you with activities for every mood. Sometimes, you’ll want to form up a fireteam to rout the Cabal from the Buried City on Mars. Other times, you’ll want to battle against your fellow players to see who’s the fairest Guardian of them all. That mood gets ahold of us on a regular basis in the studio.
Justrec During your after-work-Destiny-parties, who usually does the most trash talking?
I’ve seen Jon Weisnewski bring a grown man to tears with his vitriolic spew.
Leland Dantzler, Tester
From what I’ve heard and seen, Nate Hawbaker. But he usually plays well, so maybe it’s deserved.
Jake Lauer, Web Development Engineer
Luke Smith.
David Johnson, Engineer
Mat Noguchi. Not limited to after-work, either.
Elliott Gray, Graphic Designer
Luke Smith is the champion, but Mat Noguchi is louder.
Michael Williams, Senior Engineer
Bolt Ons23 I want to buy the PS4 now that Bungie makes games for PlayStation. But I am worried that it will effectively mean I am starting with a blank slate. How will this affect everything I have achieved with Halo?
With the rebuild of Bungie.net, we’ve sort of wiped that slate clean for you. Destiny (and the online experiences that will support it) will provide brand new opportunities for you to distinguish yourself as a rare and unique snowflake who kicks ass in a living world. The great feats you achieved in Halo may yet impact your legacy as a player of Bungie games. We still have a database with billions of rows of player data, and we’re not afraid to use it.
Player3Thomas What is love?
Love is feeling a little bit guilty when the landscape is littered with the corpses of your enemies.
Leland Dantzler, Tester
Love is taking a brief detour from your objective to help out a fellow Guardian in battle.
Josh Eash, Release Manager
Love is a night on the Moon – the ultimate date destination.
Jake Lauer, Web Development Engineer
Love is ignoring the tantalizing prospect of new loot to go save your mate.
Luke Ledwich, Test Engineer
Love is fulfilling a mission on Mars as I softly whisper, “I’ll be back soon. Promise.”
David Johnson, Engineer
Love is stumbling into a massive squad of enemies, only to be saved by a stranger on the ridgeline.
Michael Williams, Senior Engineer
Modernarcher How big will the destiny art book be?
You assume too much. However, were we to publish a book of all the art we’ve created to help us realize this brave new world; it would be heavier than all of our previous publications combined.
player 900709 Should the less awesomely talented community members (this guy) feel intimidated and not share their creative Destiny-related works?
Not at all. We only learn when we try. There are some amazing illustrators who are flexing their creative muscles in Art and Stuff, and their appreciation society is shaping up to be a great place to have your work critiqued by your peers.
Mfish125 Does Bungie use 3ds Max or Maya?
Both. And Motion Builder.
Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead
Max is typically – although not exclusively – used for environment creation and hard surface creation while Maya is typically used for character creation and animation. We also use software programs like Zbrush, Mudbox, and a variety of highly specialized software. And of course we have our own proprietary tools that our artists use.
Dave Dunn, Head of Art
EZcompany2ndsqd What does it take to become a community manager or assistant community manager?
Practice, baby. Practice!
Bungie likes to hire people who have already demonstrated an ability to tackle the work that we need done. In the absence of professional experience, personal projects are a great way to demonstrate that you pack the gear to serve on our team. I won’t speak for how my predecessors prepared themselves to man this station, but I was managing a community (a smaller, more intimate alliance of online warriors) before I was drafted into the service of the Seventh Column. As a recruit from the community, I’m not alone at Bungie. Our games provide gamers with a lot ways to express themselves, and those expressions tend to prepare them for the craziness that cultivates in our studio every day.
LordMonkey What is your spirit animal?
This could have been an interesting exploration of our various internal expressions of power, but it’s a safe bet that everyone would have just said “Tiger.”
Hylebos Human, Awoken, or Exo, and why?
Human! Cause we awesome!
Awoken. Cause blue!
Exo. Cause robots!
Francisco Cruz, Artist
Awoken, because getting destroyed by a female Edward Cullen is great bragging rights.
Leland Dantzler, Tester
Human: I love the raw passion and heroism that humans bring to the table.
Michael Williams, Senior Engineer
Exo Warlock! An ancient rusted war machine in a tattered robe who wields unknown powers and carries a shotgun? Does it really need any explanation?
Christopher Barrett, Art Director
korokva117 What are the fates of the Giant Frogs, Grub Lords, and Giant Rat Piranha Fish?
You could only have learned of those lost visions from our GDC talk. They’ve been committed to a crate, and stored in a warehouse right next to the Ark of the Covenant (no, not that Covenant). Along with the Tiger Man, they are casualties in the battle for the best idea. It’s a war that we love to wage at Bungie, but it leaves a lot of blood on the field.
It should be said that good ideas die hard at Bungie. You never know when inspiration will strike, and we start busting open those old and dusty crates.
Progo What is most important at Bungie, being able to self-manage or to be able to work in large teams?
At Bungie those two are inseparable; the work you do on your own self-motivation and management directly affects your [large] team.
Leland Dantzler, Tester
Well, if you can't self-manage you can't really be effective with a large team. We are a large team. Therefore, by modus tollens, you must be able to self-manage.
Mat Noguchi, Programmer*
By being able to self-manage, you come prepared and ready to work in a large collaborative team environment. People know you’ve got your end covered and can count on you to deliver.
Troy McFarland, Motion Capture Lead
The most important thing is being able to work in a SMALL team, the ability to help your pod kick ass. Everything else flows out of that.
Elliott Gray, Graphic Designer
While we do work in teams, and that is important, I’ve found that striking out and finding your own plot of soil and fertilizing that over time is the path to success.
David Johnson, Engineer
At Bungie and in life; both are of equal import. Who will build a shelter for you while you hunt?
Joe Spataro, Senior Technical Designer
Social intelligence and the ability to collaborate are more important than both those things.
Jonty Barnes, Production Director
Jjswanson24 Can we get a picture of DeeJ in a MoCap suit?
Never. There are few promises that I dare make to the Bungie Community, but staying as far away from full-spectrum spandex is one of them. I like you people too much to subject you to that.
Jakaii Are you going to show a new trailer at E3, or at least more game footage?
You’re going to have to wait for E3 to see what we have planned. All we can tell you is that it’s a show you won’t want to miss.
The Mail Sack is now empty. We’ve committed to your screen all the community love that is fit to pixelate. As we make our way into a restful weekend, we must take a moment for one final expression of solidarity. This week, Bungie learned of a kindred soul in need of some strength in the face of great adversity. Joe Staten, as he is known to do on many an occasion, will do the best job of speaking for us.
Bring it home, Joe:
Friends, we learned some very sad news this week. Iain Banks, a tremendously inspirational author for many of us at Bungie, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His open letter about his condition was clever and courageous, just what you would expect from the man who gave us the Culture series of books and so many other wonderful stories. If you haven’t ever read a book by Banks, or if you haven’t recently re-read your favorite, might we suggest: now would be a great time. And then, if you feel inspired, why not leave a message on his guestbook? Many of us at Bungie certainly will, offering thanks for all the joy he’s given us—and hope and comfort for his days ahead.
Be Brave, Iain. Love, Bungie.SolviteWoTaberu
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matthew521 said:
SolviteSekai said:
The people acting like 7k for NGNL isnt a lot are casuals and/or new to anime.
7k is really really good for shows that arent ludicrously popular like SAO or Monogatari.
For reference, Kill la Kill also only sold about 8k.
Not even 2 months ago NGNL was sitting at 2k on stalker. Id call this a win.
Wow, that's awesome to know! I've never really looked at any of these sales things before, so could anyone tell me how much is a volume? Like, are all 12 episodes of NGNL considered volume 1? Wow, that's awesome to know! I've never really looked at any of these sales things before, so could anyone tell me how much is a volume? Like, are all 12 episodes of NGNL considered volume 1?
No it will be 2 or 3 episodes per volume.
Madhouse will continue NGNL, they almost never have shows that sell other than HxH anymore.
And if you look at how mahoukas numbers have been dropping like a rock, madhouse might need a sure thing soon.
rederoin said:
SolviteSekai said:
The people acting like 7k for NGNL isnt a lot are casuals and/or new to anime.
7k is really really good for shows that arent ludicrously popular like SAO or Monogatari.
For reference, Kill la Kill also only sold about 8k.
Not even 2 months ago NGNL was sitting at 2k on stalker. Id call this a win.
Kill La Kill is sitting at a 10k+ average. Kill La Kill is sitting at a 10k+ average.
Its first week sales were 8k.
That was my point.
Also my other point was that Casuals look at SAO selling 30k and assume any show thats popular sells that much.
It doesnt work that way. No it will be 2 or 3 episodes per volume.Madhouse will continue NGNL, they almost never have shows that sell other than HxH anymore.And if you look at how mahoukas numbers have been dropping like a rock, madhouse might need a sure thing soon.Its first week sales were 8k.That was my point.Also my other point was that Casuals look at SAO selling 30k and assume any show thats popular sells that much.It doesnt work that way. BBCodeOptus has won a landmark court case that shatters Telstra's stranglehold over internet sports broadcasting and poses an immediate threat to the Australian Football League's recent broadcast rights deals.
Justice Steven Rares of the Federal Court in Sydney this afternoon decided Optus would be granted court protection from copyright claims by the AFL, Telstra and National Rugby League over its TV Now Service.
Optus customers can record and watch matches screened on free-to-air television. Credit:Rebecca Hallas
While Telstra and the sporting bodies are likely to appeal against the decision, this will not happen before the AFL season starts on March 24 and the NRL season starts on March 1.
Optus customers can record and watch matches screened on free-to-air television and replay with delays as short as two minutes on some devices. This is in direct competition to Telstra's exclusive deal with the AFL and NRL to broadcast matches live over the internet.David Lynch’s factory photographs – now on show at The Photographers’ Gallery in London – reveal the great filmmaker’s lifelong fascination with abandoned industrial buildings. The architectural compositions echo his most revered work – think of the claustrophobic attack on domesticity in Eraserhead, the looming shacks of Twin Peaks, the vortex swirl of Mulholland Drive’s nightmarish party scene. The black-and-white stills depict menacing silhouettes, gutted interiors and billowing smokestacks, using blurred light and layered textures to stretch the possibilities of photography to their outer limits.
Dazed Digital: Why are you so attracted to abandoned factories?
David Lynch: I’ve had a love affair for a long time with factories and industry – primarily the smokestack industry. I love all the textures associated with it. It’s so much about the beautiful light and shapes.
DD: When you enter them, is it like walking on to the set of one of your own movies?
David Lynch: No, I don’t think I’ve ever shot a scene in factories like |
theme is: ‘My Maratha rally is bigger than yours’.”
What appeared to be spontaneous anger against the Kopardi rape incident of July 13, is panning into a political movement for the consolidation of the Marathas. Local community organisations like Maratha Kranti Morcha have indicated that the Mumbai rally would be the biggest of all rallies. The target is to mobilise 50 lakh Marathas, not only from Maharashtra, but across the country as a show of strength. The final dates are still being worked out.
A Maratha morcha volunteer said, “The emphasis on mobilisation of the Marathas has a twin purpose. One is to show we are a power which cannot be ignored. Secondly, it also reflects on the hold of the established leadership in their respective districts.”
Although every rally is faceless with the top leadership of Congress and NCP keeping away from the stage, the local leaders know who is controlling the show. The volunteer said, “The Maratha community was always divided on sub-castes. For the first time, we are getting everybody on board.” However, to avoid backlash of the poor Marathas against the rich, the organisers are using the Dalit/OBC card to keep the community together.
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The protests are going to continue till October. Apart from the Kopardi rape incident, the issues being raised include the scrapping of the atrocities Act which the Marathas fear would be misused by the Dalits and reviving the Maratha reservation, including special quota in education and employment.Louis Ashworth
Who’s on the move?
Assurant
Assurant, a global provider of risk management solutions, has appointed Claude Sarfo as its new chief financial officer, Europe. As part of the enterprise finance team, Claude will have responsibility for planning implementing, managing and controlling all financial activities including forecasting, strategic planning, deal analysis, capital management and M&A support. He will also be appointed as a statutory director of Assurant’s core European legal entities (subject to receipt of regulatory approval).
Claude joins from Lloyds Banking Group where he spent almost twelve years in a range of senior finance roles. He has extensive experience in financial management, corporate development, strategy and M&A activity across multiple industry sectors, including financial services, technology and automotive.
Clifford Chance
Leading international law firm, Clifford Chance has elected Jeroen Ouwehand as its new senior partner. Jeroen will succeed incumbent Malcolm Sweeting and serve a four-year term, starting 1 January 2019. Jeroen Ouwehand has been office managing partner for Clifford Chance's Amsterdam office since 2015 and leads the firm's Continental European Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice.
Jeroen was a member of the firm's partner selection group from 2010-2015. He specialises in financial, commercial and corporate litigation and arbitration.
GPP
GPP, the custody, clearing and wealth solutions firm, has announced the appointment of Richard Shiel to its wealth solutions business, where he will take the position of sales and account manager. Richard joins from the custody and clearing sales team at platform securities, part of the FIS Group. In his new role at GPP he will support Tom Wooders, head of sales, clearing and wealth solutions, to onboard new clients onto the company’s wealth management platform. GPP launched its wealth platform in 2017 as a streamlined offering which avoids the challenges associated with legacy infrastructure and third-party technology providers.
The platform is powered by GBO, GPP’s proprietary back-office technology, providing an efficient and nimble solution which can be easily modified for a bespoke service. Richard will also promote GPP’s broader wealth solutions business to wealth managers, discretionary investment managers and IFAs. The business encompasses client relationship and portfolio management technology, a white-labelled client portal and app, tailored client reporting, and access to GPP’s established global execution, settlement and custody services.On 29 September 1940, a mid-air collision occurred over Brocklesby, New South Wales, Australia. The accident was unusual in that the aircraft involved, two Avro Ansons of No. 2 Service Flying Training School RAAF, remained locked together after colliding, and then landed safely. The collision stopped the engines of the upper Anson, but those of the machine underneath continued to run, allowing the pair of aircraft to keep flying. Both navigators and the pilot of the lower Anson bailed out. The pilot of the upper Anson found that he was able to control the interlocked aircraft with his ailerons and flaps, and made an emergency landing in a nearby paddock. All four crewmen survived the incident, and the upper Anson was repaired and returned to flight service.
On 29 September 1940, two Ansons took off from the Forest Hill air base for a cross-country training exercise over southern New South Wales. [6] Tail number N4876 was piloted by Leading Aircraftman Leonard Graham Fuller, 22, from Cootamundra, with Leading Aircraftman Ian Menzies Sinclair, 27, from Glen Innes, as navigator. [6] [7] [8] [9] Tail number L9162 was piloted by Leading Aircraftman Jack Inglis Hewson, 19, from Newcastle, with Leading Aircraftman Hugh Gavin Fraser, 27, from Melbourne, as navigator. [6] [7] [10] [11] Their planned route was expected to take them first to Corowa, then to Narrandera, and finally back to Forest Hill. [12]
The interlocked Ansons lying in a paddock Engines and forward sections of the two aircraft
The Ansons were at an altitude of 1,000 feet (300 metres) over the township of Brocklesby, near Albury, when they made a banking turn.[6][12] Fuller lost sight of Hewson's aircraft beneath him and the two Ansons collided amid what Fuller later described as a "grinding crash and a bang as roaring propellors struck each other and bit into the engine cowlings".[12][13] The aircraft remained jammed together, the lower Anson's turret wedged into the other's port wing root, and its fin and rudder balancing the upper Anson's port tailplane.[14]
Both of the upper aircraft's engines had been knocked out in the collision but those of the one below continued to turn at full power as the interlocked Ansons began to slowly circle.[7][12] Fuller described the "freak combination" as "lumping along like a brick".[15] He nevertheless found that he was able to control the piggybacking pair of aircraft with his ailerons and flaps, and began searching for a place to land.[12][16] The two navigators, Sinclair and Fraser, bailed out, followed soon after by the lower Anson's pilot, Hewson, whose back had been injured when the spinning blades of the other aircraft sliced through his fuselage.[1][12]
Fuller travelled five miles (eight kilometres) after the collision, then successfully made an emergency pancake landing in a large paddock 6 kilometres (4 mi) south-west of Brocklesby. The locked aircraft slid 180 metres (200 yards) across the grass before coming to rest.[6][12] As far as Fuller was concerned, the touchdown was better than any he had made when practising circuits and bumps at Forest Hill airfield the previous day. His acting commanding officer, Squadron Leader Cooper, declared the choice of improvised runway "perfect", and the landing itself as a "wonderful effort".[7] The RAAF's Inspector of Air Accidents, Group Captain Arthur "Spud" Murphy, flew straight to the scene from Air Force Headquarters in Melbourne, accompanied by his deputy Henry Winneke.[17] Fuller told Murphy:[12]New Georgia Tech research shows that cell stiffness could be a valuable clue for doctors as they search for and treat cancerous cells before they’re able to spread. The findings, which are published in the journal PLoS One, found that highly metastatic ovarian cancer cells are several times softer than less metastatic ovarian cancer cells.
Assistant Professor Todd Sulchek and Ph.D. student Wenwei Xu used a process called atomic force microscopy (AFM) to study the mechanical properties of various ovarian cell lines. A soft mechanical probe “tapped” healthy, malignant and metastatic ovarian cells to measure their stiffness.
Just as previous studies on other types of epithelial cancers have indicated, Sulchek also found that cancerous ovarian cells are generally softer and display lower intrinsic variability in cell stiffnesss than non-malignant cells.
Sulchek and McDonald believe that, when further developed, this technology could offer a huge advantage to clinicians in the design of optimal chemotherapies, not only for ovarian cancer patients but also for patients of other types of cancer.
This project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Award Number CBET-0932510). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=159261“Winning is good, giving emotions is better,” says manager Jean-René Bernadeau at French team’s presentation
The 2012 Europcar team was presented to the World today, with general manager Jean-René Bernadeau looking back on its most successful year to date, while looking ahead to what he hopes will be further glory. The green and black Professional Continental team, which is based in France’s western coastal Vendée region, punched high above its weight in 2011, will eleven of its riders taking a victory.
It was the Tour de France where the team really hit the headlines though, with stage victory on Alpe d’Huez and the white jersey for Pierre Rolland, and fourth place overall for Thomas Voeckler, after he’d spent ten glorious days in yellow.
“2011 is a great story,” said Bernadeau. “I am very proud of this year; people say ‘thank you’ rather than ‘well done’ to the image of the team. At the foot of Alpe d'Huez, there was virtually the entire team to defend the jersey. Thank you to our sponsors and all of our riders.
Europcar has always been a team that, like its talismanic leader Voeckler, races with its heart on its sleeve, and 2012 will be no exception to this.
“No race will be used to prepare for another,” said Bernadeau. “We respect the organizers.
“Winning is good,” he explained. “To give emotion is better. We do not want to be an actor, always controlling the race. I love my riders from the bottom of my heart.
“The Vendée loves cycling, and loves our team,” he added.
Rolland’s Alpe victory and white jersey were, for many, the beginnings of the realisation of a long-identified talent. His relatively modest results before last July allowed him a certain anonymity, from which he managed to use to his advantage, but he will not allowed the same luxury this year.
"This year I will not have the element of surprise to play with,” he acknowledged. “The Tour is still the goal; my winter was good, so everything is ok."
Voeckler’s performance in the Tour was more than a personal achievement, in that it raised the hopes of the host nation again. All eyes will be on the 32-year-old this July to see if he can match, or better, his 2011 achievement; as one of the highest profile French riders for many years though, this is something he is used to.
"The pressure does not bother me,” he said. “I have experience; I live with it. People identify well with what the team does. It's fun. It gives pleasure to people.
“My goals? It’s January 26, it’s easy to talk,” he added. “We must remain humble. I have many ambitions; I won’t go to a race without playing something."
The presentation also saw the unveiling of the team’s new jersey, made by Canadian company Louis Garneau. The black and green design is little changed from that of 2011, with any changes part of an evolution, not a revolution. The team will continue to ride Colnago frames equipped with Campagnolo wheels and components.
Team Europcar will kick off the 2012 season with the traditional French season-opener, La Grand Prix l’Ouverture La Marseillaise, in the south of France this coming Sunday.(Semi-Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)
Let's go to the Kremlin, where Blog Official Foreign Affairs correspondent Vladimir Putin has some thoughts on current events that he'd like to share. From CNN:
Speaking at a press conference in Sochi, Russia, Putin said Moscow could send its records of the encounter -- at which Trump is alleged to have shared top-secret intelligence with the Russian delegation -- to the US Congress. The intervention by Putin could turn up the pressure on the White House to provide its own transcript of the meeting. The Senate intelligence committee has already demanded a briefing on what was said at the meeting from members of the Trump administration who were present…Putin denied that Trump had shared intelligence in the meeting, describing the media reports on the issue as "political schizophrenia." "We are prepared to go there and explain our point of view to Congress if necessary," he said.
Any volunteers to go to the Kremlin and drop papers on this guy? Jared? Rex? Anyone?
This is master-level trolling by a guy who spotted a sucker years ago and who, even since, has abided in his relationship with the president* with the wisdom of Nikita Khrushchev, who famously said, "When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to heal, so that you can skin them again." No matter how you interpret the on-time arrival of Tuesday's regularly scheduled 5:30 p.m. impeachable offense, two things are quite clear: 1) the president of Russia is a lot smarter than the President* of the United States, and 2) the president of Russia has the President* of the United States, and the country itself, dancing merrily on a string.
(By the way, the Soviet political officer aboard the submarine who gets murdered in the first reel of The Hunt For Red October is named Ivan Putin. True fact.)
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He's not up to the job. This should be obvious by now. The most innocent explanation for the president*'s actions is that he's a blundering dotard who can't stop himself from destroying democratic institutions and from tripping over federal statutes. Even if you don't think he's done anything criminal, he's getting gamed from every point on the compass—by his own leaky staff, by James Comey, by the Russians. As LBJ once put it, he's on a highway in a thunderstorm; he can't run, he can't hide and he can't make it stop. But he's taken the dilemma one step further. He doesn't even think it's raining. Apparently, the Art of the Deal begins with being the biggest sucker who ever crossed the White House threshold.
There's been a lot of talk—particularly from conservatives and Republicans, who are desperately clinging to a tiny sliver of land—that the worst thing that's happening is that "politics" may be involved in resolving the problem of a president who is compromised, incompetent, and, perhaps, not altogether in the brain box. Unfortunately, this is entirely a political problem.
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Even if the whole thing gets tossed into some sort of gathering of Beltway wise men (Lee Hamilton? White courtesy phone, please.), it's still going to be a political problem seeking a political solution. The way you know this is the case is that, on Wednesday morning, the House Republicans huddled with Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, and the first thing Ryan talked about afterwards was his plan to shove more wealth upwards with his tax plan, and the first thing most of the Freedom Caucus hardbars talked about was how this whole thing is a creation of ol' debbil media.
Ryan, meanwhile, was a bowl of oatmeal.
It is obvious – there are some people out there who want to harm the president. We have an obligation to carry out our oversight, regardless of which party is in the White House. That means before rushing to judgment we get all the pertinent information."
Beware any politicians from either side who tell you that they want to "keep politics out" of the resolution of this unfolding disaster. If one side is saying, "May we please have an investigation from someone not wholly in the tank?" and the other side is saying, "Blarg! Groot! Liberal media!" what you have is a political—and, to be honest, a cognitive—divide that is not bridgeable in any way except politics. Unless you're planning to staff an independent commission with Martians, it's not like a special commission is going to be immune from political infighting. (This was particularly the case within the 9/11 Commission, which has been undeservedly sanctified as the years have passed.) Politics is what we have. Hell, it's all we have.
Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.Democratic presidential contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are locked in a dead heat in California among registered Democrats, two new polls show.
Sanders even beats Clinton by one point when potential Democratic primary voters are surveyed.
California's June 7 primary is semi-open, meaning Californians registered as Democrats or "No Party Preference" are able to vote in the Democratic primary. In previous primaries, Sanders has proved "far, far more popular with independents" than Clinton, as Kevin Gosztola recently noted.
"We are going to win here in California, we are going to win many of the other states up on June 7, we are going to leave California with enormous momentum going into the convention."
—Bernie Sanders
The Field poll (pdf), released Thursday, found Clinton leading Sanders by a mere two points—within the survey's margin of error. Clinton had the support of 45 percent of the Democratic voters polled, and Sanders had 43 percent. Clinton's lead in the state has shrunk from a whopping 50 points to today's statistical tie with Sanders, as previous polls also captured.
Meanwhile, a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll published Wednesday found Sanders beating Clinton by one point when the potential Democratic electorate was surveyed, instead of only voters registered as Democrats:
Sanders has been attracting enormous crowds at rallies throughout California in the lead-up to Tuesday's primary, sending Clinton scrambling to try to regain her once-formidable lead in the delegate-rich state.
"Our message in this campaign, of creating a nation and a vision based on social justice, economic justice, racial justice, and environmental justice [...] is the future vision of this country."
—Bernie Sanders"I read the newspapers, and they all said the campaign is over. But suddenly I just saw Hillary Clinton racing to California, Bill Clinton racing to California," Sanders said in Palo Alto on Wednesday. "Maybe they think this campaign is not over. And I agree with them. We are going to win here in California, we are going to win many of the other states up on June 7, we are going to leave California with enormous momentum going into the convention, and I believe we've got a real shot to come out of that convention with the Democratic nomination for president of the United States."
Speaking to the cheering California crowds, Sanders has particularly emphasized his stance on immigration reform and his longtime advocacy on behalf of undocumented migrant workers.
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"This campaign is listening to the Latino community," Sanders said in Davis. "Here in California and all over this country, undocumented people are being exploited on the job because they have no legal rights. If you are a farm worker here in California and you are overworked and underpaid and cheated on your wages, you can't go to the Department of Labor and your employer knows that."
"That is why together we will pass immigration reform and a path toward citizenship," the Vermont senator concluded.
Stumping in the drought-ridden state, Sanders has also emphasized his opposition to fracking and his plan for tackling climate change. He's repeatedly spoken about his opposition to Clinton's interventionist foreign policy and mass incarceration, and his support for free higher education, for legalizing marijuana, and for overturning Citizens United and establishing a system to publicly fund elections.
Sanders has also continuously returned to his critique of the United States' "rigged" economy, "in which the wealthiest 20 people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million people—half of our country," as Sanders put it in Palo Alto.
Finally, Sanders has noted the tremendous amount of support his campaign has received from young people, telling the Palo Alto crowd that he hopes they feel "enormously gratified [that] our message in this campaign, of creating a nation and a vision based on social justice, economic justice, racial justice, and environmental justice, that whether Donald Trump likes it or not, whether Hillary Clinton likes it or not—that is the future vision of this country."
Watch Sanders' Wednesday rallies in Palo Alto and Davis:Chinese authorities crack down on 'political' assertions of Tibetan national identity.
Chinese authorities have detained more than 1,000 residents of a restive Tibetan county since March, targeting mainly educated youth involved in promoting the revival of Tibetan language and culture, according to a local source.
The crackdown followed the deployment of large numbers of security forces to Driru county in the Nagchu prefecture of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in March following area demonstrations, a local resident told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“After the deployment of Chinese forces in the area, over a thousand Tibetans were either detained or put in jail, or disappeared,” the source said.
Younger, educated Tibetans and the children of wealthier Tibetan families were especially targeted for detention, he said.
Tibetans in Driru have been in the forefront of opposition to Chinese rule in the TAR, with monks and nuns protesting and abandoning monasteries in order to defy “intrusive” new Chinese regulations.
Starting in 2009, a group of young Tibetans in Driru began discussions on the importance of Tibetan culture, the source said, adding that other groups began to promote the use of the spoken and written Tibetan language.
“They stressed the use of Tibetan and not Chinese in daily conversation, even when speaking on the telephone,” the source said.
“They were trying to replace Chinese with Tibetan,” he said.
'White Wednesdays'
Meanwhile, a third group calling itself the White Diet Society began to advocate the avoidance of meat products, he added.
“They gave up eating meat on the Buddhist holy days of each month and called for the consumption of ‘white foods’ [yogurt, for example] on Lhakar,” or ‘White Wednesdays,’ the weekday especially associated with exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, he said.
These activities were not coordinated by large organizations, the source said.
“Rather, they were simple movements aimed at preserving Tibetan culture and language and advocating the ‘white diet.’ Most of the Tibetans who were detained were picked up for these reasons.”
Though over 1,000 Tibetans were eventually detained by Chinese forces in Driru, he said, those taken into custody were held for varying periods of time.
“Some were detained for only a few hours, some were held for days. Many were jailed, and many others have simply disappeared,” he said.
A reporter’s calls seeking comment from Driru county police offices rang unanswered on Wednesday.
A political link
Speaking separately, Columbia University Tibet scholar Robbie Barnett said that Tibetans in recent years have been finding ways to celebrate Tibetan language and culture—and, increasingly, vegetarianism.
“But this is usually done without any hint of political purpose in order to avoid the attention of the security forces,” he said.
It is unlikely that Chinese authorities in Tibet would detain people for promoting Tibetan language and culture “unless they find a political link,” Barnett said.
“But the risk of this is very high now for anyone who uses the name Lhakar, because that movement has been widely promoted abroad by exiles as a form of political resistance.”
Lhakar was born inside Tibet “as a homegrown movement” and is inherently political, though, said Tenzin Dorjee, president of the New York-based Students for a Free Tibet.
Following widespread protests in 2008 challenging Chinese rule in Tibetan areas, Tibetans began to create “an alternative world in their homes or social circles where they would speak only in Tibetan, wear Tibetan clothes, eat in Tibetan restaurants, and so on,” Dorjee said.
This, he said, has “weaponized” Tibetan culture, turning it into a nonviolent instrument “to pursue greater freedom.”
“[And] after the birth of Lhakar inside Tibet, Tibetans in exile started observing Lhakar to mirror and support the Tibetans inside Tibet,” Dorjee said.
In a growing wave of opposition to Beijing's rule in Tibetan areas, 49 Tibetans have self-immolated since February 2009, with nearly all of the fiery protests taking place in Tibetan-populated provinces in western China.
The first self-immolation protest in the Tibetan capital Lhasa was reported in May, when two young Tibetan men set themselves on fire in a central square of the heavily guarded city.
Reported by RFA’s Tibetan service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English with additional reporting by Richard Finney.Passengers prepare to board a New York City bound train at Union Station in Washington, on Nov. 25, 2009. (Photo11: Jacquelyn Martin, AP)
WASHINGTON — People passing through busy Washington Union Station got quite a surprise Monday night. For a few minutes, a porn site popped up on some screens inside the train station.
One Twitter user claimed to have been present for the surprise screening.
“The monitors at Union Station just started playing Pornhub,” user _joannaw posted at 5:34 p.m. Monday. (Pornhub is a popular free porn site.)
Station managers told WUSA9 that the screens, which have only been around a few months, were hacked. They would not elaborate, but said an investigation is underway.
“Fortunately it was quickly turned off,” said Beverley Swaim-Staley of the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation.
The vertically-oriented monitors are supposed to be touch screen maps of the station. Swaim-Staley says developers of the screens “are doing their due diligence” before turning them back on again.
More: Military nude photo investigation expands into gay porn websites
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2rqX8iyI arrived in New York yesterday, a year after my last visit, for 12 days of events to mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo (as described here), with a particular focus on a rally and march in Washington D.C. next Wednesday, January 11 (the actual date of the opening of Guantánamo). On arrival, I was met by Debra Sweet, national director of The World Can’t Wait, who arranged my visit, and we immediately made our way to the Brecht Forum on the West Side Highway for a fascinating event, “Building a Movement to Close Guantánamo and End All Unjust Detentions,” which focused on building bridges between those working to close Guantánamo and those campaigning against unjust trials and detentions in the US. There I was delighted to meet up, for the first time since last January, with Pardiss Kebriaei and Leili Kashani of the Center for Constitutional Rights (with whom I have been working on reports forthe 10th anniversary, to be published very soon), and also with another old friend, Guantánamo attorney and law professor Ramzi Kassem, and also Faisal Hashmi of the Muslim Justice Initiative, the brother of Fahad Hashmi, whose unfair extradition from the UK and unfair trial and disproportionately punitive sentence in the US in 2010 — after three and a half years kept in isolation in New York — I wrote about here.
I hope to write more about this event and others in the coming days, but for now, while I’m absolutely delighted to be here, meeting up with old friends, making new friends and campaigning for the closure of Guantánamo where it matters the most, I’m also pleased to note that a number of compelling events have been lined up in London, which I’m delighted to publicize below:
Saturday January 7, 2012, 2-4pm: Shut Guantánamo – End 10 Years of Shame
Public Rally, Trafalgar Square, London, at the top of the steps outside the National Gallery.
This event is organized by the London Guantánamo Campaign, the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and CND.
Speakers include:
Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP (Liberal Democrat)
Louise Christian (solicitor for Guantánamo prisoners)
Lindsey German (Stop the War Coalition)
Kate Hudson (Chair, CND)
Joy Hurcombe (Save Shaker Aamer Campaign)
Cortney Busch (Reprieve)
Victoria Brittain (journalist, Patron of Cageprisoners)
Kanja Sesay (NUS)
See the website here. Also, please sign the London Guantánamo Campaign’s petition for the release to the UK of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, and Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian national who fears being repatriated, and who lived peacefully and productively in the UK from 1999 to 2001.
For more details, please email or call 07809 757176. Also see the Facebook page.
Tuesday January 10, 2012, 10.30 am: Press launch of the “Laa Tansa: Never Forget” Guantánamo timeline project
Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ.
“Laa Tansa: Never Forget” is a major online project, undertaken by Cageprisoners over the last six months, to provide the most detailed interactive timeline of Guantánamo to date, for which I played a major role researching prisoner profiles, as featured in my ongoing series, “The Complete Guantánamo Files.”
Speakers:
Moazzam Begg (former Guantánamo prisoner and director of Cageprisoners)
Mousa Zemmouri (former Guantánamo prisoner, Belgium)
Murat Kurnaz (former Guantánamo prisoner, Germany)
Walid Haj (former Guantánamo prisoner, Sudan)
Saad al-Azemi (former Guantánamo prisoner, Kuwait)
Colonel Talal al-Zahrani (the father of Yasser al-Zahrani, who died at Guantánamo in June 2006)
Clive Stafford Smith (Director of Reprieve)
See the website here. For further information, please email or phone 020 3167 4416.
Wednesday January 11, 2012, 6 pm: “Guantánamo Remembered: 10 Years”
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.
On the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, Cageprisoners, Reprieve and the Islamic Human Rights Commission co-host an event to reflect on the impact of a decade of Guantánamo on the lives of those held in the prison and their families.
Speakers:
Moazzam Begg (former Guantánamo prisoner and director of Cageprisoners)
Sami El-Hajj (former Guantánamo prisoner, works for Al-Jazeera)
Mousa Zemmouri (former Guantánamo prisoner, Belgium)
Murat Kurnaz (former Guantánamo prisoner, Germany)
Walid Haj (former Guantánamo prisoner, Sudan)
Saad al-Azemi (former Guantánamo prisoner, Kuwait)
Colonel Talal al-Zahrani (the father of Yasser al-Zahrani, who died at Guantánamo in June 2006)
Michael Ratner (President of the Center for Constitutional Rights)
Clive Stafford Smith (Director of Reprieve)
Massoud Shadjareh (Director of Islamic Human Rights Commission)
Gareth Peirce (human rights lawyer)
Victoria Brittain (Patron of Cageprisoners)
Asim Qureshi (Executive Director of Cageprisoners)
See the website here. For further information, please email or phone 020 3167 4416.
Thursday January 12, 2012, 6.30 pm: “Death in Camp Delta” – UK film premiere
Curzon Cinema (Soho), 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 5DY.
Cageprisoners hosts the UK film premiere of the Erling Borgen film, “Death in Camp Delta.” The film tells the story of Yasser al-Zahrani and two other prisoners who died in Guantánamo in June 2006, reportedly by committing suicide, although that version of events has been seriously challenged by former soldiers working at Guantánamo at the time. The film features former Guantánamo prisoners Omar Deghayes, Moazzam Begg, Sami al-Hajj (Al-Jazeera), Walid Haj, and Colonel Talal al-Zahrani.
Speakers:
Erling Borgen (Filmmaker and director of “Death in Camp Delta”)
Moazzam Begg (former Guantánamo prisoner and director of Cageprisoners)
Talal al-Zahrani (the father of Yaser al-Zahrani, who died at Guantánamo in June 2006)
Cori Crider (Legal Director of Reprieve)
See the website here. For further information, please email or phone 020 3167 4416.
Note: For further information, and to sign up to a new movement to close Guantánamo, please visit the new website, “Close Guantánamo,” which you can join here, and also please sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.We defeated Comcast's attempt to take over Time Warner Cable — but now Charter wants to pick up the pieces. And if the deal is approved, Charter will absorb billions in new debt, for which they expect you to pay for. In fact, the only reason Charter is willing to pay so much is because it knows it can raise prices as much as it likes since there’s almost no competition in America’s broadband market. Take action now — tell the FCC to stand with competition and oppose this deal!
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We defeated Comcast's attempt to take over Time Warner Cable — but now Charter wants to pick up the pieces. And if the deal is approved, "New Charter" will become a cable behemoth that's nearly as big as Comcast — resulting in higher prices and worse service for everyone. Take action now — tell the FCC to stand with competition and oppose this deal!
Can you catch me up to speed on this?
"More competition would be better."
That's what FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told a room of Big Cable executives in 2015 at an industry gathering — not long after Comcast's attempt to merge with Time Warner Cable failed spectacularly in the face of public outrage.
But Charter Communications isn't listening — they're now trying to take over the much-larger Time Warner Cable, creating a “Mega Charter” whose broadband footprint would be almost as big as Comcast's. It would join Comcast as one of just two companies that together would control two-thirds of the nation's high-speed broadband customers. Moreover, Charter will take on billions of dollars in new debt — debt that will be repaid by the post-merger company, free of any meaningful competition, jacking up prices on consumers.
Tell me a little bit more about what’s at stake here.
1 Big Cable is big enough — this is all about the profits.
Nearly 20 million subscribers would be served by New Charter — second behind only Comcast. If this deal goes through Charter will absorb billions in new debt — and that money will be on the backs of customers nationwide. They want to jack up our prices to fatten the pockets of a few greedy cable executives. In fact, we will likely see industry-wide price increases and other harmful practices designed to stifle online video competition, such as arbitrary data caps and overage penalties.
Nearly 20 million subscribers would be served by New Charter — second behind only Comcast. If this deal goes through Charter will absorb billions in new debt — and that money will be on the backs of customers nationwide. They want to jack up our prices to fatten the pockets of a few greedy cable executives. In fact, we will likely see industry-wide price increases and other harmful practices designed to stifle online video competition, such as arbitrary data caps and overage penalties. 2 This will disproportionately impact communities of color.
Too many of us struggle to pay our cable and Internet bills as-is — and many of us can’t even afford to get connected in the first place. The best way to get more people online and close the digital divide is to lower the cost of Internet access. Charter is taking over the New York and Los Angeles markets, and will impose price increases on its customers in these diverse communities. Therefore this merger, like the failed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, will exacerbate the digital divide by concentrating market power in these communities that have many people already struggling to afford broadband.
Too many of us struggle to pay our cable and Internet bills as-is — and many of us |
the local community.
As the crowd dispersed, they sang the university song and headed home.Construction site of the new Red Wings arena in Detroit. (Photo: David Guralnick / Detroit News)
Owners of the Detroit Red Wings and a firm they have used to buy other properties are gobbling up parking lots and buildings around the Masonic Temple, which is two blocks from the hockey team’s new arena now under construction.
It’s the latest in the street-by-street land grab in the Cass Corridor, where once-unheard-of prices are being paid for properties yet to be developed.
The focus this time is near historic Cass Park and the Masonic Temple, the Gothic beauty that is the fraternal organization’s largest temple in the world. It has struggled for years as the surrounding neighborhood declined.
Since last year, millions of dollars have been paid for surface lots, an empty former church, a warehouse and a small Art Deco office building near the temple. That’s in addition to the sale of other nearby blighted properties in recent years.
Masonic Temple, owned by the Detroit Masonic Temple Association, is on the other side of Cass Avenue from the new arena. The 18,000-seat multipurpose venue is slated to open in 2017. The arena is expected to be an economic game-changer that will overhaul the surrounding 45 blocks into dense, walkable districts full of new residents, offices and retail. Much of the area now includes Detroit’s poorest neighborhoods.
The Ilitch family organization is the main driver of the development plan. Details for the ancillary development are largely unknown. One thing is clear: The price to buy property in the area continues to dramatically increase.
“The Ilitch activity certainly has sparked lots of interest” from many potential buyers, said Gary Smith, a commercial real estate broker for Marcus & Millichap. “It’s a bit like the Wild West.”
The Ilitches’ Olympia Development of Michigan has recently bought a group of parking lots on Cass near Temple Street as well as on Charlotte Street, said Masonic Temple president Roger Sobran. Other Ilitch purchases include a warehouse on Cass across from the new arena.
“We have a really good working relationship with Olympia and we are going to keep working with them,” Sobran said.
The parking lots and warehouse were sold by the Detroit Shriners organization to a limited liability corporation, TSD Solutions Inc. TSD is one of the firms used by Ilitches in the recent past to buy Cass Corridor property
Only one of the Shriners sales is publicly recorded at this point. The warehouse sold for $2.1 million in 2014. The Shriners paid $118,000 for the facility in 1983, public records shows. The fraternal organization used the facility to park buses.
A source familiar with the sale provided documents that show a total of $7 million was paid for the warehouse and parking lots last year. The source, who doesn’t have permission to speak publicly about the deal, requested anonymity.
Beyond the Shriners sale, six properties have been bought for a total for $7.6 million since last year, public records show. The buyer is the same limited liability corporation, TSD Solutions Inc, involved in the Shriners sale.
Among the sales in the Cass Park area:
■In 2014, $5.5 million was paid for four adjacent parking lots on Second Avenue in front of the Masonic Temple, public records show.
■In 2014, a 17,800-square-foot building, 2700 Second, that’s been empty for several years sold for $475,000. In 2012, an investor bought the same property for $90,000 from the Baptist State Convention of Michigan. The building is on same block of the Second Avenue parking lots bought last year.
■Earlier this year, $1.6 million was paid for the Michigan Chronicle building at 479 Ledyard, which is across the street from Cass Park and near Second. The recorded buyer is Olympia Development.
The Ilitch organization did not comment on the transactions. Several of the sellers also declined comment or could not be reached.
TSD Solutions has an East Lansing address and its only contact on state records is a firm called CSC-Lawyers Inc. Calls to the East Lansing office, a law firm that is not CSC Lawyers, were not returned. CSC is an international company, based in Delaware, whose main business is to “form corporations and maintain their good standing in thousands of U.S. and international jurisdictions,” according to its website.
The use of limited liability corporations, LLCs, is common in commercial real estate transactions, several brokers said.
“One of the points of using an LLC is to shield the real buyer and what they have planned,” said Stan Finsilver, executive vice president of Friedman Integrated Real Estate Solutions. “To be honest, there is so much outside interest in Detroit, you can’t really say that this same LLC is being used by someone besides the Ilitches.”
The sales come at a time when the city is working on a plan to make part of the Cass Park area a historic district. That would make it harder to get city permission to tear down buildings. The properties sold recently are not included in the proposed district.
Cass Park takes up a square block between Temple and Ledyard. The surrounding neighborhood has been redubbed “Cass Park Village” by Ilitch officials and others who are starting to market the area.
This is how Cass Park Village is being marketed: “Part entrepreneurial, part punk, this neighborhood has been conceived with individuality and expression in mind,” reads the description on DistrictDetroit.com, the website that is central point of information of the 45-block development plan.
The Ilitches have committed to invest at least another $200 million for other developments, beyond the arena, in the district. The entire project has an estimated economic benefit of $1.8 billion, officials said.
Olympia officials are lobbying city officials to change the boundaries of the proposed Cass Park historic district. At a public meeting last month, Olympia officials revealed they intend to double the width of Temple Street between Cass and Woodward in order to accommodate traffic flow. Olympia officials also hinted they plan to redevelop three empty buildings on Temple. They also implied they may want to raze three buildings in the proposed historic district.
The plans were revealed to the Detroit Historic Designation Advisory Board. The City Council eventually must approve the district.
laguilar@detroitnews.com
Twitter: LouisAguilar_DN
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1LwJUGKOh we boys now lol. His policy shows Black Lives Matter when it comes to Prison Reform and ending (cont) http://t.co/... — Killer Mike (@KillerMikeGTO) July 18, 2015
.@KillerMikeGTO & @BernieSanders each have strong feelings about the concentration of power and resources in America. pic.twitter.com/1HC6gMjTab — Michigan For Bernie (@Michigan4Bernie) July 20, 2015
Oh we boys now lol. His policy shows Black Lives Matter when it comes to Prison Reform and ending the war on drugs. I don't care if a liberal gets stuck on a Racial question RT @vickijee: @KillerMikeGTO Your boy Sanders when BlackRoots confronted him at RootsNation https://twitter.com/...
I wrote about Killer Mike's endorsement of Bernie here.
Listen to Killer Mike's incendiary political art "Reagan"
Interesting article on Killer Mike's Bernie endorsement Why Rapper Killer Mike's endorsement of Bernie Sanders spells trouble for Hillary Clinton
Rap Star Endorses Bernie over HIllary Why This is More Significant Than You Think
Thanks JnH!Oh Lord Shiva, protect us from the fang of the cobra, the claw of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan.
—old Hindu prayer
NEW YORK—Shock, incomprehension, fury. Americans are feeling these raw emotions as news keeps coming in of more attacks by Afghan government soldiers and officials on U.S. and NATO troops. Six American troops were killed last week as a result of protests across Afghanistan following the burning of Korans by incredibly dim-witted American soldiers.
“Aren’t they supposed to be our allies? We are over there to save them! What outrageous ingratitude,” ask angry, confused Americans.
Angry Britons asked the same questions in 1857 when “sepoys,” individual mercenary soldiers of Britain’s Imperial Indian Army, then entire units rebelled and began attacking British military garrisons and their families. British history calls it the “Indian Mutiny.” Indians call it the “Great Rebellion” marking India’s first striving for freedom from the British Raj and the Indian vassal princes who so dutifully served it.
Britons were outraged by the “perfidy” and “treachery” of their Indian sepoys who were assumed to be totally loyal because they were fighting for the king’s shilling. Victorian Britain reeled from accounts of frightful massacres of Britons at places like Lucknow, Cawnpore, Delhi, and Calcutta’s infamous “black hole.”
As Karl Marx observed watching the ghastly events in India, western democracies cease practicing what they preach in their colonies. British forces in India, backed by loyal native units, mercilessly crushed the Indian rebels. Rebel ringleaders were tied to the mouths of cannon and blown to bits, or hanged en masse.
Today’s Afghanistan recalls Imperial India. Forces of the US-installed Kabul government, numbering about 310,000 men, are composed of Tajiks and Uzbeks from the north, some Shia Hazaras, and a hodgepodge of rogue Pashtun and mercenary groups. Ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks served the Soviets when they occupied Afghanistan as well as the puppet Afghan Communist Party. Today, as then, Tajiks and Uzbeks form the core of government armed forces and secret police. They are the blood enemies of the majority Pashtun, who fill the ranks of Taliban and its allies in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
But half the Afghan armed forces and police serve only to support their families. The Afghan economy under NATO’s rule is now so bad that even in Kabul, thousands are starving or dying from intense cold. Half of Afghans are unemployed and must seek work from the US-financed government.
But loyal they are not. While covering the 1980’s jihad against Soviet occupation, I saw everywhere that soldiers and officials supposedly loyal to the Communist Najibullah regime in Kabul kept in constant touch with the anti-Soviet mujahidin and reported all Soviet and government troops movements well in advance. The same thing occurs today in Afghanistan. Taliban knows about most NATO troops operations before they leave their fortified bases. Among Afghans, the strongest bonds of loyalty are family, clan and tribal connections. They cut across all politics and ideology.
Afghans are a proud, prickly people who, as I often saw, take offense all too easily. Pashtuns are infamous for never forgetting an offense, real or imagined, and biding their time to strike back. This is precisely what has been happening in Afghanistan, where arrogant, culturally ignorant U.S. and NATO “advisors” — who are really modern versions of the British Raj’s “white officers leading native troops” — offend and outrage the combustible Afghans. Those who believe 20-year old American soldiers from the Hillbilly Ozarks can win the hearts and minds of Pashtun tribesmen are fools.
Proud Pashtun Afghans can take just so much from unloved, often detested foreign “infidel” advisors before exploding and exacting revenge. This also happened during the Soviet era. But some Soviet officers at least had more refined cultural sensibilities in dealing with Afghans. U.S.-Afghan relations are not going to flowers when American troops call the Afghans “sand niggers” and “towel heads.” Many U.S. GI’s hail from the deep south. They are inundated by virulently anti-Muslim fundamentalist Christian propaganda that calls Islam the “religion of the Devil.”
Many Afghans have just had enough of their foreign occupiers. The Americans have lost their Afghan War. As the Imperial British used to say: you can only rent Afghans for so long. One day they will turn and cut your throat.
Copyright 2012 Eric S. MargolisGoogle Launches IoT Developer Kit
At Q42 we love IoT. So much so that we’ve created a connected coffee counter, a remote controller for our Phillips Hue office lights and of course connected toilets. Needless to say we were very excited when Google asked us to help them building their IoT Developer Kit.
My First IoT
If you’ve always wanted to try this IoT thing but were overwhelmed by the options in terms of dev boards and cloud hostings, look no further. Starting with a Beagle Bone Green Wireless, a variant of the popular Beagle Bone Black, you first add some sensors, like an accelerometer or a light sensor, and then you send that sensor data straight up into The Cloud. Once in the cloud, your data can be visualized in real-time on a webpage for example. Easy duzzit!
So this kit, which has been available to developers worldwide for about a week now, will walk you through connecting the included sensors to the Internets. Which Internets? Well Google’s Cloud Platform of course :-)
What’s inside
If that has piqued your interest, here’s what you’ll find inside the kit:
said Beagle Bone Green Wireless
5 sensors: temperature, accelerometer, tilt, light, motion
buzzer
multi-color LED
96x96 OLED screen
button
Grove cables
a Grove base cape
Where to get it
You can buy this puppy here and don’t forget to drop us a note if you’ve built something with this kit. Happy hacking!The Libertarian Party affiliates in Gaston and Cleveland County will host an information meeting to introduce candidates and conduct party business at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Guacamole’s Mexican Grill, 1101 Union Road, Gastonia.
The Libertarian Party is the third largest official party in North Carolina. Dave Hoesly, the local affiliate coordinator, believes that this election cycle will bring a renewed interest in the Libertarian Party throughout the state.
“People want more options when they go to the polls,” says Hoesly. “It makes no sense in 2016 that people are forced to choose between candidates from only two parties.”
The meeting will be an opportunity to introduce Charlotte-area residents to some of the Libertarian candidates at the state and local level, and to answer questions about the Libertarian Party’s positions and platform. It will also serve as a business meeting to adopt local affiliate bylaws and elect officers.
The unpopularity of the two major-party candidates has created a sizable increase in Libertarian Party Registration and searches for the Libertarian Party Platform. Hoesly believes that the libertarian focus on personal choice, and its desire to end conflicts abroad, are some of the things that new members find appealing.
“We believe that individuals are the best ones to make decisions in their own lives, not the government,” explains Hoesly. “People are tired of war, they are tired of their money not going as far, and they are tired of others using the government to limit their potential and liberty.”
The meeting will host several candidates to include: Lon Cecil for NC Governor, Jacki Cole for NC Lieutenant Governor, Sean Haugh for US Senate, and Nic Haag for NC Senate District 44.
The Libertarian Party of North Carolina has been in continual existence as a political party since 1976, when Arlan Andrews ran for governor. Since 1976, the LPNC has petitioned successfully for ballot access eight times and has had a presidential and gubernatorial candidate on the ballot in North Carolina in all but the 1988 election.
For more information about the meeting (and to make dinner reservations), contact Dave Hoesly at 704-685-4465, or to learn more about the Libertarian Party of North Carolina visit www.LPNC.org.Girl, 14, dies six days after being 'injected with heroin by 26-year-old Navy veteran who refused to call 911 as she lay unconscious'
Jena Dolstad 'asked Navy veteran Sean Warner to inject her with drugs' because she didn't want to do it herself
She was found with heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine in her system
The teen fought for her life for six days after suffering heart and brain damage
Warner faces man-slaughter charges after the death today
Police said he did not call for help immediately after she collapsed
Jena Dolstad died almost a week after being injected with heroin
A 14-year-old Alaskan girl has died six days after she was allegedly injected with heroin by a 26-year-old.
Jena Dolstad of Anchorage had been critical since she was taken to the hospital last Friday with a drug overdose.
The teenager died shortly after noon today (Thursday), police spokeswoman Anita Shell said.
On the tragic night which would lead to her death, Navy Veteran Sean Warner and two other men picked Jena up and took her back to Warner's home to hang out, according to police reports.
Warner was sharing a gram of heroin with two men when the Jena said she was willing to try something 'new' but did not want to inject herself, the court papers report.
Warner tried to inject Jena, but failed, so he had her lie down on his bed and hold out an arm, then used his belt as a tourniquet and shot 25 to 30 units of heroin, taking several times to find a vein, the papers say.
The two witnesses told authorities they left the Jena on the bed and found her the next morning, face down in her own vomit.
'They felt for her pulse, sat her up, and grew concerned at her condition and upset at Warner's ambivalence,' the documents state.
Accused: Navy veteran Sean Warner, 26, has been accused of injecting Jena Dolstad, 14, with heroin six days before she died on Thursday
Warner initially did not want to call 911 because of fears authorities would find drugs, and instead gave the teen Suboxone, a prescription drug used to treat opiate addicts, according to the court papers.
He only called 911 after Jena began to convulse a couple of hours after he gave her the Suboxone, the papers say.
Sean Warner is under arrest on charges of delivering a controlled substance to a minor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and evidence tampering.
With the death, Warner now faces additional charges, including manslaughter, said assistant District Attorney Regan Williams.
Scene: It is believed two others went with Warner to pick the girl up on Thursday night and take her back to Warner's home (pictured) to hang out
Arrested: Sean Warner has been arrested and is facing charges of manslaughter after Jena Dolstad tragically died
The case is still in the "investigatory stages," he said.
When emergency services attended his address to tend to Jena, Warner locked his bedroom door, and responding officers did not search it when he told them it was his roommate's room, the documents state.
Tragedy: 14-year-old Alaskan girl, Jena Dolstad died six days after she was allegedly injected with heroin by 26-year-old Sean Warner at his home in Anchorage, Alaska
After police left, Warner and one of the witnesses put needles and other "related evidence" into a box then dumped it behind a trash bin at a nearby business, according to the papers, which police later recovered.
Dolstad was found to have heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine in her system when she was brought to the hospital, charging documents said.
Medics told authorities she had sustained damage to her brain and heart.
Authorities have said the heroin used is known on the street at "China White," considered more potent than common tar heroin.By: Moroni Channel
Salt Lake City Utah, USA
the church indicated that caffeine is not explicitly against the church’s Word of Wisdom — a set of guidelines for members that forbids the use of tobacco, alcohol and “hot drinks.” Salt Lake City — In an article published by Mormon Newsroom
Church Response to the said manner: “Despite what was reported, the Church revelation spelling out health practices (Doctrine and Covenants 89) does not mention the use of caffeine. The Church’s health guidelines prohibits alcoholic drinks, smoking or chewing of tobacco, and “hot drinks” — taught by Church leaders to refer specifically to tea and coffee.”
Mormons are free to down a Coke or Pepsi. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has clarified its position on caffeinated soft drinks, noting the news media often incorrectly states that its members are forbidden to drink caffeine according to a news article published by Heraldextra.
“For me it’s more of I don’t want to get addicted to it. I don’t want to be like, ‘I need my caffeine today,’ ” said Dave Rollins, who carried a caffeine-free Diet Coke.
church for caffeine usage. A statement released by lds.org about the stance of thefor caffeine usage.
Doctrine and Covenants 89:9 says we shouldn’t drink “hot drinks.” The only official interpretation of this term is the statement made by early Church leaders that it means tea and coffee. Caffeine is not specifically mentioned as the reason not to drink these drinks.
However, we should keep in mind this counsel given by President Boyd K. Packer: “The Word of Wisdom was ‘given for a principle with promise’ (D&C 89:3). … A principle is an enduring truth, a law, a rule you can adopt to guide you in making decisions. Generally principles are not spelled out in detail. Members write in asking if this thing or that is against the Word of Wisdom. … We teach the principle together with the promised blessings. There are many habit-forming, addictive things that one can drink or chew or inhale or inject which injure both body and spirit which are not mentioned in the revelation. … Obedience to counsel will keep you on the safe side of life” (“The Word of Wisdom: The Principle and the Promises,” Ensign,May 1996, 17–18).My son survived this serious collision. Honda’s expert safety engineering saved him. (Courtesy of Lynn Beisner)
Under a pen name, Lynn Beisner writes about family and social justice issues. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Altnernet, The Good Men Project and Role Reboot.
Last Friday night, a semi-trailer pushed the car my son was driving into a Jersey barrier. The trailer’s back wheel landed on the hood of the car, less than six inches from my son’s head. Every window shattered, throwing glass inches from his face.
But my son has not a scratch on him.
I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that I wrote a letter to Honda praising the expertly engineered safety features that saved his life. I explained that I had been in an equally serious accident 18 years earlier and had suffered a serious brain injury and broken bones all over the right side of my body, requiring countless surgeries.
I posted the letter on Facebook, and closed it with this:
I want to extend my thanks to the engineers who used their intelligence and skill to create a car that safe, to the crash test dummies who have died a thousand horrible deaths and to your executives who did not scrimp on safety. Thank you, Honda.
That last line rubbed some people the wrong way. While many who left comments on my post were just glad that my son was alive and well, others wanted to know why I had thanked Honda for that outcome. The entity that deserved my thanks, they said, was God. One commenter wrote: “I am thankful that God held your son in His embrace and I am curious why you thanked Honda rather than Him.”
Before I go any further, let me be clear: I am deeply grateful that I still have a son to make fun of my tastes in music, drink milk out of the carton and turn my mother-heart to mush when he tells me that he loves me. In moments of private devotion, I find myself at a loss to express how thankful I felt when I saw the remains of his car and how perfectly it had formed a cocoon for his body.
However, over many years of thinking about religion and faith, I have noticed that something sad and somewhat strange happens when we thank God: We tend to stop there. We simply overlook the decisions, the science, the policies and the people who contributed to the “miracle.” To put it another way: When we focus on supernatural deliverance from harm, we often ignore all of the human ways we can improve our own safety. I am concerned that we may associate survival of serious accidents with the unpredictable hand of Providence, not with airbags, safety testing and the regulations that have put them in place.
For the first 29 years of my life, the only cars that I could afford were dodgy and dangerous. One of them had a tricky power-steering pump. One day, when the power steering went out, the wheel whipped back when I tapped a curb, hitting my hand on the inside of the wheel and snapping one of the bones. My 4-year-old daughter had to shift gears as I drove myself to the emergency room. Another car required that I park on a hill because, no matter what part we repaired or replaced, it often wouldn’t drive unless I gave it a rolling start and popped the clutch.
When my husband introduced me to Honda, I fell deeply in love. I named that first Honda Mr. Belvedere, after the 1980s television housekeeper because, like its namesake, the car was reliable, boring, safe and served our family well. Every other car that we have owned has been a Honda. The company has not violated our trust in more than 16 years.
But here is the other reason that I thanked Honda: Automobile safety is a cause that is very important to me. I understand from painful personal experience just how fragile the human body can be and how savage a car can become during an accident. I did not want to waste an opportunity to credit a company that saved a life by doing the right thing. More importantly, I do not want to contribute to the mistaken idea that surviving a motor vehicle accident is more a stroke of luck or divine providence than the result of human actions and decisions.
Thankfully, Honda is not the only car company that is producing safer vehicles. The number of traffic fatalities dropped 26 percent between 2005 and 2012, to about 1 in 10,000 people. Such a significant improvement in safety does not happen by accident. And it’s also not a product solely of the free market. The airbag was patented in 1951 and offered in luxury vehicles in the 1970s. But airbags did not become standard in American vehicles until federal regulations began requiring them in the mid-1990s.
Fatal car accidents are not inevitable. We have the ability to prevent them and the amount of injury they cause. Accidents also are not an act of God. No matter what you believe about a divine creator, I think most would agree that an all-poweful and all-loving being would not need encouragement to do the right thing. Unlike people, God does not require regulations and oversight – or even thanks – to be sure that human beings are never sacrificed for profit. The truth is, we cannot make our roads and our cars safer if we ignore what makes them that way: science, regulations and corporations that prioritize safety.
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This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stampsDon't forget to comment! <3Still working on my digital skills and getting there! Played around with some effects and tried some stuff I've never done before. This is actually a remake of a really, really old drawing I did of Princess Mononoke (a Before and After meme to follow soon perhaps) that I think may have been the very first art piece I ever uploaded on deviantart.I absolutely love Princess Mononoke, she's so fearless and tough, but when I drew this I thought of a softer side of San. A girl who's lost and loves the wolves. X)I seriously need to work on my background skills.Okay, Photoshop, approx 8 hours. This is the result of being stuck in my room with the flu (don't want my poor roommates to suffer too, especially since school just started lol) for a few days.PSD and fullsize available through PatreonI am also releasing my first manga chapter "Soulbound" soon, so stay tuned!!Character belongs to Studio Ghibli filmsBefore and AfterThose of us who work in pediatric intensive care have frequent encounters with the problem of suicide and attempted suicide. It has seemed to me for some years that the numbers are increasing, and this has been shown to be the case. After years of declining, the suicide rate in our country has been increasing, now at about 125% of the rate of several decades ago.
This increase accelerated after 2006. Although all age groups showed an increase, the rate among women, particularly adolescent girls, took a notable jump. In 2012 suicide was the second leading cause of death in adolescents ages 12 to 19 years, accounting for more deaths in this age group than cancer, heart disease, influenza, pneumonia, diabetes mellitus, human immunodeficiency virus, and stroke combined. Here are some recent statistics of women from the CDC, although they don't quite break out adolescents they way I would like.
Actual suicide is just the tip of the iceberg, since, at least among adolescent girls who attempt it, typically, with a drug overdose, there are as many as 90 attempts for every death. Since a large number of these attempts end up in the PICU, I'm not surprised we are seeing more and more of them come through our doors. A few other points are worth noting here. The success statistics for adolescent boys are unfortunately much higher because boys tend to use more violent means than girls, such as hanging, firearms, or automobiles.
However, although rates for boys are up slightly, they really haven't changed much. It's also important to realize suicide attempts are a spectrum -- some are more serious than others. Many girls take an overdose and then immediately tell somebody about it. These are often called suicide gestures and can be quite impulsive. Some use the term "cry for help" to describe them. More ominous are children who carefully plan, such as by hoarding powerful drugs in secret and taking them in a setting where they won't be found. They may leave a suicide note. I couldn't find any data about whether these different categories are discordant in the rate increase, but I assume the two are tracking together. Finally, a child may not know which drugs are truly dangerous. I have seen very serious suicide attempts by children who take overdoses of what we know to be innocuous medications, but the child does not. Regardless of what category the attempt is, of course, the child needs mental health services subsequently. These days we find a child's text messages to be very helpful. So why the increase in adolescent girls?
Presumably, suicide rates are rough and ready markers for rates of depression. Is teen depression increasing? A 2006 study says no, at least up until then. What about the last decade, since 2006 appears to be the year suicide rates inflected upward in adolescent girls. I did find a snapshot for 2015 from the CDC of the number of adolescents who experienced a major depressive episode during the year -- girls were nearly 20%.
A recent study in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, found a nearly 50% increase in adolescent depression over the past 11 years. Mental health problems are notoriously difficult to study because, of course, we have no definitive test for them -- no blood test, no fancy brain scans. We mostly rely on surveys. Still, it does seem something changed about a decade ago, and this is probably reflected in the increase in suicide attempts among girls at roughly the same rate as the increase in major depression.
There are a few other things to keep in mind. Prescriptions of antidepressants have increased dramatically, particularly of drugs in the class we call selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Common brand names for these are Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, and Zoloft. There has been concern that in the short term after starting them, SSRIs may actually increase thoughts about suicide in adolescents. Another new development is social media. Teenagers, especially those in difficult home situations or who are socially isolated, are quite susceptible to bullying behavior, and cyberbullying has emerged as a new threat to such children. There have been several dramatic cases in the news about suicides following cyberbullying.
I'm sorry to say I really don't know what explains these increasing rates, except to point out the overall rate of suicide for the whole population has also increased to some extent; it was 10.5 deaths per 100,000 persons in 1999 and is now 13 per 100,000. Middle-aged males have seen a dramatic jump in rates. It appears to me that, for many possible reasons, there is more social anxiety and depression in America, which in turn increases suicide rates. Adolescent girls are feeling this in particular. You might say our entire society is issuing a cry for help.
Christopher Johnson is a pediatric intensive care physician and author of Keeping Your Kids Out of the Emergency Room: A Guide to Childhood Injuries and Illnesses, Your Critically Ill Child: Life and Death Choices Parents Must Face, How to Talk to Your Child's Doctor: A Handbook for Parents, and How Your Child Heals: An Inside Look At Common Childhood Ailments. He blogs at his self-titled site, Christopher Johnson, MD.
This post appeared on KevinMD.com.
2017-04-13T17:00:00-0400ZAGREB, Croatia - A conservative populist become Croatia's first female president Sunday after beating the center-left incumbent in a runoff election amid deep discontent over economic woes in the European Union's newest member.
The state electoral commission said that after about 97 percent of the vote counted, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic won 50.54 of the vote Sunday, while President Ivo Josipovic had 49.46 percent.
The result meant that Grabar-Kitarovic won by a slight margin of about 21,000 votes.
Josipovic, a law professor and composer of classical music, conceded defeat, saying Grabar-Kitarovic won in a "democratic competition."
The vote was seen as a major test for Croatia's center-left government, which is facing parliamentary elections later this year under a cloud of criticism over its handling of the economic crisis. The conservative triumph could shift Croatia back to right-wing nationalism, jeopardizing relations with its neighbors, including bitter Balkan wartime rival Serbia.
The vote was always expected to be close. In the first round two weeks ago, Josipovic won 38.5 percent of the vote, just edging Grabar-Kitarovic with 37.2 percent. The runoff was called because neither candidate captured more than 50 percent needed to win outright.
The presidency in Croatia is a largely ceremonial position, but the vote was considered an important test for the main political parties before the parliamentary elections expected in the second half of the year. The victory for Grabar-Kitarovic - giving her a five-year term - greatly boosts the chances of her center-right Croatian Democratic Union to win back power.
A voter casts her ballot at a polling station in Zagreb, Croatia, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015. AP / Darko Bandic
Grabar-Kitarovic, a former foreign minister, ambassador to Washington and an ex-assistant to the NATO secretary general, said earlier Sunday she felt "very confident" of a victory because "people will vote for a change."
She has said that Josipovic did nothing to stop Croatia's economic downturn, including a 20-percent unemployment rate - one of the highest in the EU.
Josipovic has said the president's duties don't include the government's economic policies and has proposed constitutional changes that would decentralize the country and give more power to Croatia's regional authorities.
Grabar-Kitarovic also criticized Josipovic for allegedly being too soft toward Serbs, who in the 1990s fought a war against Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia. She said Serbia's EU membership bid must be conditioned by Croatia.
"Serbia is our neighborly and friendly country," Josipovic said after he cast his ballot. "But it has to meet the same conditions which we had during our bid for the European Union."
Autocratic nationalist President Franjo Tudjman and his conservative HDZ party ruled Croatia until his death in 1999, marking the start of democratization that put Croatia, with the population of 4.2 million, on track to EU membership, which was accomplished in 2013.
Croatia declared independence in 1991.Photo
The Justice Department is poised to announce a $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America over accusations that it duped investors into buying troubled mortgage securities, say people briefed on the matter — the single largest government settlement by a company in American history.
Yet even as that accord nears completion, prosecutors are preparing a separate civil case against Angelo Mozilo, the man who came to embody the risk-taking for which Bank of America is now paying dearly, a rare move against a senior executive at the center of the financial crisis.
The Bank of America settlement will be a coda to a painful period for the bank and the broader financial industry. More than any other Wall Street giant, Bank of America was the source of the troubled subprime loans that helped ignite the crisis — the result of its acquisitions of Merrill Lynch and Mr. Mozilo’s Countrywide Financial. The size and scope of the expected settlement, which will announced at news conference at 9 a.m. on Thursday, reflect the extent of the damage.
The deal would resolve more than two dozen investigations from prosecutors across the country, the people briefed on the matter said, including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, New Jersey and North Carolina. To settle those varied investigations, some of which have not been previously reported, the bank is expected to pay a $9.6 billion cash penalty and $7 billion in so-called soft-dollar payments to aid struggling consumers. In turn, the Justice Department will forgo any potential cases against the bank over collateralized debt obligations, one of the people said, complex financial instruments the bank sold in the years before the crisis.
Photo
While no bank executives will face charges as part of the settlement, the people said, the prosecutors in Los Angeles are preparing a lawsuit against Mr. Mozilo, Countrywide’s co-founder. Mr. Mozilo, who previously reached a $67.5 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, was an early target of the Justice Department.
In 2011, the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles decided not to file criminal |
indeed it is vital that it should do so.
If any of the weaker members of the eurozone left, their currencies would probably depreciate by something like 30pc to 50pc. International experience suggests that the consequent spike in inflation can be short-lived.
Just before departure, some form of capital controls would be essential, including closure of the banks. But after departure, capital controls should be used sparingly, and withdrawn as soon as possible.
An exiting country would face a huge problem with its debt – quite unlike the experience of classic devaluations, such as the UK’s in 1992. For once it has left the euro, its debt will be denominated in what will then be a foreign currency – and in relation to relevant domestic values, such as tax revenue, the value of that debt will have soared. The government should redenominate its debt in the new national currency and make clear its intention to renegotiate the terms of this debt. This is likely to involve a substantial default – enough to cut the ratio of debt to GDP to 60pc.
To restore confidence further, the exiting country should immediately announce a regime of inflation targeting, adopt a set of tough fiscal rules, and outlaw wage indexation. If necessary, the central bank should stand ready to inject liquidity into its own banking system. The monetary authorities should also announce their willingness to recapitalise the banks.
The authorities should provide to the private sector guidance on the legal issues, including the impact on international contracts currently denominated in euros and the country’s membership of the European Union – which it should seek to maintain.
There is no doubt that euro exit would be messy and – if handled badly – extremely damaging, not only for the country concerned, but also for the rest of us. But it needn’t be handled badly. Indeed, there are ways of dealing effectively with all the key practical difficulties.
If handled well, euro exit could present weak peripheral members with a much better prospect than remaining in the euro. Moreover, their exit could enhance the prosperity of the rest of Europe – and the wider world.On the heels of three new miniseries featuring Midnighter, Hawkman and Deadman this month, January will bring more unique and noteworthy miniseries to readers, including a tale of the Amazon warriors in the years before Diana, and the return of Captain Atom.
THE ODYSSEY OF THE AMAZONS #1 is a brand-new miniseries set in the world of Wonder Woman from writer and actor Kevin Grevioux (New Warriors, Underworld) and artist Ryan Benjamin (BATMAN BEYOND). Years before the birth of Princess Diana, a group of Amazons set out on a globe-spanning quest to find others of their kind, encountering legendary creatures and beings along the way. But their journey soon turns into a rescue mission as two of their own are captured by the legendary Storm Giants of Norse mythology. It’s up to their leader, the stalwart Hessia, to keep them together through the many trials that lie ahead. The series will run for six issues.
THE FALL AND RISE OF CAPTAIN ATOM #1 is a new miniseries from the writing team of Cary Bates and Greg Weisman (CAPTAIN ATOM) and artist Will Conrad (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Bates and Weisman return to the character with “Blowback: Part One”! Captain Atom hasn’t been seen or heard from in years—and even if you think you know what happened to him…you’re wrong! But you’re not alone. To this day, no one on Earth—not even the other superheroes—has an inkling of the missing Captain Atom’s true fate. At last, the truth is about to be revealed in a saga that transcends not only the meaning of life and death, but the limits of time and space. The series will run for six issues.
Both titles will debut in January 2017, beginning with THE FALL AND RISE OF CAPTAIN ATOM #1 on January 4, and THE ODYSSEY OF THE AMAZONS #1 on January 18.A seventh Palestinian succumbs to his wounds following Friday’s deadly clashes on the Gaza border. Further shootings and attacks into Saturday morning show few signs that the surge in violence is abating.
A total of seven Palestinians have now been killed as a result of IDF fire at protests along the Gaza Strip’s border fence, which took place Friday afternoon. The confrontations killed six and wounded over 130 at the scene, several of whom were in serious condition. One of those, 22-year-old Jihad Salim al-Ubeid, succumbed to his wounds overnight.
Widespread demonstrations had been expected following Hamas’ call for a “day of rage” in response to the killing and wounding of Palestinians by Israeli security forces, as well as ongoing restrictions at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
On Friday, hundreds of Gazans gathered near the eastern border with Israel, close to the Shujai’ya neighborhood in Gaza City. The Israeli army began firing at Palestinians with live rounds as the demonstration approached the buffer zone along the border fence. According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, the fire was in response to Palestinian stone throwing, as well as rolling burning tires toward army positions along the border.
The Gaza Health Ministry provided the details of the other six those killed as Shadi Hussam Dawla, 20, Ahmad al-Harbawi, 20 and Abed al-Wahidi, 20, who were shot at the protest near Shujai’yah, and Muhammad al-Raqeb, 15, Ziad Nabil Sharaf, 20 and Adnan Moussa Abu Elayyan, 22, who were shot at the Khan Younis demonstration.
The heavy death toll has prompted fears among the Israeli military that militant groups in Gaza may respond with rocket fire into Israel. Late Friday evening, two rockets were shot towards Israel from inside the Strip but failed to cross into Israeli territory. Shortly after that, sirens sounded in southern Israel as an additional rocket from the Gaza Strip fell in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council.
The violence and unrest continued throughout Friday night and into Saturday morning. Overnight, demonstrations and violent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces were reported in East Jerusalem, Umm al-Fahm, Sakhnin, Kafr Kana, Nazareth and Jerusalem’s Old City [Hebrew links].
In Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp, a Palestinian was shot and critically wounded in the early hours of Saturday morning, after reportedly opening fire on Israeli police. He died from his wounds shortly after.
On Saturday morning, two Israelis were stabbed and lightly injured on HaNevi’im Street in Jerusalem, close to Damascus Gate. The attacker, Ishaq Badran, a 16-year-old Palestinian from Kafr Aqab, was shot dead at the scene by Israeli police.
Additionally, protests are reportedly ongoing near Erez Crossing in the Gaza Strip [Hebrew link].
There has been a dramatic spike in violence in Israel-Palestine over the last few weeks, with confrontations over the Al-Aqsa compound leading to a spate of “lone-wolf” attacks by Palestinians and heavy-handed, frequently lethal responses from Israeli security forces. Since the wave of violence began, 17 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed.On Tuesday, the retired general who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan will publish a candid book likely to be unloved in military and political circles
General Dan Bolger says what the US does not want to hear: Why We Lost
Dan Bolger is not looking to add to the debate over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The retired three-star army general, out of patience with unresolved conflicts, means to end it.
On Tuesday, Bolger will publish his 500-page attempt to make sense of both the wars in which he served. Its blunt title pre-emptively maneuvers conversation over the book on to Bolger’s terrain: Why We Lost.
Senior army officers tend not to use the “L” word, certainly not in public, despite one war stretching into its 14th inconclusive year and the other one restarting. Bolger is not used to being out of step with the army. A tall man who speaks deliberately, he is respected in military circles for being a historian as well as an officer. Bolger deadpanned during an hour-long interview with the Guardian that he won’t get any more Christmas cards from his old friends in uniform.
But Bolger considers a reckoning with the military’s poor record in Iraq and Afghanistan overdue. The army in which he soldiered for three decades comes in for the greatest amount of blame, a decision that flatters the military’s pretensions about being above politics but arguably lets the Bush and Obama administrations off the hook. Bolger, a senior officer responsible for training the Iraqi and Afghan militaries, includes himself in the roster of failed generals.
“Here’s one I would offer that should be asked of every serving general and admiral: general, admiral, did we win? If we won, how are we doing now in the war against Isis? You just can’t get an answer to that question, and in fact, you don’t even hear it,” Bolger said.
“So if you can’t even say if you won or lost the stuff you just wrapped up, what the hell are you doing going into another one?”
Bolger has several explanations for why the US lost. The post-Vietnam army was built, deliberately, for short, conventional, decisive conflicts, yet the post-9/11 military leadership embraced – sometimes deliberately, sometimes through miscalculation – fighting insurgents and terrorists who knew the terrain, the people and the culture better than the US ever would.
“Anybody who does work in foreign countries will tell you, if you want long-term success, you have to understand that culture. We didn’t even come close. We knew enough to get by,” Bolger said.
More controversially, Bolger laments that the US did not pull out of Afghanistan after ousting al-Qaida in late 2001 and out of Iraq after ousting Saddam in April 2003. Staying in each conflict as it deteriorated locked policymakers and officers into a pattern of escalation, with persistence substituting for success. No one in uniform of any influence argued for withdrawal, or even seriously considered it: the US military mantra of the age is to leave behind a division’s worth of advisers as insurance and expect them to resolve what a corps could not.
The objection, which proved contemporaneously persuasive, is that the US would leave a vacuum inviting greater dangerous instability. “It would be a mess, and you’d have the equivalent of Isis,” Bolger conceded.
“But guess what: we’re in that same mess right now after eight years, and we’re going to be in the same mess after 13 years in Afghanistan.” The difference, he said, is thousands of Americans dead; tens of thousands of Americans left with life-changing wounds; and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead, injured, impoverished or radicalized.
“Moreover, you’d be doing a real counterinsurgency, where they’d have to win it. That’s what the mistake is here: to think that we could go into these countries and stabilize their villages and fix their government, that’s incredible, unless you take a colonial or imperial attitude and say, ‘I’m going to be here for 100 years, this is the British Raj, I’m never leaving,’” he said.
It is there that Bolger plants his flag in an interminable debate within the army about the wisdom of counterinsurgency. He savages its proponents, chiefly Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, for overpromising and under-delivering in Iraq and then recycling the formula to brew a weaker tea in Afghanistan. It leads Bolger’s book to some dubious places, like comparing the pre-Petraeus Iraq commander George Casey to Ulysses S Grant, the savior of the union, even though Casey under-promised and under-delivered.
Some in military circles view Bolger’s book as the first shot of an internecine fight to purge the army of counterinsurgency, much as the post-Vietnam generation attempted. It is an uphill struggle. While many officers of Bolger’s generation share his views, the Iraq surge saw the greatest tactical results of either long war past the invasion phase. Repudiating it is difficult without conceding the futility of either conflict, as Bolger has done, which, for much of the contemporary military, is a psychological step too far.
John Nagl, a retired army lieutenant colonel and prominent counterinsurgency advocate, praised Bolger as a “smart, dedicated army officer” while rejecting his thesis.
“While I haven’t yet read his new book, I don’t agree with him that we lost, and find it hard to believe that he does,” Nagl said.
But if the wars succeeded, Bolger said, “how come two or three years later, everything’s a pile of crap?”
One of the reasons was an “unstated assumption” that undergirded the American construction of the Iraqi and Afghan militaries, supposedly the US ticket out of both wars.
Bolger, who led the training of Afghan soldiers and held a senior post training the Iraqis, said US trainers banked on being present alongside their foreign charges for decades, guaranteeing their performance and compensating for weaknesses.
“The thought was to leave a conventional division, Korean-type model and you’d be there for 40 or 50 years with a mutual defense treaty and all that kind of stuff. Hey, the Korean army in 1953 was not very good. It takes a generation to build a good army: you need to retrain leaders, you have to build a non-commissioned officer corps,” he said.
The anticipated length of the US training helps explain the immaturity of both forces. The collapse of entire divisions of the Iraqi military against the Isis advance this year sent shockwaves through Washington. The Afghans are judged to lack critical air support, medical evacuation, intelligence and other capabilities, which helps explain how 9,000 soldiers have died in two years, as a US general revealed last week.
Yet never has an administration official or senior military officer – to include Bolger – told the American people to expect a half-century stay in a hostile foreign country. Instead, officials vaguely discuss a “long war”, leaving the actual anticipated duration unstated, to say nothing of the price in money and blood.
Surveying the latest war against Isis, Bolger sees the same pattern repeating.
“Here’s what wasn’t said: we never had the discussion where we said, ‘Hey, Mr President, you realize you’re signing up for a 50-year commitment, or plus, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where was that discussion? We talk about surges, but those are all short-fuse things. We’re still not having that.
“Has President Obama come to the American people and said, ‘By the way, this fight against Isis is going to last 30 or 40 years. You guys good with that?’”Designed with strong technical expertise and high intelligence, it’s not so far-fetched that the robots of the future could outperform human managers
Would you like to work for a robot? Although the automation of skilled jobs is a reality, your boss is probably (still) a human. Even though the most optimistic artificial intelligence (AI) enthusiast would struggle to persuade us that the technology to create non-human leaders is upon us just yet, robots could be managing people in the decades to come. So would a robot leader be much worse than your current boss?
Most people think of leadership as an occupation or a person who is formally in charge of others, but leadership is really the mechanism that enables a group to perform better. Specifically, leadership is a process of influence that enables a group of people to function as a team to achieve more than an individual or a badly led group. Leadership, then, is a resource for the group, and the critical issue is not what the leaders look like but how they influence the group.
The good news for those hoping to automate leadership is that its scientific study is well-established. Indeed, 100 years of academic research have enabled us to identify the key ingredients of leadership, so it is now possible to predict with a relatively high degree of accuracy whether someone will become a leader and how effectively they will lead if they get there. And once we are able to decode a phenomenon to break it down into its core components, then it is feasible to automate it. As Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics and a pioneer in robotics, noted: “If we can do anything in a clear and intelligible way, we can do it by machine.”
Unlike human leaders, a well-programmed robot would be selflessly focused on advancing the interest of its team
For example, a crucial component of effective leadership is technical expertise. Unsurprisingly, leaders make better decisions than their subordinates when they have higher levels of domain-specific knowledge and sometimes higher general intelligence than them. To the degree that this knowledge can be reduced to a fixed set of rules and facts, it would be hard for even the most experienced leader to compete with a machine.
Furthermore, while the logical and reasoning capabilities of humans tend to peak by the age of 30, intelligent machines can continue to learn and get smarter and faster as they process more data. Of course, a robot leader will not be able to replicate human intuition, but there is no real evidence that intuition – feelings about facts – makes leaders more effective. On the contrary, when intuition is not grounded on data it can produce toxic ideas and undesirable behaviours, such as prejudice, unconscious bias and discrimination.
Another key component of effective leadership is integrity, which involves putting the team ahead of the leader and displaying consistency between one’s words and actions. There are two main reasons for the importance of integrity in leadership. First, integrity is linked to trustworthiness and unless groups trust their leaders they will not be able (or willing) to perform well. Second, when leaders lack integrity they could engage in a range of unethical and counterproductive behaviours that harm their teams.
Given the frequency with which these toxic and destructive behaviours are displayed in leaders, including highly qualified and talented individuals at the top of successful and global organisations, it appears that the honesty bar is fairly low, so it should not be difficult to design robot leaders that outperform most of their human counterparts on this score.
Needless to say, unlike human leaders, a well-programmed robot would be selflessly focused on advancing the interest of its team – that would be its only agenda. In contrast, even when people lead effectively they tend to be driven by selfish and narcissistic desires (eg the need for status, recognition and power), which explains why they often derail. Indeed, one study estimates that up to 67% [pdf] of managers can be expected to fail.
A third critical element for effective leadership is strategic self-awareness or the capacity to understand how one impacts on others. Self-aware leaders are able to examine themselves from other people’s perspective. They are alert to feedback and able the gauge how their acts and intentions may be interpreted by others, which enables them to proactively manage their reputation.
Although self-awareness might appear to be a human characteristic, it can be modelled in robots. Indeed, most AI systems comprise a feedback loop that enables them to adjust their decisions on the basis of environmental inputs (eg thermostats, chatbots and wearables). Meanwhile the technologies for identifying human emotions from audiovisual content are advancing rapidly. And again, it is not that this ability is particularly refined in leaders, which is why billions of pounds are devoted each year to executive coaching designed to help leaders increase their self-awareness.
A final key ingredient for effective leadership concerns good people-skills, often referred to as emotional intelligence (EQ). Leaders with higher EQ are able to stay calm and composed, even in stressful circumstances. They can read other people like a book and are capable of predicting and influencing the behaviour of others.
Although affective computing – the creation of emotionally intelligent systems - is still in its infancy, it is important to note that robots do not need to be able to feel in order to act in an emotionally intelligent manner. In fact, contrary to what people think, even in humans high EQ is associated with lower rather than higher emotionality: it is about controlling one’s impulses and inhibiting strong emotions in order to act rationally and minimise emotional interference.
What does artificial intelligence mean for the creative mind? Read more
EQ scores range from very low – with key characteristics being neurotic, hotheaded and emotionally hypersensitive – to very high, phlegmatic, impassive and unexcited, so the real challenge would be to create robots with low rather than high EQ.
Though the idea of a computer-generated manager may seem far-fetched at the moment, robot leaders could start entering the working environment and begin to outperform bad (or even average) human leaders within the next few decades.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is professor of business psychology at University College London, visiting professor at Columbia University and the CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems. He is co-founder of metaprofiling.com and author of Confidence: The Surprising Truth About How Much You Need and How to Get It.
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All Guardian Media & Tech Network content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled “Paid for by” – find out more here.As an Austin-based studio prepares to release the new season of its popular web series ‘RWBY,’ the animators behind it are getting ready to move into a new building.
“We’re basically all cramped into this stage right now and we need more space,” said Kerry Shawcross, writer and co-director on ‘RWBY Volume 4.’
Located at the Austin Studios, Rooster Teeth Productions and its animation department occupy more than one stage. The animation department alone is growing by leaps and bounds.
“At the time that animation moves into its new digs, it will be bigger than the company Rooster Teeth was as a whole when the company moved onto the Austin Film Studios lot just two years ago,” said Head of Rooster Teeth Animation Gray Haddock.
The team will move into the new space near Rooster Teeth’s current location before Volume 4 premieres Oct. 22, and will help the animators continue to produce shows like RWBY, Red vs. Blue and Camp Camp.
“We want to do more things and the things that we’re doing we want to do them even better. For that we need more people and more talented people,” Shawcross said.× Police: Woman caught drinking vanilla extract charged with DUI, littering
ADAMS TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Adams Township Police originally out to catch a litterer ended up making a DUI arrest.
But it took some time and old-fashioned police work to finally identify the suspect.
The police had a real puzzle on their hands. Workers with the Township road department kept finding bags full of empty vanilla extract bottles with an alcohol content of 35 percent or more. So they put a trail camera in the woods near Myoma and Carriage Hill roads.
“In the same day, we got pictures of the subject throwing litter out, which was vanilla extract bottles,” Adams Township assistant chief Robert Scanlon said.
From the pictures, police got a description of an SUV and the license plate number. The next step was catching the driver.
“I believe the sergeant was out one day, and he observed the car,” Scanlon said. “He made a traffic stop and subsequently arrested the woman for DUI.”
The driver was identified as 61-year-old Mary Ranker from Cranberry. Police say Ranker said she had two vanillas, about seventy proof alcohol that she was drinking from an eight-ounce bottle. She also had five more two-ounce bottles in her car.
Greg Betant lives nearby. He says empty bottles have been dumped there for years.
“I’ve complained about it to the police, and I usually get a large garbage bag and go down every year and pick up,” he said. “The most I picked up at one time was 110.”
He couldn’t believe that a 61-year-old woman was drinking vanilla extract.
“I thought kids that could not buy alcohol [did that], I didn’t think a 61-year-old woman [would],” Betant said. “That’s amazing.”
Ranker’s blood alcohol level was 0.128 percent. She’s charged with DUI and littering.
Police say Ranker is a recovering alcoholic who felt more comfortable buying vanilla extract from the supermarket than going to the liquor store.
According to the FDA, “In vanilla extract the content of ethyl alcohol is not less than 35 percent by volume…”German and British spy services in ‘biggest rift’ since World War II, claim sources
December 16, 2016 by Joseph Fitsanakis
A reported discord between British and German intelligence services, which began in 2014, allegedly persists and now constitutes the “biggest rift between [the] secret services” of the two countries “since World War II”. According to British newspaper The Daily Mail, the Germans accuse Britain of working with the United States to spy on Berlin, while the British government says German intelligence agencies cannot be trusted to safeguard classified information. In an article published on Thursday, The Daily Mail said British and American intelligence agencies have stopped sharing non-critical intelligence with their German counterparts. The lack of cooperation “has now reached the point where there is virtual radio silence” between German and Anglo-American intelligence agencies, said the newspaper, citing “a source familiar” with the ongoing negotiations between the two sides.
In 2014, Germany expelled the most senior American intelligence officer stationed in the country after it confirmed that the United States National Security Agency had spied on German citizens, and had even targeted the personal communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Berlin also caught a German intelligence officer who was spying for the Central Intelligence Agency. It was later alleged that Washington threatened to end all intelligence cooperation with Berlin if the German government offered protection to American defector Edward Snowden. Some German lawmakers had suggested that Berlin should reach out to Snowden, in return for information about US intelligence operations against Germany. In March of last year, the German broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung said that officials in Berlin had accused Britain of participating in American spy operations against Germany. The resulting dispute betweem Britain and Germany, said the paper, had turned into a “burgeoning crisis” that threatened intelligence-sharing between London and Berlin.
According to The Daily Mail, British intelligence agencies are now accusing their German counterparts of not properly safeguarding classified information that is shared with them by British security services. Consequently, claim the British, some of that information has found its way to WikiLeaks, the international whistleblower website founded by Australian former computer hacker Julian Assange. The London-based newspaper claims that British and German intelligence officials have met twice since 2014 to discuss ways of resolving the differences between their respective intelligence agencies. But the meetings have failed to mend the division between the parties and the crisis persists, claims The Daily Mail.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 16 December 2016 | Permalink
AdvertisementsAUSTIN, Tex. — Texas and 16 other states filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday challenging President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, arguing that he violated his constitutional duty to enforce the laws and illegally placed new burdens on state budgets.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Brownsville, Tex., was the first major legal challenge to initiatives Mr. Obama announced Nov. 20 that will provide protection from deportation and work permits to up to five million immigrants in the country illegally.
Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas, which led the coalition bringing the challenge, said Mr. Obama was “abdicating his responsibility to faithfully enforce the laws that were duly enacted by Congress and attempting to rewrite immigration laws, which he has no authority to do.”
The suit added to the broadside by angry Republicans against Mr. Obama’s unilateral actions. In Washington, Republicans in the House of Representatives moved toward holding a largely symbolic vote on Thursday on a bill to dismantle the president’s programs, with a plan to vote next week on a spending bill that could fund the Department of Homeland Security, the agency administering the new programs, for only a few months.Exploring Performance of etcd, Zookeeper and Consul Consistent Key-value Datastores
• By Gyu-Ho Lee
This blog post is the first in a series exploring the performance of three distributed, consistent key-value stores: etcd, Zookeeper, and Consul. The post is written by the etcd team.
The Role of Consistent Key-value Stores
Many modern distributed applications are built on top of distributed consistent key-value stores. Applications in the Hadoop ecosystem and many parts of the "Netflix stack" use Zookeeper. Consul exposes a service discovery and health checking API and supports cluster tools such as Nomad. The Kubernetes container orchestration system, Vitess horizontal scaling for MySQL, Google Key Transparency project, and many others are built on etcd. With so many mission critical clustering, service discovery, and database applications built on these consistent key-value stores, measuring the reliability and performance is paramount.
The Need for Write Performance
The ideal key-value store ingests many keys per second, quickly persists and acknowledges each write, and holds lots of data. If a store can’t keep up with writes then requests will time-out, possibly triggering failovers and downtime. If writes are slow then applications appear sluggish. With too much data, a store may crawl or even be rendered inoperable.
We used dbtester to simulate writes and found that etcd outperforms similar consistent distributed key-value store software on these benchmarks. At a low level, the architectural decisions behind etcd demonstrably utilize resources more uniformly and efficiently. These decisions translate to reliably good throughput, latency, and total capacity under reasonable workloads and at scale. This in turn helps applications utilizing etcd, such as Kubernetes, be reliable, easy to monitor, and efficient.
There are many dimensions to performance; this post will drill down on key creation, populating the key-value store, to illustrate the mechanics under the hood.
Resource utilization
Before jumping to high-level performance, it’s helpful to first highlight differences in key-value store behavior through resource utilization and concurrency; writes offer a good opportunity for this. Writes work the disk because they must be persisted down to media. That data must then replicate across machines, inducing considerable inter-cluster network traffic. That traffic makes up part of the complete overhead from processing writes, which consumes CPU. Finally, putting keys into the store draws on memory directly for key user-data and indirectly for book-keeping.
According to a recent user survey, the majority of etcd deployments use virtual machines. To abide by the most common platform, all tests run on Google Cloud Platform Compute Engine virtual machines with a Linux OS1. Each cluster uses three VMs, enough to tolerate a single node failure. Each VM has 16 dedicated vCPUs, 30GB memory, and a 300GB SSD with 150 MB/s sustained writes. This configuration is powerful enough to simulate traffic from 1,000 clients, which is a minimum for etcd’s use cases and the chosen target for the following resource measurements. All tests were run with multiple trials; the deviation among runs was relatively small and did not impact any general conclusions. The setup (with etcd) is diagrammed below:
All benchmarks use the following software configuration:
System Version Compiler etcd v3.1.0 Go 1.7.5 Zookeeper r3.4.9 Java 8 (JRE build 1.8.0_121-b13) Consul v0.7.4 Go 1.7.5
Each resource utilization test creates one million unique 256-byte keys with 1024-byte values. The key length was selected to stress the store using a common maximum path length. The value length was selected because it’s the expected average size for protobuf-encoded Kubernetes values. Although exact average key length and value lengths are workload-dependent, the lengths are representative of a trade-off between extremes. A more precise sensitivity study would shed more insight on best-case performance characteristics for each store, but risks belaboring the point.
Disk bandwidth
Write operations must persist to disk; they log consensus proposals, compact away old data, and save store snapshots. For the most part, writes should be dominated by logging consensus proposals. etcd’s log streams protobuf-encoded proposals to a sequence of preallocated files, syncing at page boundaries with a rolling CRC32 checksum on each entry. Zookeeper’s transaction log is similar, but is jute-encoded and checksums with Adler32. Consul takes a different approach, instead logging to its boltdb/bolt backend, raft-boltdb.
The chart below shows how scaling client concurrency impacts disk writes. As expected, when concurrency increases, disk bandwidth, as measured from /proc/diskstats over an ext4 filesystem, tends to increase to match increased request pressure. The disk bandwidth for etcd grows steadily; it writes more data than Zookeeper because it must also write to boltDB in addition to its log. Zookeeper, on the other hand, loses its data rate, on account of writing out full state snapshots; these full snapshots contrast to etcd’s incremental and concurrent commits to its backend, which write only updates and without stopping the world. Consul’s data rate is initially greater than etcd, possibly due to both write amplification by removing committed raft proposals from its B+Tree, before fluctuating due to taking several seconds to write out snapshots.
Network
The network is the central to a distributed key-value store. Clients communicate with the key-value store cluster’s servers and the servers, being distributed, communicate with each other. Each key-value store has its own client protocol; etcd clients use gRPC with Protocol Buffer v3 over HTTP/2, Zookeeper clients use Jute over a custom streaming TCP protocol, and Consul speaks JSON. Likewise, each has its own server protocol over TCP; etcd peers stream protobuf-encoded raft RPC proposals, Zookeeper uses TCP streams for ordered bi-directional jute-encoded ZAB channels, and Consul issues raft RPCs encoded with MsgPack.
The chart below shows total network utilization for all servers and clients. For the most part, etcd has the lowest network usage, aside from Consul clients receiving slightly less data. This can be explained by etcd’s Put responses containing a header with revision data whereas Consul simply responds with a plaintext true. Inter-server traffic for Zookeeper and Consul is likely due to transmitting large snapshots and less space efficient protocol encoding.
CPU
Even if the storage and network are fast, the cluster must be careful with processing overhead. Opportunities to waste CPU abound: many messages must be encoded and decoded, poor concurrency control can contend on locks, system calls can be made with alarming frequency, and memory heaps can thrash. Since etcd, Zookeeper, and Consul all expect a leader server to process writes, poor CPU utilization can easily sink performance.
The graph below shows the server CPU utilization, measured with top -b -d 1, when scaling clients. etcd CPU utilization scales as expected both on average and for maximum load; as more connections are added, CPU load increases in turn. Most striking is Zookeeper’s average drop at 700 but rise at 1000 clients; the logs report Too busy to snap, skipping in its SyncRequestProcessor, then Creating new log file, going from 1,073% utilization to 230%. This drop also happens at 1,000 clients but is less obvious from the average, utilization goes from 894% to 321%. Similarly, Consul CPU utilization drops for ten seconds when processing snapshots, going from 389% CPU to 16%.
Memory
When a key-value store is designed for only managing metadata-sized data, most of that data can be cached in memory. Maintaining an in-memory database buys speed, but at the cost of an excessive memory footprint that may trigger frequent garbage collection and disk swapping, degrading overall performance. While Zookeeper and Consul load all key-value data in-memory, etcd only keeps a small resident, in-memory index, backing most of its data directly through a memory-mapped file in boltdb. Keeping the data only in boltDB incurs disk accesses on account of demand paging but, overall, etcd better respects operating system facilities.
The graph below shows the effect of adding more keys into a cluster on its total memory footprint. Most notably, etcd uses less than half the amount of memory as Zookeeper or Consul once an appreciable number of keys are in the store. Zookeeper places second, claiming four times as much memory; this in line with the recommendation to carefully tuning JVM heap settings. Finally, although Consul uses boltDB like etcd, its in-memory store negates the footprint advantage found in etcd, consuming the most memory of the three.
Blasting the store
With physical resources settled, focus can return to aggregated benchmarking. First, to find the maximum key ingestion rate, system concurrency is scaled up to a thousand clients. These best ingest rates give a basis for measuring the latency under load; thus gauging the total wait time. Likewise per-system client counts with the best ingest rate, the total capacity can be stressed by measuring drop of throughput as keys scale up from one million to three million keys.
Throughput scaling
As more clients concurrently write to the cluster, the ingestion rate should ideally steadily rise before leveling off. However, the graph below shows this is not the case when scaling the number of clients when writing out a million keys. Instead, Zookeeper (maximum rate 43,558 req/sec) fluctuates wildly; this is not surprising since it must be explicitly configured to allow large numbers of connections. Consul’s throughput (maximum rate 16,486 req/sec) cleanly scales, but dips under concurrency pressure to low rates. The throughput for etcd (maximum rate 34,747 req/sec) is overall stable, slowly rising with concurrency. Finally, despite Consul and Zookeeper using significantly more CPU, the maximum throughput still lags behind etcd.
Latency distribution
Given the best throughput for the store, the latency should be at a local minima and stable; queuing effects will delay additional concurrent operations. Likewise, ideally latencies would remain low and stable as total keys increases; if requests become unpredictable, there may be cascading timeouts, flapping monitoring alerts, or failures. However, judging by the latency measurements shown below, only etcd has both the lowest average latencies and tight, stable bounds at scale.
A word on what happened to the other servers. Zookeeper struggles serving concurrent clients at its best throughput; once it triggers a snapshot, client requests begin failing. The server logs list errors such as Too busy to snap, skipping, fsync-ing the write ahead log and fsync-ing the write ahead log in SyncThread: 1 took 1,038 ms which will adversely effect operation latency, finally culminating in leader loss, Exception when following the leader. Client requests occasionally failed, including errors such as zk: could not connect to a server errors and zk: connection closed errors. Consul reports no errors, although it probably should; it experiences wide variance degraded performance, likely due to its heavy write amplification.
Total keys
Armed with the best amount of concurrency for the best average throughput for one million keys, it’s possible to test throughput as capacity |
ulof said. “There’s no investigation going on at the Berkeley Patriot.”
Contact Ashley Wong and Chantelle Lee at [email protected].Sir Alex Ferguson was angry with Manchester United even when they were 12 points clear at the top of the Premier League, according to former striker Robin van Persie.
Van Persie, who now plays for Fenerbahce, recalled an incident which took place in April 2013, during a season when United went on to become runaway champions. United had just played local rivals Manchester City -- who finished the season in second place -- and the home team lost 2-1 at Old Trafford.
That meant the lead at the top of the table for Ferguson's men was cut from 15 points to 12 points, upsetting the two-time European Cup winning manager. Sergio Aguero scored a late winning goal for City in a bad-tempered game, which saw eight players booked.
"We could have gone 18 points clear but still we were in a very good position. He was very hard on us, very angry," Van Persie told UEFA.
"He made everyone aware that everybody had to give their all. The training was very hard that week. He was almost punishing us. But that showed me he was a really good manager."The Republican candidate for Alabama’s Senate seat, Roy Moore, raised three times more in big-dollar donations from donors outside his state than from those within Alabama, according to newly released Federal Election Commission data that covers Oct. 1 through Nov. 22
Moore, the former chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, raised nearly $680,000 in itemized donations from outside of Alabama during that time, and only $172,000 from donations within the state.
He also raised $861,400 in non-itemized contributions.
The FEC requires candidates itemize contributions only for donors who have contributed more than $200.
This is the first FEC report to be released that shows the campaign’s fundraising since The Washington Post reported in early November that Moore had allegedly pursued underage girls when he was in his 30s. Moore has denied the allegations. The special election race to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions comes to a close on Tuesday, as voters head to the polls to cast ballots for Moore or his opponent, Democrat Doug Jones.
The top states for Moore’s fundraising operation, outside of Alabama, were Texas, California, Florida and Virginia. Together they combined for about $272,000 in itemized donations.
Moore received only three itemized contributions from inside Washington, D.C., which totaled $1,250.
Itemized contributions for Jones were not available electronically Monday morning because of the large size of Jones’ filing, though he is also expected to have a sizable amount of out-of-state donations. The Senate requires all candidates to submit paper filings, which are then converted to machine-readable data by the FEC.
Jones so far has far outraised Moore. He brought in more than five times as much as Moore in this filing, according to the pre-special election fundraising report. But Moore’s campaign and others have noted Moore is typically outspent in elections, and that his passionate base of supporters will still turn out to the polls.
In recent days Moore’s campaign has sent several fundraising blasts in an attempt to raise $300,000 for a final push to get out the vote.
Watch: In Alabama Race, Jones Has Funding, Moore Has Trump, Bannon Support
“If you’re sick and tired of [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell and the entire D.C. establishment who hate our conservative Christian values.... I hope and pray you’ll step up and chip in a donation to help close the gap before midnight tonight,” Moore said in a fundraising email sent Sunday night.
Democrats have also stepped up their fundraising for Jones, with the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and other groups sending out fundraising emails touting a close race.
“In a race this close, the outcome will depend on what we do in the next day,” read one DSCC fundraising email sent Monday morning. “Doug is counting on you.”
Bridget Bowman contributed to this report.Hey girl, you should be America’s next president.
Ryan Gosling is not afraid to show his love for the opposite sex. The Nice Guys actor, 35, appears on the cover of ES Magazine this week, and his corresponding interview is full of admiration for women.
The father of two daughters with wife Eva Mendes goes as far as to say females are superior.
“I think women are better than men,” Gosling said. “They are stronger, more evolved. You can tell especially when you have daughters and you see their early stages, they are just leaps and bounds beyond boys immediately.”
In fact, Gosling thinks it’s about time a woman was in the White House.
“I think [America] needs a woman’s touch. I’ve always liked women more,” he said. “I was brought up by my mother and older sister. I found my way into dance class. My home life now is mostly women. They are better than us. They make me better.”
The heartthrob’s lifelong exposure to women also opened his eyes to the struggles they face.
Gosling says it’s time men feel the objectification that females are exposed to on a regular basis.
“I grew up with women so I’ve always been aware of it,” he said. “When my mother and I walked to the grocery store, men would circle the block in cars. It was very scary, especially as a young boy. Very predatory; a hunt.”
VIDEO: Ryan Gosling’s Changing Looks
Although they’re too young for that kind of attention, Gosling and Mendes, 42, have been protecting their daughters from the media since before their births. The couple managed to keep both pregnancies secret for months and do not expose their children to the media.
Nonetheless, Gosling is enjoying fatherhood.
Gosling recently told PEOPLE, “It sounds so clichéd, but I never knew that life could be this fun and this great.”URSC (Unified Rocket and Space Corporation, a member of ROSCOSMOS State Corporation) has entered into a cooperation agreement with 3D Bioprinting Solutions, a resident company of Skolkovo Center of Innovations, aiming to create a unique bioprinter capable of magnetic biofabrication of tissue and organ constructs in zero-gravity at the International Space Station (ISS).
It was signed by the URSC General Director Yuri Vlasov and Mikhail Bakanov, General Director of 3D Bioprinting Solutions. Research will be supervised by Professor Vladimir Mironov, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of 3D Bioprinting Solutions.
The creation of a magnetic bioprinter will allow printing tissues and organ constructs in outer space, which will be supersensitive to space radiation - sentinel organs (for example thyroid gland) for biomonitoring of negative effects of space radiation during long-term exposure and developing relevant preventive measures.
In the long run the technology of magnetic 3D bioprinting can be used for healing of damaged tissues and organs of astronauts during long space flights. On Earth it could be used for faster bioprinting of human tissue and organs.
The bioprinter is scheduled to be ready for transportation to the ISS by 2018. All preparatory work and experiments will be performed in close cooperation with Rocket and Space Corporation Energia and Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Yuri Vlasov, URSC General Director: "The creation of a portable bioprinter for study of the effects of cosmic rays on human organs and tissues, in the long run creating a possibility of printing organs during manned flights in outer space, bringing us one step closer to the era of human mastery over distant planets."
Yusef D Khesuani, managing partner of 3D Bioprinting Solutions: "Bioprinting in zero-gravity at ISS opens up unique possibilities and will allow using a fundamentally new approach to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine."
Source: 3D Bioprinting Solutions
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For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
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Given the recent changes in government on Parliament Hill and at Winnipeg city hall, there is a growing sense that change is in the air. But what does that change look like at this point? Although the Progressive Conservatives are out in front by a significant margin, the race for seats in Winnipeg has become even more competitive as the Liberals, PCs and NDP battle for suburban constituencies.
But four months before Manitobans go the polls, the NDP looks incredibly vulnerable. It has trailed the Progressive Conservatives by double-digit margins in Probe Research polls for nearly two years. NDP Leader Greg Selinger barely survived a difficult and unprecedented challenge to his leadership earlier this year. The third-place Liberals are back from the political dead and appear to be reinvigorated under a new leader, Rana Bokhari, and a new Liberal government in Ottawa.
The party won four straight majority governments and increased its seat totals in every election since 1999, despite the fact the number of Manitobans who cast ballots in each of the past four elections remained unchanged around the 200,000-vote mark during the past three elections.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 18/12/2015 (1166 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/12/2015 (1166 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitoba’s New Democratic Party spent 16 years building itself into a formidable political force.
The party won four straight majority governments and increased its seat totals in every election since 1999, despite the fact the number of Manitobans who cast ballots in each of the past four elections remained unchanged around the 200,000-vote mark during the past three elections.
But four months before Manitobans go the polls, the NDP looks incredibly vulnerable. It has trailed the Progressive Conservatives by double-digit margins in Probe Research polls for nearly two years. NDP Leader Greg Selinger barely survived a difficult and unprecedented challenge to his leadership earlier this year. The third-place Liberals are back from the political dead and appear to be reinvigorated under a new leader, Rana Bokhari, and a new Liberal government in Ottawa.
Given the recent changes in government on Parliament Hill and at Winnipeg city hall, there is a growing sense that change is in the air. But what does that change look like at this point? Although the Progressive Conservatives are out in front by a significant margin, the race for seats in Winnipeg has become even more competitive as the Liberals, PCs and NDP battle for suburban constituencies.
The outcome of the April election is likely to be decided by a relatively small but influential group of voters: former NDP supporters who have been shaken loose from their previous partisan attachment by the events on Broadway during the past couple of years.
Data from nine quarterly Probe Research polls taken from September 2013 to September 2015 show, on average, only 55 per cent of the people who voted for the NDP in 2011 would do so again in the next provincial election.
Typically, the other two parties retain anywhere from 75 to 80 per cent of their vote between elections, so the group of voters that all three parties will be targeting in the next few months is the large group of voters who cast a ballot for an NDP candidate in the past, but are having second thoughts about doing so again.
Not surprisingly, the Liberals are the biggest beneficiary among these ex-NDP supporters, with an average of 14 per cent in these nine polls indicating they would vote for a Liberal candidate in their constituency. On average, one in 10 ex-NDP voters now prefers the PCs, with five per cent currently opting for the provincial Green party.
But the big number that should stand out is this: on average, 17 per cent of ex-NDP supporters are undecided. This is a much higher share of undecided voters than those who voted for other parties in the past.
These undecided former NDP voters are the key to the next election. If the NDP can convince them to hold their noses and vote NDP again to prevent a Progressive Conservative government, they have a shot at being competitive.
If the Progressive Conservatives can convince them "change for the better" isn’t scary, it will consolidate their lead and help them form a strong majority government with significant representation in Winnipeg. If the Liberals can convince them to take a risk on a party that is typically the afterthought of Manitoba politics, the Liberals could pick up a number of seats and potentially hold the balance of power in a minority legislature.
When those who voted NDP in 2011 are compared with existing NDP supporters, some fascinating differences arise. For instance, in December 2014 — right as the NDP mutiny was in full swing — two-thirds of current NDP supporters (67 per cent) approved of Greg Selinger’s performance as party leader. When you look at the broader universe of those who voted NDP in 2011, the figure drops to 43 per cent — a telling sign that the majority of those who voted NDP last time but are considering other options today would rather have someone else leading the NDP.
When Manitobans were asked in March 2015 whether the New Democrats made the right choice in keeping Selinger as leader, 61 per cent of current NDP supporters agreed compared to 27 per cent who disagreed. However, among those who voted for the NDP in 2011, there was an even split — 41 per cent said the party made the right choice, 40 per cent felt it was the wrong choice.
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Again, the defection of ex-NDP supporters to other parties or to the undecided column suggests it will be difficult for a party led by Selinger to woo these disgruntled voters back to the NDP fold.
But stranger things have happened, especially as the NDP attempts to convince voters that Brian Pallister and the PCs will privatize everything and slash government spending to the bone.
Leading up to April 19, these voters can expect to be hit with an increasing array of competing messages and claims about the merits of the Progressive Conservatives, New Democrats and Liberals. Which is as it should be, as these voters hold the fate of all three parties and their leaders in their hands.
Curtis Brown is the vice-president of Probe Research Inc., a Winnipeg-based public opinion firm. His views are his own.
curtis@probe-research.com
Twitter: @curtisatprobeAt this time of year holiday beers are all the rage, particularly here in Ohio where the popularity of Great Lakes Christmas Ale has spawned such a multitude of winter warmers that I would not be surprised if our beer consumption put a strain on the world supply of cinnamon. For my first holiday beer review of the season I’ve opted to go in a different direction and tell you about a special beer that I’ve been saving in my cellar for a couple of years now, Samichlaus from the Austrian brewery Schloss Eggenberg.
Samichlaus, which means Santa Claus in Swiss-German, is a special beer with an interesting history. It was first released in 1980 by the Swiss brewery Hürlimann, who were renowned for culturing unusual strains of yeast. In the case of Samichlaus they managed to reach 14% abv, which at the time secured a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s strongest beer. Nowadays there are many beers with higher abv, but I believe that Samichlaus is still the strongest lager in the world. You heard right, Samichlaus is a 14% abv lager!
Samichlaus is only brewed one day each year, St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6), which in Switzerland and other parts of Europe is the traditional day when the holiday gift exchange takes place. To reach such staggering alcohol levels with conventional fermentation techniques the beer is lagered for 10 months, before bottling in time for its release the following St. Nicholas Day. According to beer critic Michael Jackson, the brewers occasionally move the beer from one tank to another to restart the secondary fermentation (click here if you want to read Jackson’s informative 1997 post on Samichlaus).
In 1997 Hürlimann was bought out by Danish megabrewery Carlsberg and production of Samichlaus was halted. Thankfully, it was revived in 2000 when the venerable Austrian brewery, Schloss Eggenberg, purchased the rights to brew Samichlaus and collaborated with former Hürlimann brewers to brew this iconic beer using the original recipe. Because of the high abv Samichlaus is unfortunately not sold in Ohio. The 750 mL bottle in my possession was a gift from my former PhD student, Jenni Soliz, on the occasion of her graduation. Given its strength I figured the beer would improve with some aging, but this year my patience finally ran out.
Vitals
Brewery: Schloss Eggenberg (Austria)
Schloss Eggenberg (Austria) Style: Doppelbock
Doppelbock ABV : 14.0% ABV
: 14.0% ABV Availability: Released every Dec. 6, not available in Ohio due to high abv
As you can see in the picture above this beer was bottled in 2009, which means it has been aging for five years.
My Review
Ruby brown in color and translucent, Samichlaus pours with a minimal scrim of cream colored head. The aroma leaves no doubt that this is going to be a big, decadent beer. Your nose is greeted by a mélange of molasses, raisin, alcohol, and savory notes not unlike soy sauce. The smell is so enticing I’m in no rush to start drinking, but when I do the flavor does not disappoint. Big, malty flavors of caramel and toffee wash over your tongue. Unlike the nose, dark fruits and raisins are not prominent here, but there is an underlying fruitiness not unlike what you might find in peach or apricot brandy. It’s a sweet, alcoholic sipper of a beer to be sure, but I did not find it to be cloying. The alcohol is enough to keep the sweetness mostly in check, but it does not overwhelm the other flavors and leaves you with a pleasant warming finish. It’s a full bodied beer that coats the tongue and mouth.
Summary
In all honesty I wasn’t sure that drinking a 14% abv lager was going to be an enjoyable experience, but my trepidation was misplaced. From reading online reviews, not all of which are very complimentary, I think the aging of this bottle helped round off the rough edges, allowed the alcohol to mellow, and brought out the umami soy notes. I read somewhere that it should be aged for at least three years. I’d be very curious to get comments from people who have tried this beer with different lengths of cellaring. What I can say for sure is that properly aged Samichlaus is a sophisticated after dinner sipper par excellence. It’s classified as a doppelbock, I suppose because that is the strongest style of lager, but in actuality it is quite reminiscent of an English barleywine. So as we enter the dark, cold days of winter gather around the fire with a few friends and loved ones and enjoy what may be the world’s best expression of Santa Claus.
Thanks to Jenni for treating me to this special beer! Thanks to my friends Mark, George, Tom and Josh for helping me finish it and contributing to the review.
Rating: 9
Rating scale: 10 = perfection, 9 = excellent, one of the top beers in the world, 8 = very good, one of the top beers in its style category, 7 = good, a solid beer I’m happy to be drinking, 6 = average, not bad but not something I’m likely to buy again, 5 = below average, 3-4 = poor, should be avoided, 1-2 drainpour.What? It said that? In 2011??
No, hopefully not so recently, especially with the increasing criminalization of abortion since last year. But as you’ll soon see, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (보건복지부) certainly did once define unwed mothers as such, and I’d wager within at least the last decade.
It was just in 2008, for instance, that singer Ivy (아이비) was vilified in the media for the heinous crime of having sex with her boyfriend, so by those standards the Ministry’s comments were not particularly outlandish. And while Ivy did eventually rehabilitate her reputation, unfortunately Korean society is still far from accepting women being so sexually “open and impulsive”, let alone so blatantly so as to have a child out of wedlock.
Whatever the date though, when even the organization charged with helping unwed mothers once stigmatized them, then you can imagine how badly they fare in society today.
Despite that, abortion opponents seem to have quite a sanguine image of what it’s like to raise a child as a single mother. Which is what prompted this anonymous Korean woman, who kindly recently wrote on TGN about how and why she got an abortion, to post a link to this imomNews article outlining how the reality is anything but. With thanks to Marilyn for translating it, here it is in full:
(Update – To my shock and disappointment, the Ministry’s appalling definition was actually on its website until as recently as May 2010)
‘동성애자’ 다음으로 차별 받는 집단 ‘미혼모 / Unwed Mothers Most Discriminated Group after Homosexuals
인식 개선 선행…정부지원 확대 /[With] improvement in perception as precedent... expansion of government aid
Image Caption: 최근 정치권을 중심으로 ‘미혼모’ 지원방안이 활발히 이루어지고 있다. 지난 3일 서울 여의도 국회에서는 ‘미혼모 지원정책 개선방안’ 포럼이 개최됐다 /Currently, political methods for supporting unwed mothers are actively becoming reality. On Aug. 3, at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, an “Unwed Mothers Support Measures Improvement” forum was held.
‘학력이 대체로 낮고, 불안정한 직업에 종사한다. 자취나 하숙을 하고, 성에 대한 가치관이 개방적이고 충동적이다. 사회경제적 상태가 낮고 부모와 떨어져 사는 사람’이라고 과거 보건복지부가 운영하는 웹사이트 건강길라잡이는 미혼모에 대한 정의를 이렇게 내렸다.
“Usually low levels of education, with an unstable job. Lives by herself or in a boarding house, has open and impulsive sexual values. A person whose socioeconomic situation is low, and who lives apart from her parents,” is how a website health guide operated by the past Ministry of Health and Welfare defined unwed mothers.
이처럼 사회의 부정적인 시선 탓에 미혼모에 대한 관심과 지원은 일부 사회복지시설을 제외하곤 전무후무한 것이 사실이었다.
Because of society’s negative views like these, it was true that, as for interest in and support for unwed mothers, a few social welfare facilities were the first and seemed like they would be the last.
특히, 1990년대 이후 정부와 시민단체 등의 노력으로 조손가정, 다문화 가정, 한부모 가정 등은 상당부분 인식개선이 이루어 졌으나 미혼모 가족만은 사회의 편견 속에 여전히 ‘눈총’의 대상이 되고 있다.
In particular, through the efforts of the government and civic organizations since the 1990s, perception of grandparent-grandchild families, multicultural families, and single-parent families has improved; among society’s prejudices, only unwed-mother families continue to be the target of stares.
때문에 형편이 좋지 않아 자립이 힘든 미혼모들은 자연히 입양을 생각하거나 권유받게 되고, 우리사회도 ‘낳아 기르는 쪽’ 보다는 입양을 암묵적으로 유도했다.
Because of that, unwed mothers, whose circumstances are not good and so have difficulty supporting themselves, think of adoption of their own accord or are induced to adopt, and our society also implicitly supports the “have and raise side” less than it does adoption.
사정이 이렇다 보니 지난해 우리나라의 해외입양아는 미혼모의 자녀가 90%를 차지한 것으로 나타났다. 그러나 최근 이들에 대한 지원방안이 정치권과 시민단체, 기업 등을 중심으로 활발하게 논의되면서 미혼모 가족에 대한 관심이 일고 있다.
Because of this situation, last year it emerged that 90% of internationally adopted children from our country were the children of unwed mothers. However, as ways to support them are currently being actively discussed in political circles, civic organizations, and businesses, interest in unwed-mother families is rising.
Image Caption: 던킨도너츠는 미혼모 정소향(21세) 씨를 정규사원으로 채용하면서 미혼모 채용에 적극 나서기로 했다 /By hiring unwed mother Jeong So-Hyang (21) as a permanent employee, Dunkin Donuts is actively taking a stand for the hiring of unwed mothers.
미혼모 인식 개선이 우선 / Improvement of perception of unwed mothers the priority
미혼모에게 가장 필요한 부분은 부정적인 사회의 시선이 관심과 보호의 시선으로 바뀌어야 하는 것이라고 전문가들은 지적했다.
Experts indicate that the most important thing unwed mothers must do is change negative societal views into feelings of interest and protection.
실제 지난 2009년 한국미혼모지원네트워크와 한국여성정책연구원이 실시한 ‘미혼모ㆍ부에 대한 한국인의 태도와 인식’ 설문조사에 따르면 미혼모는 동성애자 다음으로 가장 많은 차별을 경험한 집단으로 조사됐다.
In fact, according to the survey “Koreans’ attitudes toward and perception of unwed mothers and fathers,” carried out in 2009 by the Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network and the Korean Women’s Development Institute, unwed mothers were found to be the group that experienced the most prejudice, after homosexuals.
또한 설문에 참가한 2,000명 중 60% 이상이 미혼모에 대해 ‘판단력과 책임감이 부족한 사람’이라고 답변했다.
Also, of the 2,000 people who participated in the survey, over 60% answered that unwed mothers “are people who lack judgment and a sense of responsibility.”
김혜영 한국여성정책연구원 연구위원은 “미혼모의 경우 일종의 일탈자로 낙인 받고 있다”며 “미혼 부모에 대한 과감한 지원정책이 필요하다”고 지적했다.
Kim Hye-young, a senior researcher at the Korean Women’s Development Institute, said, “An unwed mother is branded as a kind of deviant. We need bold support policies for unwed parents.”
이영호 서울시 한부모가족지원센터장도 “우리사회는 다양한 가족이 있고 모든 가족은 행복할 권리가 있다”면서 “그러나 우리 사회에서 미혼모가 아기를 키우면서 자랑스럽게 또는 당당하게 양육의 경험을 공유하고 그 안에서 성장할 수 있을까란 의문이 들때가 많다”고 아쉬움을 드러냈다.
Lee Young-ho, head of the Seoul City Single Parent Family Support Center, also showed frustration: “There are diverse families in our society, and all families have a right to be happy. However, there are many times when I question whether unwed mothers, while raising their children, can proudly or confidently share their child-rearing experiences and develop in that [kind of environment], in our society.”
이에 최근 여성단체와 미혼모 보호 시설은 미혼모 인신 개선 사업을 적 극 펼치고 있다.
Accordingly, women’s organizations and unwed-mother shelters are currently actively engaging in a project to improve the perception of unwed mothers.
지난달 28일 서울시한부모가족지원센터와 20여 곳의 미혼모관련 단체들은 ‘미혼모지원단체협의체’를 발족하고 미혼모 인식 개선을 위한 다양한 논의를 시작했다.
On July 28, the Seoul City Single Parent Family Support Center and about twenty organizations for unwed mothers started the ‘Unwed Mother Support Organization Council” and began a variety of discussions designed to improve the perception of unwed mothers.
그 첫 번째 사업으로 사람들에게 부정적 이미지가 강했던 ‘미혼모’를 공모를 통해 ‘두리모’로 대체하기로 했다. 두리모란 ‘둥근’이라는 뜻과 둘이라는 숫자를 의미하는 방언 ‘둘레’가 조합된 것이다.
For their first project, they agreed through a public contest to replace “unwed mother”, which had a strong negative image, with “doo-ree mother.” “Doo-ree mother” combines the meaning “round” [doong-geun] with the regional dialect word dool-leh, which means “two people.”
정치권ㆍ기업, 미혼모 자립위해 노력 / Efforts by political groups, business for unwed mothers’ independence [ability to support themselves]
정치권에선 ‘미혼모 자립’을 위해 관련법을 정비하고, 토론회를 통해 다양한 의견을 청취하고 있다. 기업들도 미혼모를 우선 채용하는 등 이들의 자립을 위해 힘을 쏟고 있다.
Political groups are modifying laws in order for ‘independence for unwed mothers,’ and through panels, they are listening to diverse opinions. Through actions like prioritizing hiring unwed mothers, businesses are also devoting themselves to the cause of their independence.
특히 민주당 최영희 의원(국회 여성가족위원회)은 미혼모에 대한 지원을 확대하는 내용을 담은 ‘입양촉진 및 절차에 관한 특례법 전부개정안’ 등 관련법을 최근 국회에 제출하는 등 법 만들기에 앞장서고 있다.
Democratic Party Assemblywoman Choi Young-hee (National Assembly Gender Equality and Family Committee), in particular, is leading the way in making laws, some of which are currently submitted to the National Assembly, like “Overall Revision Bill for the Special Act Relating to Promotion and Procedure of Adoption,” the contents of which expand support for unwed mothers.
또한 지난 3일에는 한국미혼모가족협회·한국여성정책연구원와 공동주최로 ‘미혼모 지원정책 개선방안’ 포럼을 개최했다.
Also, on June 3, the Korean Unwed Mother Families Association and the Korean Womens Development Institute co-hosted the “Unwed Mothers Support-Policy Improvement Measures” forum.
이날 최 의원은 “해외입양의 90%가 미혼모의 자녀라는 점은 우리 사회의 아픈 현실을 반영하는 것”이라며 “직접 양육하기를 원하는 미혼모가 늘어나고 있는 만큼 양육비 지원을 현실화 하고 지역사회에서 안정적인 생활을 할 수 있도록 정부의 적극적인 지원이 시급하다”고 지적했다.
On that day, Assemblywoman Choi said, “That 90% of international adoption is the children of unwed mothers reflects our society’s painful reality. As the number of unwed mothers who want to raise their children themselves rises, the government’s active support is urgently needed to actualize aid for child-raising expenses for a stable life in a community.”
한편 이날 포럼에서 김혜영 한국여성정책연구원 박사는 ‘양육미혼모의 자립기반실태와 지원방안’에 대한 연구결과를 발표했다.
Also at this forum, Dr. Kim Hye-young, researcher at the Korean Women’s Development Institute, revealed the results of a study on the “Current State of Groundwork for Independence of and Ways to Support Unwed Mothers Raising Children.”
김 연구원은 “60%가 넘는 미혼모가 양육비와 교육비의 문제로 어려움을 겪고 있고, 80%이상은 월세와 같은 불안정적인 주거생활을 하는 것으로 나타났다”면서 “안정적인 자립기반 구축을 위해 미혼모 가족에 대한 조기 개입의 필요성과 함께 지원의 폭을 보다 확대할 필요가 있다”고 주장했다.
Dr. Kim said, “It showed that over 60% of unwed mothers are struggling because of the costs of child-rearing and education, and more than 80% live in unstable housing situations like [those requiring] monthly rent. In order to build stable foundations for independence, early intervention for unwed-mother families, together with an expansion of the range of support, is necessary.” (Source, right)
또 목경화 한국미혼모가족협회 대표도 “우리나라의 미혼모정책은 시설에만 초점이 맞춰져 있어 시설에서 벗어나 자립을 하려는 미혼모들은 빈곤 상황을 쉽게 개선하지 못하는 실정이다”고 지적했다.
Furthermore, Mok Gyeong-hwa, a representative from the Korean Unwed Mothers and Families Association, pointed out, “Policies regarding unwed mothers in our country only focus on facilities, so unwed mothers who want to break free from facilities and live independently can’t easily improve their state of poverty.”
최 의원은 이날 논의된 내용을 바탕으로 ‘한부모가족지원법 개정안’과 ‘국민기초생활보장법 개정안’을 제출할 예정이다.
Assemblywoman Choi will present the “Single-Parent Family Support Law Amendment” and “National Basic Living Security Law Amendment” based on the discussions of that day.
기업들도 미혼모 자립을 위해 적극적으로 나서고 있다. 던킨도너츠와 배스킨라빈스를 운영하는 비알코리아는 미혼모 시설인 사회복지법인 동방사회복지회와 함께 미혼모 고용지원 협약을 체결하고, 던킨도너츠 매장에서 파트타임으로 근무하던 미혼모 정소향(21세) 씨를 정식 사원을 채용했다
Businesses are also actively taking a stand for the independence of unwed mothers. BR Korea, which operates Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins, together with the Eastern Social Welfare Society, a welfare corporation that is an unwed mother [support] facility, signed the Unwed Mothers Employment Support Agreement and recruited unwed mother Jeong So-hyang (21), who had been a part-time employee at a Dunkin Donuts shop, as a permanent employee.
June 16, 2011.
Reporter: Cheon Won-gi (천원기, 000wonki@hanmail.net)MLS made the right decision by dumping the predetermined venue for the championship game and, starting this year, awarding the match to the finalist with the most regular season points.
Look no further than the previous two MLS Cups for the striking difference in setting and atmosphere: In 2010, when FC Dallas played the Colorado Rapids in Toronto, no-shows and early-exiting fans on a gusty evening left an embarrassing number of empty seats. Last year, in contrast, the Los Angeles Galaxy happened to advance to the final at its home stadium against the Houston Dynamo — just the third time in 16 years the league final had a true home team. Home Depot Center pulsated with energy and provided a vibrant backdrop for the TV presentation. League executives were hooked.
When the new venue policy was approved last winter, the immediate issues were logistics and weather. But as the 2012 regular season winds down and the San Jose Earthquakes close in on the Supporters’ Shield as the regular season’s best side, MLS is facing the possibility of its marquee match being played at the smallest venue in the league — one better suited for a high school football playoff game than a pro championship.
Buck Shaw Stadium |
“socialize” boys away from “feminine behaviors” so they would act more stereotypically masculine.
Feminism is all about allowing people of all genders autonomy and choice, regardless of gender stereotypes. The neurodiversity movement has the same principles in regard to differences in brains and minds.
Because of all this, it’s crucial for people invested in both feminism and disability justice to understand exactly what neurodiversity is – and what it isn’t.
Because I’m your friendly neighborhood neurodivergent person (you’ll find out what that means soon enough), I’m here to answer all your frequently asked questions about neurodiversity.
1. What Is Neurodiversity and The Neurodiversity Movement?
Neurodiversity is, according to activist Nick Walker, “the diversity of human brains and minds – the infinite variation in neurocognitive functioning within our species.”
Basically, it’s a fancy name for the fact that all our brains and minds are unique and individual. Like snowflakes, no two brains and no two minds are exactly alike.
Neurodiversity is a basic, biological fact, as evidenced by the broad array of functioning of minds and brains, which to some extent can be seen with technology like MRIs. The neurodiversity paradigm, as explained by Nick Walker, is an approach based on three principles:
Neurodiversity is a natural and valuable form of human diversity. The idea that there is one “normal” or “healthy” type of brain or mind, or one “right” style of neurocognitive functioning, is a culturally constructed fiction – no more valid (and no more conducive to a healthy society or to the overall well-being of humanity) than the idea that there is one “normal” or “right” ethnicity, gender, or culture. The social dynamics that manifest in regard to neurodiversity are similar to the social dynamics that manifest in regard to other forms of human diversity (e.g., diversity of ethnicity, gender, or culture). These dynamics include the dynamics of social power inequalities, and also the dynamics by which diversity, when embraced, acts as a source of creative potential.
The neurodiversity paradigm is a collection of beliefs that stem from the biological fact of neurodiversity. It states that neurodiversity is normal, natural, and right, and that every type of mind, brain, etc. is valid.
In other words, no one type of mind or brain is “right” or “wrong.”
Diversity in all forms, including neurodiversity, creates social inequality, but it also can expand creativity. Neurodivergent people – who have neurological differences such as but not limited to dyslexia, developmental coordination disorder, or ADHD. – face social oppression. People whose minds and brains function in a way that’s considered “normal”, aka neurotypical people, are privileged in relation to neurodivergent people.
If we’re going with the snowflake analogy, the neurodiversity paradigm means that we don’t single out one particular type of snowflake (let’s say snowflakes with square shaped holes) as being “abnormal” and needing to be like the “normal” type of snowflakes (let’s say snowflakes with triangle shaped holes).
All snowflakes are “normal” and beautiful – just like all human minds/brains.
2. So, When We Talk About Neurodiversity, We’re Talking Specifically About Disabled People?
Neurodiversity doesn’t just apply to one group of people – neurodiversity is about everyone.
In the disability community, I’ve found that different categories of disability stand very much apart. Those with physical disabilities reject those with psychiatric disabilities and intellectual/cognitive disabilities. Those with cognitive or psychiatric disabilities reject those with physical disabilities.
No one is willing to work together and start to break down our internalized biases. This can make it difficult for someone like me, who has multiple disabilities that are not easily separated into discrete chunks.
The neurodiversity paradigm is the antithesis to this approach. When I found radical autistic activists, I felt more at home than I ever did among people who solely had my diagnoses, even though I’m not autistic.
People who value neurodiversity not only accept the way my body and mind work, but value the unique ways I experience life because of my disabilities.
Like other social justice concepts, the neurodiversity movement is about equality and appreciating the broad array of diversity within our species.
It, steeped in the principles of the neurodiversity paradigm, rejects the concept that brains that diverge from the norm are disordered or dysfunctional and that brains that don’t work in standard ways need to be fixed, treated, or cured.
In essence, the neurodiversity movement swims against the current of the medical model of disability, which is unfortunately the prevailing wisdom in our society when it comes to brains and bodies that work differently.
The medical model is extremely harmful, because at its core, it tells us that there is something “wrong” if our bodies and minds do not conform to an arbitrary definition of “normal.”
It makes us feel like outcasts and leads us to go to great (and often dangerous) lengths to make ourselves “normal.”
The medical model is grounded in the notion that there is only one “right” way to be. The medical model says that human beings are factory standard models, and any difference is a defect that must be corrected or thrown out.
Harmful therapies and treatments such as Applied Behavior Analysis, bleach enemas, and shock therapy (used at the infamous Judge Rotenberg Center) all grow out of the medical model impulse to “fix” neurodivergent and disabled people.
The neurodiversity movement has done incredible things in just a few short years. Organizations like Parenting Autistic Children with Love and Acceptance have sprung up centered around the ideals of the neurodiversity movement, helping parents who aren’t cure-oriented to get advice from autistic people themselves.
New concepts like Neuroqueer, fusing the principles of the neurodiversity movement and the queer rights movement, are gaining traction both inside and outside of academia.
Perhaps most importantly, the neurodiversity movement has provided community and solidarity for people like me, who have felt alienated from other disability spaces.
I found a home in the neurodiversity movement, and I know I’m not the only one.
3. Can I Disagree with the Neurodiversity Movement?
A lot of the disagreement surrounding the neurodiversity movement is based on misinformation. Some people think that rejecting the medical model means that we don’t think of conditions such as autism, ADHD, or other neurodivergences as disabilities. That’s not true at all! We fully recognize that disabilities can be, well, disabling! When we say we believe in the neurodiversity paradigm, we’re not saying our lives are all butterflies and sunshine — we’re saying that our minds are normal and natural for us, and we shouldn’t be subjected to attempts to cure or fix us. If we choose for ourselves to seek treatment or a cure for the parts of our disabilities that are distressing or difficult, that’s fine. I would give anything to cure my generalized anxiety disorder and OCD. But we reject the idea that there’s something “wrong” with us because of the way our brains work. The neurodiversity paradigm is about saying that all ways of thinking and being are right and valid, and there is no one “right” way to be, just as no one snowflake is the “right” way for a snowflake to look. When you say you disagree with neurodiversity, you’re really saying you disagree with the principles that form the neurodiversity paradigm and drive the neurodiversity movement, a social justice movement based on the neurodiversity paradigm and advocating for equality. However, you can’t disagree with the fact of neurodiversity. 4. Am I Neurodiverse? It depends on what you mean by that. Humans, as a species, are neurodiverse because no two people’s minds and brains are the same. But if you mean that your brain/mind doesn’t function in a way that’s considered “normal,” then yes, that means you’re neurodivergent. Being neurodivergent means that your brain and mind don’t function in conventional ways. Early autistic activists in the 1990s recognized that many people with diagnoses like these thought and acted in ways similar to autistic people, but weren’t autistic. This led autistic activist Kassiane Sibley to coin the term “neurodivergent,” specifically to fill the need for a term with a wider definition that didn’t center autism. The neurodiversity movement is still mostly led by autistic people and autism is an example of a specific form of neurodivergence, but neurodiversity is not just about autism at all. Some examples of people who are neurodivergent are people with psychiatric disabilities (depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.), people with developmental/intellectual disabilities (autism, Down Syndrome, other types of intellectual disability), and people with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, etc. But this isn’t an exhaustive list! For instance, I’m multiply neurodivergent because I have cerebral palsy, generalized anxiety disorder, and OCD. All of these conditions affect how my brain and mind function. Even if you’re not formally diagnosed, recognizing that your mind and brain work in non-typical ways can be a powerful and life-changing realization. For me, I focused on my physical disabilities for so long that when I started meeting neurodivergent people who had some of the same difficulties that I did, it was exciting and refreshing. Our society tells us that we can overcome anything and be “normal” if we only try hard enough. It also highly stigmatizes neurodivergence. I’m usually not embarrassed when using my mobility aids in public, but as soon as I have an anxiety attack in public, I’m deeply ashamed. Identifying as neurodivergent has helped me understand that the way my brain works isn’t my fault, and it’s not bad or wrong. It has also helped me stand up for my access needs when I need to, because I recognize that the way my brain works isn’t something I have to push through or get over. The neurodiversity paradigm and the neurodiversity movement are about recognizing that all minds and brains are valid and important. 5. What Does Neurotypical Mean, Then? Neurotypical (NT) is the opposite of neurodivergent. Neurotypical means that your brain and mind function in ways that fit within conventional, “normal” parameters. It is not the same as allistic, which means not autistic. As we already established, neurodiversity and neurodivergence goes far beyond just autism. When autistic or other neurodivergent people say that someone is allistic or neurotypical, a lot of times they’re talking about experience and privilege. People whose brains work in societally accepted ways do not have the same experiences and do not face the same stigma as those whose brains diverge from the norm. Like other forms of oppression, that doesn’t mean that allies don’t have a place in the discussion – it just means that they need to sit back and let marginalized people take the lead. Unfortunately, this can make some people feel defensive. Without a good understanding of how oppression and privilege work, some potential allies can feel like they’re being shut out of the conversation and insulted with terms they don’t understand. But the words “neurotypical” and “allistic” aren’t slurs or labels with any sort of feeling behind it. They’re neutral descriptors. 6. Does Being Neurotypical Mean that I’m Not Disabled? No. It just means that your brain and mind function in a state that is considered “normal.” There are plenty of disabilities that don’t affect the brain and mind, but are still disabilities. Amputees are disabled, but their disabilities don’t affect their brains, so they’re neurotypical (unless, of course, they have another disability which affects their brain/mind). Alternately, there are some neurodivergent people who don’t consider themselves disabled, particularly those who identify as having mental illness/psychiatric disabilities, or who identify as psychiatric survivors. The line isn’t absolute, either. There is some debate about whether sensory impairments such as blindness and deafness, which don’t necessarily affect the mind in the way we typically think of it, but could affect the way the brain processes information, are counted as neurodivergences. 7. What If I Want to Learn More? Nick Walker’s blog, Neurocosmopolitanism, is a great place to start, and where I got most of my information for this piece. Kassiane Sibley’s blog, Radical Neurodivergence Speaking has a lot of good information on autism oppression and the dual neurodivergences of autism and epilepsy. Jim Sinclair’s “Don’t Mourn for Us” and “Why I Dislike Person-First Language” are seminal pieces not only in the autism rights movement, but the broader neurodiversity rights movement as well. Julia Bascom’s “On Quiet Hands” is another seminal piece that launched an amazing video and an incredible anthology. Neuroqueer is a concept and a movement fusing together the ideals of queer and neurodivergent communities. Neurodiversity and the neurodiversity paradigm are still very much “in” concepts, with “in” language, meaning that no one outside of a specific group of people really know what it is. Hopefully, this piece will go a long way towards changing that. Though you may feel like you’ve failed a vocabulary test by this point, don’t worry. The words are important, but what’s more important are the concepts behind the words – concepts like embracing everyone, regardless of the way their brains work, even if their brains work in a way we don’t quite understand. We live in a neurodiverse world. It’s time we began to embrace that. 4.9K Shares Share Cara Liebowitz is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. She is a multiply-disabled activist and writer currently pursuing her M.A in Disability Studies at the CUNY School of Professional Studies in Manhattan. Her published work includes pieces in Empowering Leadership: A Systems Change Guide for Autistic College Students and Those with Other Disabilities, published by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and the Criptiques anthology. Cara blogs about disability issues large and small at That Crazy Crippled Chick. You can check her out on Twitter @spazgirl11. Found this article helpful?
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15 May 2017
The political crisis brought to a head by President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey is rapidly intensifying, with calls for Trump’s impeachment and threats by the White House to go even further in attacking democratic rights and constitutional norms.
Trump provoked further recriminations from within the political establishment with his tweeted threat Friday, warning that Comey should be careful what he says to the media and to Congress about his private discussions with the president, because tapes of their conversations might exist. This led to immediate responses from both Democrats and Republicans that any tapes could be subpoenaed as part of the ongoing investigations into the conduct of the 2016 elections.
There were unconfirmed press reports of an impending purge within the White House staff, with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Stephen Bannon and press spokesman Sean Spicer all potential targets. As more than one media commentator noted, this would leave the White House staff under the direction of “Ivanka and Jared,” the president’s daughter and son-in-law, making even more extreme the personalist and quasi-dictatorial character of the Trump administration.
Trump fueled such speculation by suggesting that daily White House press briefings might be canceled, to be replaced by infrequent press conferences by the president himself. He refused to allow any White House spokespeople to appear on the Sunday television interview programs after the networks rejected demands that they refrain from asking questions about the Comey firing and its aftermath.
The Washington Post published an editorial Sunday warning that Trump’s conduct “threatened the independence of federal law enforcement and sullied key institutions of U.S. democracy,” adding that “The president injected himself into an investigation where he has absolutely no right to interfere.” While demanding that congressional and FBI investigations into alleged Russian interference in the US election be stepped up, the newspaper published an op-ed column by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe calling for Trump’s impeachment.
Even more extraordinary were the remarks of retired Gen. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence under President Obama. Interviewed Sunday morning on the CNN program “State of the Union,” Clapper had the following exchange with host Jake Tapper after Tapper asked for his response to the firing of Comey:
Clapper: I think, in many ways, our institutions are under assault, both externally—and that’s the big news here, is the Russian interference in our election system. And I think as well our institutions are under assault internally. Tapper: Internally from the president? Clapper: Exactly.
Clapper is no friend of democracy or accountability. By rights, he should be serving a prison sentence for perjury, having denied under oath, during congressional testimony in 2013, that there was widespread US government spying on the communications of Americans. A few weeks later, the revelations of Edward Snowden exposed him as a liar.
If the retired general, who until January 20 stood at the head of 17 agencies with more than 100,000 spies, analysts and agents, now declares that Trump, the nominal commander-in-chief, is a threat to the institutions of the American state, that is a sign of a state machine at war with itself. This is only one step removed from advocating that the military-intelligence apparatus step in to “preserve order,” the pretext invariably given in country after country for coups and military takeovers.
No one should believe that “it can’t happen here.” Both sides in the conflict within the ruling elite are turning to the military as the final arbiter. Trump himself has filled his cabinet with former and currently serving generals in an effort to strengthen his ties with the military. He has repeatedly addressed military audiences while offering his top commanders free rein to order more aggressive battlefield tactics and troop buildups, and promising police similar leeway within the United States.
The Democratic Party is incapable of raising a single democratic principle in opposition to Trump. It has chosen to oppose the president on the basis of the completely reactionary and bogus claim that he owes his presidency to alleged Russian intervention into the 2016 campaign. Its media supporters have followed suit: two New York Times columnists (Nicholas Kristof and Tim Egan) yesterday suggested that Trump may be guilty of treason, while a third (Thomas Friedman) appealed openly to the military last month to carry out a palace coup.
The world is confronting a crisis of historic dimensions in the center of global capitalism. Decades of social and political reaction, unending war and the artificial suppression of class conflict are coming to a head. Wealth and power have been concentrated to an extraordinary degree in the hands of a narrow oligarchy, while the vast majority of the population is driven into increasingly desperate economic straits and deprived of any political influence.
The dysfunctionality of American society is everywhere in evidence. Crumbling roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, deepening poverty and social misery, collapsing schools, the slashing of social spending and private pensions are in their totality the consequence of the subordination of all rational consideration of the public interest to a manic drive for profit.
Social anger among working people—who see the government shutting them out from any access to decent health care, poisoning the water supply in cities such as Flint to enrich speculators and their bribed politicians—is reaching the boiling point. Both parties and all of the official institutions—Congress, the Supreme Court, the media—are discredited. What is unfolding is a breakdown of the entire framework of constitutional government.
If Trump is a rogue president who accepts no legal or constitutional limits on his actions, he only mirrors the conduct of the corporate CEOs, bankers and hedge fund moguls who crashed the world economy in 2008 with impunity, and now reap untold profits while working people suffer the consequences.
There is no way out of this crisis through the existing political framework. If Trump is replaced through the machinations of the Democrats or its allies in the military-intelligence apparatus, the result will be a further turn to the right, an acceleration of militarism and reaction, and potentially a US nuclear war with Russia. Trump himself can prevail only through the mobilization of ultra-right and fascistic elements, both within the military and outside it, with the most ominous consequences for the social interests and democratic rights of working people.
The only way to resolve the political crisis on a progressive and democratic basis is through the political mobilization of the working class. Only the working class, fighting on the basis of a socialist program, independently and in opposition to the two parties of big business and their stooges in the trade unions, can open a new road forward.
Patrick Martin
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.AUGUSTA, Ga. -- After seeing playing partners Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler make consecutive aces on the fourth hole of Wednesday’s Par 3 Contest, Jordan Spieth knew he had a near-impossible task.
“It might’ve been the hardest shot I ever had to hit, trying to follow them,” the defending Masters champ said. “Boy, that was so much fun.”
Spieth didn’t complete the hat trick of aces, drawing some good-natured boos. Said Fowler with a grin, “You know, after two hole-in-ones, you got to man up and hit the shot. Just couldn’t do it.”
By the time they reached the green, the crowd had already reached a delirious state thanks to the back-to-back aces, the first by Thomas, followed by Fowler.
“It was awesome,” Thomas said. “I don't know if it's ever been done, back‑to‑back shots like that. But to play with two good buddies and make a hole‑in‑one and to have my mom on the bag in my first Masters, it's a bucket list kind of thing.
“It was so cool. And Rickie to do it on top of it, it was pretty funny for Jordan. Today was just so much fun.”
After his ace, Thomas said he had a “weird feeling” as he watched Fowler’s ball in flight. When the ball rolled in, both players wore looks of disbelief, then proceeded to capture the moment with photos and videos.
“Obviously there's some pins out here on a couple holes where there's a good chance to make it in one,” Fowler said. “Still takes a good shot. I was hoping that one of us would have a chance. Really cool to see Justin get one. Sorry I had to steal a little bit of his thunder, hitting one right after him.”If you haven’t heard of Bitcoins or cryptocurrencies then you have probably been living under a rock for the last five years. Decentralized currencies are here and they are growing with their cumulative market cap being over $8,000,000,000! Today we are talking with Max Kordek, the founder of a new decentralized platform called Lisk. Lisk is currently in the process of their Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which has already raised over 3500 Bitcoins, totaling around 1,500,000 USD!
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and how you got into cryptocurrencies?
Sure, my name is Max Kordek and I’m living in Aachen, Germany. My crypto-currency journey began with Bitcoin 3 years ago, however I quickly switched over to Litecoin in order to mine them on my mining rig. After that I learned more about Nxt shortly after BCNext launched it. I was actively involved in the Nxt community and also went to several conferences to promote it. 18 months ago I also discovered Crypti and became a Crypti Foundation member. Within the foundation I helped to build out the platform and promote it. About 6 weeks ago I founded Lisk together with Oliver Beddows and we now seek to innovate the crypto-currency sector with decentralized applications, sidechains, and a remarkable user experience.
Why did you decide to create Lisk?
Oliver and I were both frustrated with the lack of progress at Crypti. We knew since the beginning that the potential of our source code and idea is enormous, but it just wasn’t possible to reach it with Crypti. The foundation model was holding us back and because Crypti’s ICO only lasted 5 days the community was very small as well. With Lisk we can finally live up to the potential.
I heard that Lisk is similar to Ethereum. Are they similar? Why should one choose Lisk over Ethereum?
Lisk and Ethereum are only in one point similar – decentralized applications (dapps). Both platforms allow the development of decentralized applications, else they are completely different. Differences are numerous, just to name a few:
– Programming language: Lisk dapps are developed in JavaScript, Ethereum dapps are developed in Serenity or Solidity.
– Mainchain vs. Sidechain: Lisk dapps are always running in their own autonomous sidechain, keeping the Lisk mainchain lean and efficient. Ethereum dapps are always running on its mainchain, alongside every other dapp and smart contract.
– DPoS vs PoW: The Lisk mainchain and sidechains are running on Delegated Proof of Stake, while Ethereum is a Proof of Work coin. That means Lisk is much more energy friendly. It is also possible to secure the network from a Raspberry Pi or similar small ARM devices, which is great for the Internet of Things.
– Usability: Lisk comes by default with a user interface, which includes a Dapp Store.
Can you give us some real world examples of what such a dapp would do?
Yes of course! Here are two examples I just came up with. Example 1: Internet of Things Let’s say you are one of the many who own various measuring instruments. They are just lying around, and you can’t monetize them right now. With Lisk someone could develop a dapp to which you can plugin your devices and write the measurement data to the dapp sidechain. We now have a marketplace with various types of data; temperature, humidity, carbon emission, or traffic situations. Research laboratories, universities, companies, websites, and individuals can directly buy the data within the dapp for small amounts of LISK. Example 2: Energy Sector In Germany there are over 40,000,000 households with a electricity meter. The energy providers have to come to their customer’s houses once a year and check the energy consumption. These electricity meters can easily manipulated or damaged, and the whole process is extremely expensive for the energy providers. A Lisk dapp could track the daily energy consumption of every household and save it into the dapp sidechain, in which the values are immutable and tamper-proof. Then the energy provider simply have to read the values from the sidechain and calculate the costs.
How is your ICO going? What are the current numbers?
Our ICO is doing great! Until now (Friday 11th) we collected 3200 BTC and are looking forward to the last week of our ICO.
After the ICO is complete and you create the Genesis block, how do you envision the future of Lisk?
We envision the future of Lisk to be phenomenal! We are in contact with several companies already, and many individuals expressed their interest to develop a dapp. During the next months we will make Lisk more robust, rapid and secure. Improved test coverage, performance optimisations and developer documentation will help tremendously in this regard. We are striving to be the easiest crypto-currency platform to use. We want to bring Lisk and the Lisk Dapp Store to the mainstream crowd and be the place to go for decentralized application development.
Want to learn more? Head over to their main page : Lisk.io.Saturday Night Live jumped in the Hillary Clinton beatdown this weekend. Amy Poehler started the show with her spot-on Hillary Clinton impression. “Hillary” said she’s still in the race because she’s a sore loser, her supporters are racist, and if she gets the nomination, she’ll use the sexist and racist cards against John McCain - because she’s just that ruthless.
As much as I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee, all of this stick swinging at her head, telling her to sit down and fall in line, only hurts Barack Obama’s chances to pick up support from her Hillbots (is that what they’re called?) in November. People that Barack Obama will need in order to win.
Ignore her dumb comments about “hardworking.. White americans.” Hell, if I was White I’d be mad that she thought of my support as the “uneducated White vote.” Educated people know that.
Let her campaign flame out on its own. She has no way to win.
But kicking her in the ass as she waves goodbye is not the way to unite the party.We all have had our fair share recently of Gartman the "market timer" (here and here). However, little have we experienced of Gartman "the historian". Here he is, by way of Art Cashin, being off by 300 years notwithstanding, describing something that he has intoned on recently in his ever-so-frequent appearances on CNBC: the "they" who are in control, or in this case the central planners whose decisions ultimately lead to nothing but ruin.
Art Cashin - Too Good Not To Pass Along
In his latest Gartman newsletter, Dennis cites historians, Will and Ariel Durant, on the decline of the Roman Empire.
Rome had its socialist interlude under Diocletian. Faced with increasing poverty and restlessness among the masses, and with the imminent danger of barbarian invasion, he issued in A.D. 3 an edictum de pretiis, which denounced monopolists for keeping goods from the market to raise prices, and set maximum prices and wages for all important articles and services. Extensive public works were undertaken to put the unemployed to work, and food was distributed gratis, or at reduced prices, to the poor. The government – which already owned most mines, quarries, and salt deposits – brought nearly all major industries and guilds under detailed control. “In every large town,” we are told, “the state became a powerful employer, standing head and shoulders above the private industrialists, who were in any case crushed by taxation.” When businessmen predicted ruin, Diocletian explained that the barbarians were at the gate, and that individual liberty had to be shelved until collective liberty could be made secure. The socialism of Diocletian was a war economy, made possible by fear of foreign attack. Other factors equal, internal liberty varies inversely with external danger. The task of controlling men in economic detail proved too much for Diocletian's expanding, expensive, and corrupt bureaucracy. To support this officialdom – the army, the courts, public works, and the dole – taxation rose to such heights that people lost the incentive to work or earn, and an erosive contest began between lawyers finding devices to evade taxes and lawyers formulating laws to prevent evasion. Thousands of Romans, to escape the tax gatherer, fled over the frontiers to seek refuge among the barbarians. Seeking to check this elusive mobility and to facilitate regulation and taxation, the government issued decrees binding the peasant to his field and the worker to his shop until all their debts and taxes had been paid. In this and other ways medieval serfdom began.
Read it. Put it down. Pick it up and reread it again. Repeat several times. There are many lessons here, many important lessons. (We think the date, however, is a typo. Diocletian ruled from 284 to 305)Why Free Trade Doesn’t Work for the Workers
Steve Keen explains the flaws in conventional theory and what a President Trump could do to reverse the process
According to conventional economic theory, free trade is a winner for developing and developed countries alike. That’s how globalists sold Americans on NAFTA and China’s ascension to the World Trade Organization (WTO), but that’s not how it played out.
Millions of lost manufacturing jobs later, frustrated American workers from the rust-belt states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan voted for Donald Trump, the first candidate in decades to oppose the free trade doctrine.
But why doesn’t free trade work? And what can a President Trump do to reverse the near complete offshoring of American manufacturing?
Mainstream economics cannot answer these questions. That’s why Epoch Times spoke to Steve Keen, author of “Debunking Economics” and lecturer at London’s Kingston University who was able to offer both an explanation and insights on how Trump could revive American manufacturing.
Epoch Times: Why doesn’t free trade work as advertised?
Steve Keen: The starting point of the conventional theory is that you can increase efficiency by specializing. For example, China is absolutely better at producing two things like steel and textiles than the United States, but its competitive advantage is relatively higher in steel production than textiles.
So according to conventional theory, the United States should produce more textiles and China should produce more steel. This causes a relative increase in efficiency and both countries would produce more of both than if there wasn’t free trade.
They will admit there will be winners and losers, the steel industry in the United States will suffer whereas the textile industry will gain. The theory is that the winners compensate for the losers and there is more for everyone.
Even the argument by classical economist David Ricardo (1772–1823) about wine and clothes involved the workers in one industry losing their jobs. What the neoclassical economists say is that workers in the losing industry can get a job in the winning industry.
So it’s assuming full employment, everybody who wants a job gets a job, which is not the real world. And they also assume you can move resources from one industry into another. Workers can retrain, it is possible to retrain a textile worker into a steel worker. It takes time but it can be done.
Aside from the fact that China now produces more of everything, what is not possible is turning a weaving machine into a steel furnace. And that’s why you have the rust-belt. In the case of China and the United States, the steel plants in the United States won’t become weaving machines; they just turn into rust. So what you have is absolute destruction of physical resources in one country.
Or they ship the capital to the place where the low wage workers are, like China or Mexico, and what you get is a class redistribution of income. The workers in the developed country lose, the capitalists in that country gain.
The capitalists in the developed country still own the machinery and employ people but in a different country and at lower wages. Then they sell the products back into the American markets at the same prices but at lower costs. So they gain, and the working class has to finance their consumption with increased levels of debt because they don’t have the income anymore.
Trump is used to playing hardball, and now he will have to negotiate with bureaucrats and their corporate backers. — Steve Keen
The workers in the developing country also gain, so it’s also a wealth transfer from the developed to the developing country.
Epoch Times: How could Western societies let this happen?
Mr. Keen: The motivation is profit, and the question is whether companies or the government would constrain their greed. You don’t if you don’t care what the workers think.
But in a democracy you get to the point where the workers have lost so much because of globalization, they get sick and tired of hearing the fairy tale that they won’t suffer and that it’s all for their own good. And they look at their decayed streets and factories and dismal jobs and lower share of income, and they say: “You know what, I’m going to vote against this.”
And that’s what we are seeing globally now with Trump and Brexit, this revolt against globalization and financialization. The absolute losers of all of this are the working class of the first world. The winners are the multinational corporations.
Epoch Times: Most governments in the West tried to paper over the job losses by expanding the welfare state. With the election of Trump, however, the workers don’t seem to be content with handouts anymore.
Mr. Keen: Yes, humans get their sense of self-worth by contributing to a community. If you are human and you are being paid for staying alive, you are not particularly happy about it, your sense of self-worth is pretty low. But if you have a job and can contribute to a community, that’s where your sense of self-worth is going to come from.
All this welfare is replacing work which is the case in the rustbelt areas makes people angry and resentful. Their self-worth is challenged and they are not going to be happy with the establishment.
That’s why Trump has such an appeal, and they don’t care about him being politically incorrect. They like the fact he is like a human hand grenade. They threw the human hand grenade into Washington.
Epoch Times: So what can Trump do to reverse the process?
Mr. Keen: Once you have transferred all your capacity offshore, it’s very hard to reverse the process. You haven’t just lost the industrial capacity, you have lost the skill-base as well, you don’t have the engineers and designers anymore. They used to build new versions every year; now they are gone.
What he can do on the fiscal front is his plan to invest in infrastructure.
If he goes into this massive program as he has talked about and insists on a made-in-America policy, which he will do, that will provide the financing for the reindustrialization to occur. I’m not worried about a potential deficit because he has the world reserve currency in his hands and the Fed can print as much of it as necessary.
Then, if you produce all the infrastructure components onshore, you don’t even need trade tariffs. In my opinion, this wouldn’t be a trade barrier under WTO rules, but this could be the first dispute he has with the WTO.
Because there is demand by the government and the components have to be manufactured onshore, capital needs to be invested and workers trained for the job. On top, you have the increases in productivity through infrastructure, another positive.
Epoch Times: What about tariffs?
Mr. Keen: It’s not going to be peaceful, and there will be repercussions for American companies. Trump is used to playing hardball, and now he will have to negotiate with bureaucrats and their corporate backers.
There will be attempts to control what Trump does through the WTO and it will be interesting to see how successful those attempts will be.
Epoch Times: What about automation, doesn’t that render the whole process of on-shoring meaningless?
Mr. Keen: Part of the motivation to move production offshore was cheap labor. But as we are getting better and better robots, you can have machines you can retrain for different assembly processes.
And you have 3-D printing turning up, which has become mainstream. So it means you can produce onshore without |
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